How News Breakfast anchor Lisa Millar is taking on the big guns at Sunrise and Today
After nearly a decade as a globetrotting reporter Lisa Millar has found her new happy place as co-host of the ABC’s News Breakfast and says they’ve found the winning recipe in the morning TV ratings battle.
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Lisa Millar is wobbling on one foot, trying to ignore the tennis balls bouncing off her racquet while maintaining a smile for the camera.
“I used to be a serious journalist,’’ the co-host of ABC’s News Breakfast show quips, before dissolving into laughter as tennis coach Dan Norris, tasked with lobbing the balls into the photo, replies he used to a serious coach too.
A reporter for the past 31 years who’s spent the best part of the previous decade working in Washington and London covering some of the world’s most important stories, Millar is still a serious journalist.
But since taking over from Virginia Trioli on the Melbourne-based breakfast couch in August, the country girl from Queensland has been able to show viewers a lighter side to her personality.
“I enjoy it because I like to have fun,’’ Millar, 50, says.
“You can be a serious, good, hard-nosed journalist and still have a bit of fun. And breakfast news lets me do that. I’ve come back and discovered there’s this other side of me that (until now) I’ve not been able to show viewers.’’
As bureau chief of the ABC foreign offices in Washington and London, Millar has spent the past nine years covering or organising stories including the terror attacks in London, France and Istanbul to the 2016 Italian earthquake which killed almost 300 people.
She’s been to the Guantánamo Bay prison twice, covered multiple US and UK elections, the 2005 hanging of Australian citizen Van Nguyen in Singapore, and the second Bali bombing. The 2012 Sandy Hook primary school shooting in Connecticut still haunts her.
But after years covering some of the world’s most tragic and horrific stories, she surprised herself by finding a natural home on breakfast TV, seguing from international news to the eclectic mix of books, movies, current affairs and community news which fills the three-hour breakfast slot each weekday.
“Journalism, I do absolutely love it,’’ Millar says.
“Getting someone to tell you something deeply personal that they’ve never shared before is — it might sound a bit lame — but I do think it’s an honour and I do think it’s a privilege and I want to tell those stories because I think they need to be told.’’
Millar says she still retains the enthusiasm for a breaking news story.
“When I was in Washington, I went to hear (Australian writer) David Malouf speak. He said, ‘the thing about being Australian is that history happens while we are asleep’. And I’ve always thought that. You basically wake up and the world has changed. So now I’m waking up with Australians waking up and I can tell them, ‘history’s changed, this is what’s happened overnight around the world. These are the big stories’.
“And I love it.’’
Unlike recent changes to commercial TV breakfast teams, the transition from Trioli to Millar was friendly, neat and bloodless.
Trioli left to take up a new role on morning radio and Millar found herself in a job she hadn’t thought much about until she filled in during the non-ratings period last Christmas.
With co-host Michael Rowland — an old friend and colleague — Millar found a natural groove early.
“We get on really well and people have made mention of the fact we’ve got a really nice chemistry and we do, and I think it’s because we are mates,’’ she says.
“(There’s been) not one moment of anything other than friendship and collegiality and I think the audience knows when that’s true or not. They can see if it’s authentic and I think that’s why it’s appealing and the ratings seem to be indicating that.’’
News Breakfast ratings have gone up since Millar arrived on August 29, with OzTAM figures showing an average metro audience of 157,000 since August 5 — up from 152,000 in 2018. The ratings also make it a player in the breakfast-TV battle with Channel 7’s Sunrise and Nine’s Today.
Trioli, who has taken over from Jon Faine on morning radio, had hosted News Breakfast since its inception in 2008, and was an urbane, sophisticated presenter with plenty of fans.
The transition to the warm-voiced Queenslander who grew up in Kilkivan, population 400, didn’t please some of the ABC’s more city-centric viewers.
Millar is unapologetic.
“What you see on television is pretty much what you get in real life. And that is, ‘I just want to be me,’’ Millar says.
“Someone criticised me for laughing too much. Well, you know what, if that’s my biggest sin, sue me because I’ve spent enough time not laughing at my job … so if I want to have a laugh making Michael Rowland eat hot chillies, then I’m going to do it.
“It was always going to be difficult for some members of the audience who loved and adored Virginia. But the reality is, I’m here, get used to it. I respect everything she’s done for the program. But this is a new era.’’
The second-youngest of five children, Millar spent her early years in Kilkivan and landed her first job in journalism at The Gympie Times in 1988 as a 19-year-old. She’d started university at just 16.
She lost her job along with everyone else in the newsroom in 1991 when the afternoon tabloid The Sun in Brisbane closed down. She spent her redundancy cheque on a second-hand car with airconditioning, which she used to relocate to Townsville and start her TV career with WIN covering Northern Queensland.
