Laurie Oakes’ greatest moments

LAURIE Oakes has landed serious scoops and caused a few controversies of his own over the past 40 years. Here are the moments that will go down in history.

SPEAKING at the 20011 Andrew Olle Memorial Lecture, Laurie Oakes shared a few trade secrets.

“Sneakiness,” he said, “comes with the territory”.

“In the face of canny politicians, tight-lipped bureaucrats and armies of spin merchants, rat cunning and the ability to bluff are sometimes all we’ve got.”

It’s an approach that has kept Oakes at the forefront of Australian political reporting over the past four decades.

With the veteran political journalist set to retire, here are some of his best and most controversial moments.

2017: TRUMPING TURNBULL

OAKES made headlines in June this year after he published leaked footage of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull impersonating US President Donald Trump at the Parliament House Midwinter Ball.

While it was intended as a bit of fun, the revelation could have proved a major political headache for Turnbull, given the Prime Minister’s working relationship with the President got off to a rocky start with a fractious phone call back in January.

Oakes was criticised for reporting on the event, which is subject to Chatham House rules, but he shot back pointing out he was not even at attendee.

“The PM presumably thought that Mr Trump would never find out because journalists attending the ball agree not to report what happened,” he said. “But I don’t go to the ball and audio just happened to leak, plus a sample was posted on Instagram.”

There was little sustained political fallout from the expose, although Turnbull cheekily suggested that in future Midwinter Balls his speeches would simply be readings from the Budget papers.

Laurie Oakes interviewing Malcolm Turnbull for 60 minutes. Picture: Channel 9

2016: TIE GATE AND PIZZA GATE

During the 2016 Federal Election count, Laurie Oakes had some fun with punters who had laid bets through Sportsbet on what colour tie he would wear during the broadcast.

Without an on-camera explanation until late in the night, Oakes changed his tie five times during the evening, meaning various backers won a nice return on their flutter.

A less enthralling TV moment came later in the year, during Channel Nine’s broadcast of the US election count. The coverage suffered a number of technical glitches, including an awkward moment when a sudden cut back to the studio revealed Karl Stefanovic texting while Oakes chomped down on a slice of pizza.

During a live cross on the US election night coverage in 2016, Laurie Oakes was seen scoffing a slice of pizza.

2010: LAMBASTING LATHAM

Like anyone who’s anyone in Australian public life, Laurie Oakes has been subjected to that typical rite of passage: a savaging from former Labor leader Mark Latham.

In 2010, Latham made some disparaging remarks about Oakes’s work ethic and appearance, but Oakes hit back, saying: “You develop a thick hide in this business. You deal with some pretty weird people although not many as weird as Mark Latham. It’s pretty clear who’s got the screw loose. I think he showed he’s got a bile duct the size of Sydney Harbour.”

2010: GRILLING GILLARD

In his book The Party Thieves, The Real Story of the 2010 Election, political commentator Barrie Cassidy related a zinger of a question that Oakes put to then Prime Minister Julia Gillard about her decision to challenge Kevin Rudd for the Labor leadership.

Cassidy said Oakes had “come out of a three-year self-imposed National Press Club exile” to ask Gillard if she had decided to challenge Rudd despite suggestions that he (Rudd) might voluntarily stand aside if his polling numbers continued to be poor.

Cassidy wrote: “Gillard batted away the question ... (but it) dominated the media coverage for 48 hours and put the focus back on the ‘brutal’ nature of the leadership change”.

Not buying it. Laurie Oakes at the National Press Club listening to Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2010. Trouble was just around the corner (for Gillard).

2002: LABOR LOVERS LEAK

In 2002, Oakes was criticised for revealing that Cheryl Kernot had a five-year affair with Gareth Evans around the time of the former’s 1997 defection from the Australian Democrats to Labor.

Oakes had teased the “biggest secret of Kernot’s life” in his column for The Bulletin before dropping the bombshell during a segment on Channel Nine.

Oakes justified his decision to reveal the affair on the basis that it had been elided from the pages of Kernot’s recently-released memoir.

“The point is that Cheryl Kernot chose to write a book and she chose to write a book purporting to be a political history which was based on a falsehood and as a result of that aspersions were cast on a whole lot of other people, blame was cast for what happened to her when obviously this underlying thing, this steamy affair, was crucial to what happened to her, crucial to her behaviour, crucial to her lapses of judgment,” he said at the time.

Oakes grilled then Prime Minister John Howard on Channel Nine’s Sunday in the lead-up to 2007 federal election. The Howard era had a rocky start, thanks to an Oakes expose.

1997: A THREE-SCALP STORY

THREE scalps from the one expose? It’s a pretty dramatic result by most people’s reckoning, but for Laurie Oakes in 1997, it was just another day in the office. Barely a year into the life of the Howard government, Oakes revealed that three senior MPs — John Sharp, Peter McGauran and David Jull — had submitted incorrect travel claims. All three were gone by the following year.

1991: THE KIRIBILLI CONUNDRUM

ONE of Oakes’s biggest ever scoops was in the early 1990s, when he revealed the so-called ‘Kirribilli agreement’ struck in the 1980s between Prime Minister Bob Hawke and the man who would eventually replace him, Paul Keating.

Oakes reported that Hawke had reneged on the deal to hand the leadership over to Keating after the 1990 election, intensifying the tension between the two men.

Keating went on to unsuccessfully challenge Hawke before returning seven months later to finish the job.

1980: THE SCOOP OF THE CENTURY

IN one of the biggest leaks in political history, Laurie Oakes revealed the entirety of the 1980 Federal Budget before then treasurer John Howard was meant to deliver it.

“I had a copy in my hand for a total of 15 minutes and garbled into a tape and read the whole Budget. Later I had to transcribe my own garble, which was quite difficult,” he said at the time.

Laurie Oakes: his career predates colour TV.

1974: THE GAIR AFFAIR

IN a 2015 Fairfax interview, Oakes revealed one of the tools of a successful journalist driven to desperate measures: bluffing. He employed the strategy in 1974, forcing a Whitlam government MP to reveal that Prime Minister Whitlam was planning to make DLP Senator Vince Gair the ambassador to Ireland ... simply by pretending he already knew about it.

But that wasn’t enough for Oakes, who decided he needed a second source. Bluffing again, he called Gair’s wife to congratulate her on the news, and her response effectively confirmed the yarn.

Oakes told Fairfax it remained one of the best stories he’d ever broken.