Peter Stefanovic opens up about his Ubergate shame as he returns to TV
Peter Stefanovic has opened up about his embarrassment and shame over the infamous “Ubergate” controversy as he prepares for a spectacular comeback as the host of a new doco series unravelling the extraordinary Lawyer X story.
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Exclusive: Peter Stefanovic has opened up about his embarrassment and shame over the infamous “Ubergate” controversy as he prepares for a spectacular comeback from the TV wilderness.
The former Weekend Today host left Nine after the incident last year, in which he and the channel’s big-hitter brother Karl Stefanovic were secretly recorded in a back of a Uber cab venting about their colleagues and network.
Following several months of soul-searching he has frankly addressed the fallout ahead of his return to the small screen, fronting a new documentary series unravelling one of the most extraordinary stories in criminal history: Sky News Australia’s probe into the infamous gangland figure Lawyer X.
Key players in new Lawyer X doco
“I was embarrassed, I was ashamed about it all too because I got my network into trouble,” he said in a candid conversation. “I got my wife (fellow Nine star Sylvia Jeffreys) and brother into trouble; and I took that really hard. I apologised, which was the right thing to do and got things back on track again, but I’m in a pretty good place, a really good place actually.”
He’s right.
Presenting Lawyer X: The Untold Story is taking Stefanovic to the centre of Australia’s most important crime story: the tale of how defence barrister Nicola Gobbo, known by the alias Lawyer X for years, represented Melbourne gangland’s biggest criminal names — all the while working as a police informer rolling over on her own clients.
He said he jumped at Sky’s offer in February to tell such an amazing story, the implications of which will be far reaching not just in Victoria but nationally.
“At the heart of it is justice, the whole criminal justice system and people have got to have faith in that system, they have got to be aware that it is fair on everybody and this shows that it isn’t,” the 37-year-old journalist said.
“This shows it’s murky and there are tentacles that spread far and wide and there won’t be any quick fix. A couple of lawyers I have spoken with have said the trust has been broken between the public and criminal justice system and that is going to take a long time to repair.”
Stefanovic said there was nothing to say that if it was happening in Victoria it wasn’t happening in other states.
“It is a Melbourne story but the concept transcends the Victorian borders because you’ve got this lawyer representing clients — some of whom were the most notorious in Australian criminal history — and there she is giving up their secrets and handing them over to the cops,” he said.
“It’s a clichéd thing to say but it is truly like a movie, something out of Hollywood — but it’s real, we’re talking about real lives here and real-life consequences that are going to come out in a royal commission and laws are probably going to have to be amended or made to stop it happening again.”
Lawyer X: The Untold Story, coming to screens soon, will lift the lid on how a brilliant barrister from one of Victoria’s most respected families became a double-agent and police informer. Stefanovic speaks with those inside the story including an emotion-charged interview with the daughters of executed parents Terence and Christine Hodson, potentially sold out by Gobbo. He also speaks with police and lawyers of those Gobbo put away, who are now chasing “seven-figure” compensation against the state.
From what he has seen, Stefanovic said he would describe Gobbo in five words: bold, brave, cunning, naive and overconfident. It was her sense of invincibility that was her undoing, he said.
Perhaps words that some said about him last year after he and former Today show host brother Karl had their unguarded moment in an Uber? Not so, the now relaxed and genuinely happy Stefanovic says.
“I didn’t mind just hiding for a while because it was a tough time and I am inherently an introvert shy person and so when all this fuss was made and all ‘that’ happened, it was hard to deal with,” he said.
“But I’d like to think we are resilient, life’s tough and you deal with it. Everybody is going to go through good times and everybody is going to go through bad times and we went through a bad time and I actually found I did my best growth while I was under all that pressure.”
Stefanovic, who had been at Nine for 15 years, said he embraced the opportunity to recalibrate, learnt from it and after a while rebuilt and never thought about doing anything else since journalism was all he knew and loved.
As for the wider public: he said people still come up to him in bars and joke about Ubergate — and now he only takes taxis, as opposed to Ubers, home.
“I went out and spoke to a lot of people and that is what was good about the opportunity but when I left 9 you can go one of two ways — you can pack it in or keep going and I wasn’t done with it (TV) yet. I’d like to think I haven’t peaked yet,” he said.
“Sky has given me a great opportunity to do this great documentary and I felt it was a privilege to do and who knows what happens after that.”
LAWYER X-TRAs: TV DRAMA AND BOOK
The Sky News documentary comes ahead of two other major Lawyer X projects.
LAWYER X: The Scandalous Story Of How Melbourne’s Gangland War Was Really Won is the forthcoming book by Herald Sun journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, who led the investigation into the Nicola Gobbo story and have covered it every step of the way.
Today we can give you this first look at the cover.
LAWYER X is published by HarperCollins Australia and is available to pre-order now at Booktopia and at Apple Books for the e-version.
PRE-ORDER THE PAPERBACK: Click here
PRE-ORDER THE E-BOOK: Click here
Meanwhile Foxtel is working on a drama series that will bring the saga to life on the small screen.
And our reporters will continue to bring you exclusives and the latest angles at truecrimeaustralia.com.au/lawyerx
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