Herd on the Terrace: Tom Percy tweaked above ‘newbies’ like Tim Hammond, Rachel Young and Kate Lendich

It is pleasing that Tom Percy has kept in touch with his home town while in Hobart defending a Tasmanian judge on domestic violence charges. The veteran barrister has volunteered for a new scheme, proposed by Chief Justice Peter Quinlan and outgoing Court of Appeal boss Michael Buss, to help self-represented people mount criminal appeals. But there was a hitch when the WA Supreme Court published a formal list of the 49 volunteers — identifying them by their initials and surname. The letters SC were used for volunteers with the lofty designation of Senior Counsel. There was no problem with identifying Tim Hammond as “T J Hammond SC”; nor with identifying Rachel Young as “R Young SC”. Nor was there were hitches of with the formalised identification of Kim Lendich, Seamus Rafferty, Bettina Mangan, Eric Heenan and Josh Thomson using their initials and with their post-nominal SC. But rumblings could apparently be felt atop Mount Wellington because Percy was called “T F Percy, SC”. You see, Thomas Francis Percy carries the far loftier post-nominal KC. KC is short for King’s Counsel but has bugger all to do with King Charles or even his late mum Queen Elizabeth. Percy was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in December 1997, four years before the abstract connection to the reigning monarch was removed from the WA system for appointing senior counsel. Letters, even archaic ones, matter to old silks. This list of scheme volunteers was promptly removed from the Supreme Court website and later replaced with a new listing identifying Percy as KC. A cackle of Chris’s at MinRes There’s an affinity for a particular given name at the plaything of a certain Kiwi mining billionaire. Mineral Resources’ June quarterly analyst call on Friday was hosted by company’s iron ore boss Chris Soccio and investor relations manager Chris Chong. If you reside anywhere other than under a rock you would know these two report to MinRes overlord Chris Ellison. Given the reported exodus of female talent, we can but hope there will not soon be more Chris’s than women on the poop deck at MinRes. Epic battle for NicheLiving spindoctor Anyone who has read ancient Greek literature and enjoyed the heyday of Australian television will know the cultural significance of the names Odyssey and Leo. The Odyssey is a painfully long poem about the travels of a king named Odysseus after the Trojan War; while the misadventures of stuntman named Leo W^#ker on the Paul Hogan Show are classics. These cultural icons sprung to mind this week after reading a rather unusual media release from a digital marketing outfit called Odyssey & Leo. Odyssey & Leo proclaimed it had set up a partnership with battling builder NicheLiving to help it navigate “a period of significant market challenges”. “Our goal is to foster transparency, improve operational efficiency, and rebuild public trust in NicheLiving’s brand,” Odyssey & Leo boss Taha Salman said. Salman will need the smarts of Odysseus and the persistence of Leo to fix NicheLiving given it is battling to complete up to 200 homes and grappling with dozens of complaints to the Building Commissioner. But let’s not forget that Odysseus conquered Troy. Diversity gongs a work in progress Diversity and inclusion are buzzwords in the corporate world these days. It’s so lucrative now that even hard heads at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA have an awards night for it. But our operative with a well-tuned ear for such matters noted a couple not-very-inclusive actions at the Diversity and Inclusion Awards last week. Compere Tracy Vo opened the event with “ladies and gentlemen”. With an LGBTQIA+ award up for grabs, you could safely assume not everyone is either male or female — but somewhere in between. The wheelchair lift was not only slow but needed a service. We’re happy Rio Tinto won the gong for the best D&I initiative at the big end of town for what was described “as a bench with a QR code” to combat loneliness.