By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Well it looks like we can reset the old “days since embarrassing screw-up at Seven West Media” dial back to zero.
Just when its torrid 2024 began disappearing in the rearview mirror, Seven has been quietly working through a staff underpayments controversy.
The Seven Network has been dealing with staff underpayments. Credit: Bloomberg
One staff member told us the company had quietly organised Zoom meetings with affected journalists, sometimes trying to spin the fact as “good news” that it had discovered some staff were owed upwards of $25,000. Okaaay.
We know that many television viewers think free-to-air TV exists in a time warp, but really Seven, underpayment scandals are so five years ago.
Not that anyone is in a position to cast the first stone: the ABC paid staff $12 million and Nine (owner of this masthead) dealt in 2022 with underpayments to staff over a six-year period.
In not paying its staff what they are due Seven also joins other good corporate citizens including, er, Woolworths and, er, Qantas. Just how much it does owe the 30-odd staff affected, the network wouldn’t say.
“Through regular payroll checking processes, we identified a small number of journalists who had incorrect classifications for their roles input into our payroll system,” the network said in a statement.
“As soon as we became aware, we notified impacted employees and payments are expected to be made to them by the end of the month. The classifications have been corrected, and we have apologised to those impacted.”
So much for Seven West Media boss Jeff Howard promising in these pages to institute a “clean slate” after “a few bad apples” tarred the media company. A string of executive departures followed a series of well-publicised incidents that engulfed Seven News.
Maintain your vigilance, Jeff. These apples don’t look too good.
Palmer Army
Who said the election campaign is boring? (Us, many times, to whoever would listen). But while the major party leaders continue with their tradie cosplay, real fun is happening with mining magnate and frequent newspaper advertiser Clive Palmer and his Trumpet of Patriots, which continues the billionaire’s tried and tested preselection tactic of picking weird units.
Palmer is headed back to a now largely empty Parliament House to reveal his how-to-vote cards on Thursday. Stop the presses.
Meanwhile, in Victoria, the lead candidate is James Unkles, who describes himself as: “A military lawyer. Trying to overturn the convictions of ‘Breaker’ Morant.”
Thank you for your service, James, but we feel the Breaker Morant ship has well and truly sailed. Unkles also reveals in his social media bio that he “enjoy[s] chillies and spicy food, curries, playing drums / vocals” pointing to the fact Team Palmer is a considerably broad church indeed.
In NSW, the Senate ticket is being led by Silvana Nile, second wife of ex-NSW MP and Christian soldier Fred Nile. She’s there to fight for the real issues animating Australians
“While Labor and the Liberals are for THEY/THEM, we are for YOU,” Nile said in her candidate statement, sounding more Trumpian than Trumpet to our ears.
Special session
Sorrento Writers Festival director Corrie Perkin.Credit: Eddie Jim
Who knew that this November marks the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal? Certainly not us, but the Sorrento Writers Festival, which this column is looking forward to attending, is on the case.
It has programmed several events to mark 50 years since governor-general Sir John Kerr turfed out the duly elected Labor government of Gough Whitlam.
We hadn’t realised 1975 was such a signature year: Darwin dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy, the Tasman Bridge collapsed in Hobart, Triple J (then 2JJ) founded, Microsoft founded, Saigon fell and Papua New Guinea gained independence.
“I’m not sure whether historians would agree, but 1975 feels like a year when modern Australia shifted its axis,” says festival director Corrie Perkin, who has another reason to remember 1975.
On October 16, the day Indonesian troops murdered the Balibo Five journalists in East Timor, Perkin’s dad, Graham Perkin, editor of The Age, died suddenly of a heart attack.
The festival will debate whether 1975 marks a turning point, but for Perkin, the political will remain forever personal.
Pokie Scamps
We’re old enough to remember when Sophie Scamps, teal independent MP for the federal seat of Mackellar, called pokie machines “a scourge on our society”.
It was January 2023, when poker machines were viewed as a scourge in Victoria and NSW. Scamps was doing her bit. A day earlier, she’d divested from the Waratah Hotel Group Trust, which owns a bunch of pokie pubs. Anyway, since then, despite campaigning hard for a crackdown on gambling advertising, Scamps has changed her tune a little, at least as far as pokie dens are concerned.
The teal has been drawing big crowds at events held at the Dee Why RSL in Sydney, which last year took home $43 million in pokie revenue. These included a recent event with Warringah MP and OG teal Zali Steggall and former Liberal leader turned Climate 200 advisory council member John Hewson.
We hear Scamps hasn’t exactly had a damascene conversion on pokies, but has instead focused her attention on campaigning for a ban on gambling advertising. As for the choice of Dee Why RSL, it’s apparently one of the few local venues big enough to hold the crowds Scamps is drawing, with the Hewson and Steggall event over-subscribed within days. Looks like someone, somewhere, is excited about the election after all.
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