When the Nine merger with Fairfax Media was announced in 2018, former Prime Minister Paul Keating put out a scathing, 600-word statement blasting an “exceptionally bad development”.

Nine, he said, had the “opportunism and ethics of an alley cat”. In language marking that classic Keating genre of nuance, finesse and subtlety, the former PM continued: “Through various changes in ownership, no one has lanced the carbuncle at the centre of Nine’s approach to news management,” he said.