This week, Christmas finally comes for Rob Lucas, lifting the veil on Crow-media cosiness, LGA time travel and much more.

Jay’s man with the abacus

Premier Jay Weatherill has appointed a new economics adviser in his office – finally completing his team of advisers more than six months after his unexpected election win.

Sam Crafter told colleagues at Santos on Thursday that he would be leaving on October 17. He has been with Santos since 2007, most recently as manager of policy and government.

His connections with Labor run deep: he’s the son of Bannon era minister Greg Crafter, was a senior policy adviser to then Premier Mike Rann in the glory days of 2006-07, and was a chief-of-staff to Jane Lomax-Smith when she was Education Minister.

The economics adviser position has been vacant since wunderkind Aaron Hill left the job at the election to join Deloitte.

The appointment will be particularly good news to Liberal MLC Rob Lucas, whose second Christmas is the day when the Government Gazette publishes the names, positions and salaries of the Premier’s ministerial advisers.

That usually happens in July, but Weatherill has delayed the official notice until all positions are filled.

Expect the list to be in the gazette over the next week – and watch out for the media release from Lucas.

Fiercely independent journalism

The brouhaha over Brenton Sanderson’s sacking as Crows coach has pulled aside the veil on the very cosy relationship between parts of Adelaide’s media and the city’s AFL teams.

FIVEaa’s drive sports presenter Stephen Rowe, a Crows “ambassador”, tortured listeners on Wednesday night with constant references to a big rumour circulating about the Crows.

Rowe repeatedly said the FIVEaa team was trying to verify the scuttlebutt before putting any details to air.

Which is fair enough.

But as the rumours started to gain wide traction – and it became obvious to everyone in the sports media that Sanderson had been axed – Rowe became more and more unsettled, assuring listeners that they would hear the news first on FIVEaa first (which they didn’t, much to the station’s annoyance).

The interesting point was why Rowe was asserting they would report it first – they could make this promise, he said, because the radio station was a “corporate partner” of the Crows.

That’s the way football journalism is done in Adelaide?

Still, if you’re looking for objectivity perhaps don’t switch over to Triple M where breakfast presenter Mark Ricciuto was one of the backroom boys who made the decision to boot Sando – a move described by FIVEaa brekky presenter David Penberthy as a “dog act” (Penbo clearly didn’t get the memo).

“He might regret saying that,” noted Ricciuto, ominously.

Devibrantisation

Arts SA was forced out of its lovely Hindley Street digs in June, swapping one of Adelaide’s most beautiful buildings for one of its ugliest – the execrable Wakefield House.

The move was all about saving money.

Arts’ former home, West’s Coffee Palace, has stood vacant ever since.

While Hindley Street traders hope for a more “vibrant” ground floor use of the building than a government office, there is no sign of a new tenant.

The four-year rule

The Local Government Association has been carpet-bombing the community and the media with daily missives about the upcoming council elections.

A keen-eyed correspondent let us know this week about an interesting LGA media release on candidate signs (life’s too short to read them all ourselves).

This one was headed “Candidate signs – four week rule” – and warned that candidates can only put up their election posters in the four-week period before polling day – and not a moment before.

“Local Government Association CEO Wendy Campana said under Local Government (Elections) Act candidates should not put up campaign posters until Friday 10 October 2010, four weeks from the 7 November polling day.”

It seems the LGA is keen on recycling.

Wrong Wrong

Were we the only Adelaideans bemused by yesterday’s page 3 story in the dear old Tiser, which declared that we’ve been pronouncing Wang Wang incorrectly for years?

“We’ve been getting it Wong,” stated the Murdoch organ.

Yeah, we know. Since 2009 we’ve known.

Two Wongs have always been right.

Speaking of the pandas, things got a bit hot and sweaty on Matt Abraham and David Bevan’s ABC radio breakfast show this week.

The pair gave air-time to Andrew “Cosi” Costello and his unusual suggestion that if couples around SA start making sweet love, a general environment of friskiness might encourage Wang Wang and Funi to make the most of their breeding window, which was open briefly, so to speak, this week (for the record, a “competent mating” did not occur).

If you think about it for a moment, this idea might actually reduce the already precarious erotic momentum of the State, but Cosi was on a roll – taking the metaphor further to compare his apparently sexually frustrated self to a “greyhound in the box at Angle Park, champing at the bit”.

Perhaps he’d been fired up by Abraham and Bevan’s interview with Hollywood legend Shirley MacLaine earlier in the week, which traversed the erotic territory of her legendary orgasm scene in the Peter Sellers’ film, Being There?

The Outsider appears in InDaily every Friday, digging into places where we’re not welcome, and probing Adelaide’s obsessions.