The proposal wasn’t unique, it was just an easy fix, Crawford found. And the bureaucrats working on the sale told the bidders what price would be acceptable up front, less than ideal when you’re trying to get top dollar. Err, and they didn’t take notes in two “crucial meetings” when discussing price or document any sort of negotiation strategy. But it was only one day earlier that one of the most senior of the DPC staffers, a senior member of the commercial branch by the name of Con Kargas, was basically made employee of the year. Our man Kargas is literally the point guy on unsolicited proposals, managing the process.

Loading He didn’t make the decision. Presumably that job was left to former Treasury chief Rob Whitfield, DPC secretary Blair Comley, Berejiklian and then premier Mike Baird, and their advisers at UBS and Deutsche Bank. With some 657 employees though, surely the department could have found pretty much anyone else to give an award for “outstanding work in delivering great services and results”? (Meanwhile, DPC points to work done by PricewaterhouseCoopers which concluded it was unlikely there would have been a higher bidder. However, with one eye on PwC’s recent creative R&D tax incentive work, we assume they operate in very solid “anything’s possible for a price” terrain.)

Total access Pathology operator Sonic Healthcare yesterday splashed out $750 million to purchase Florida-based Aurora Diagnostics, transforming the company into a major global business. But you’d think a business worth $9 billion might be able to sort out a corporate email address for its chief executive Colin Goldschmidt and chief financial officer Chris Wilks. Not in this case. Goldschmidt can be reached at his personal MSN address, while Wilks has appended his personal Bigpond email to the Australian Securities Exchange announcement.

Cashing in, cashing out Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit: Labor MP Emma Husar could fast be turning into a miniature piggy bank for our legal friends. She's not only in the Federal Court against BuzzFeed, alleging defamation, but has threatened action against NSW Labor and at least one of her former staff in the recent past. And she’s in court on a separate private matter.

All that could run up quite a bill, even if the other threats never materialise. Someone’s got to lick the stamps! And we note it was prominent Sydney silk Sandy Dawson SC who appended his name to the documents tendered to the court last Friday, a man who charges some $950 an hour for his services. Also in her corner, solicitor Amy Carr, a writer of many letters who promises “advice from the inside” (although from the inside of what remains an open question). Carr tells us Husar's “terms of engagement with her legal team are confidential”.

BuzzFeed has brought in lawyers from MinterEllison, with a date in court tomorrow. There was some speculation among Labor operatives that Husar was taking pro-bono advice. We suspect that’s not the case, considering a lack of disclosure on her Parliamentary register. Canberra-bound, sans gun And an addendum to the news in this column last Friday that one-time Rene Rivkin sidekick Gary Mares was pushing a shoot first; ask questions later mine security strategy at his new Ecuadorian endeavour Rio Dorado (which, by the way, plans to list on the ASX next year).