She was first hired by the ABC in 1993, and has had a stellar career in Sydney, Canberra, two stints in Washington and most recently running the ABC bureau in London.
Her life as a foreign correspondent began in December 2001 when she boarded a plane with a young Leigh Sales, the pair becoming fast friends after being appointed the ABC’s two North America correspondents. They remain best mates to this day.
The last thing Millar does each day is watch Sales host the ABC’s flagship current affairs show 7.30 before going to bed.
“I say, ‘goodnight Salesy’ and go to bed at 8pm,’’ she says.
After years being on call 24/7 and not knowing which country she could end up in tomorrow, Millar says she’s enjoying the routine of her new job, despite the 3am alarm.
“I’ve always done shift work with journalism and I’m actually enjoying, far more than I anticipated, the routine of this job,’’ she says.
“The alarm goes off at 3am but I know that at ten-to-four, I walk into the green room, the wardrobe area. At ten-past-four I walk into the make-up room. There’s this kind of monotony of movement that I’m really enjoying and I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying it because it’s such a crazy time to be up.’’
Google searches show that “Lisa Millar married’’ is a popular search. For the record, she is single.
“I had a long relationship overseas. I’ve returned to Australia single,’’ she says.
She’s close to her family — two brothers and two sisters, 11 nieces and nephews and 13 great-nieces and great-nephews.
“And we all get on, which is a bit of a miracle,’’ she laughs.
Her father Clarrie was the Country Party member for Wide Bay for 16 years and had previously run a dairy farm with his wife Dorothy.
“Dad went into federal politics when I was four. So that was sort of the life I knew. My older brothers and sisters spent their childhoods having to milk the cows at five o’clock in the morning, which they remind (younger sister) Trudi and I of often.’’
Millar was close to her parents. Clarrie died in November 2017, while Dorothy’s death was on Millar’s last day in the London bureau in September last year.
She recalls 2017 as “intense’’, starting with the New Year’s Eve Istanbul nightclub terror attack and progressing through terror attacks at Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge.
“We had the hung election. Grenfell (tragedy where 72 people died in a fire). In my period in London, I covered eight or nine terrorist attacks. It was so crazy to be in a posting that’s that full-on.
“I’d stand on street corners and be convinced the bus coming to the traffic lights was actually going to veer off and knock us down. I wouldn’t stand by the edge of the road, I’d stand back. You just felt like bad shit was going to happen all the time. Because it was.’’
Millar is no princess on or off-screen. A photo of her yelling questions at the top of her lungs at Prince Harry ahead of his Windsor wedding sums up her approach.
“I was screaming out ‘how do you feel?’ It was the night before his wedding and he turned around and put his hand on his heart and we got the shot and it was fantastic. That was what I was screaming out, ‘Harry, how do you feel?’ Your most basic question in journalism but it worked.’’
Millar says she is “absolutely’’ a country girl “and proud of it.’’
She recently went back to Gympie for the 150th anniversary of her primary school.
“Even though I haven’t lived in Gympie since I left The Gympie Times in 1990, I don’t ever want to lose that connection,’’ she says.
“And I do think people are real. There’s a real authenticity about that and I like it.’’
Away from the studio, Millar, who has moved into an apartment in bayside Melbourne, spends her time exploring the city and state, doing Park Runs on Saturdays, and trying to find people to play tennis with in the middle of the day at Tennis World at Albert Reserve, as she rediscovers the sport she loved as a kid.
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Like many women with a public profile, she cops more than her share of abuse on social media. She hopes to become better at ignoring the trolls.
“I’ve shut off my notifications on Twitter. This is how I manage it. I don’t think I’m as resilient as I need to be in that regard yet.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of friends about it. I’ve spoken to (Nine’s current Today breakfast
co-host) Deb Knight, I’ve spoken to Leigh (Sales), I’ve spoken to Annabel (Crabb). Everyone has a different approach.
“Sometimes … I can’t just brush it aside when there are random, sometimes anonymous, sometimes not, personal criticisms. One day maybe I’ll be able to. But at the moment, what I’ve realised that the best thing to do is not to read it, not to see it.’’
Millar says she’s no fashionista and feels body image pressure.
“I try not to. The body image things I worried about 20 years ago I’ve realised are nothing. I just remind myself that when I’m 70, I’ll be looking back at this period and think I wasted a lot of time worrying about body image.
“My younger sister’s three daughters, who I’m particularly close to, are 14, 11 and 9 and I’m super conscious that I’m a role model for them.
“And whether it comes to putting down my phone whenever I’m around them and not having my phone out all the time, not worrying about what we look like, not worrying about what we’re eating, just enjoying ourselves and each other’s companies. I’m very conscious that what I do is sending a message.’’