60 Minutes affair: Awkward Logies can lift Nine Network

Illustration: Peter Nicholson.

It will be the non-attendance of the year. 60 Minutes star reporter Tara Brown will give Australian television’s night of nights a wide berth in Melbourne on Sunday as the internal investigation into the program’s botched Beirut kidnapping roles on.

While stars and network execs will walk the red carpet for the cameras at Crown from 4pm on Mother’s Day, Brown will be absent — even though she’s a fair chance for a statue.

Brown’s report on Australian pedophile Peter Scully, “Catching a Monster”, is nominated for “most outstanding public affairs report”. And, if you can believe it, 60 Minutes is nominated for best news or current affairs program.

Brown, who’s keeping a low profile since returning from prison in Beirut a fortnight ago, has already won a Walkley for the report, along with its producer, Rebecca Le Tourneau.

For Brown’s boss Hugh Marks, it will be his first Logies as Nine’s chief.

Things could get awkward at the Nine executive table, with relations on the third floor of the Willoughby bunker said to be tense amid poor ratings and controversies.

Don’t expect to see programming execs Adrian Swift, who’s just returned to Nine after a stint at the national broadcaster, and Andrew Backwell (who apparently learned of Swift’s return just ahead of circulation of the staff memo) next to each other on the seating plan.

Maybe head of TV Michael Healy, who once again is also heading south for the glittering affair, should sit in between.

And if Brown wins, who’ll collect the gong? The whole thing is awkward as hell, which can only be good for the awards night’s broadcaster, Nine.

Guthrie’s right of reply

Marks won’t be the only exec debuting as boss at the awards.

New ABC chief Michelle Guth­rie will frock up for the gala in the company of her head of television Richard Finlayson.

And we’re told former Google exec Guthrie is warming up to have a quiet word at the bar with her Nine top office counterpart after Marks’s public comments last week that he was envious of the national broadcaster’s public funding while boasting of Nine’s efficiency.

His comments are believed to have left Guthrie bemused. Should Nine really be delivering sermons as it mops up its own controversies in news and current affairs?

Over at Ten, there were only two tuxes on offer from the wardrobe department, but it looks like Ten’s Paul Anderson is just the right size because he’s flying south for the night.

So is head programmer Beverley McGarvey and sales exec Lou Barrett, who the smart money is on to break out the on-trend metallics.

Ye shall not pass

Scott Morrison’s post-budget National Press Club address is a time for reflection — on national fiscal health, the political narrative and why exactly you stayed out drinking in Manuka until 2am the night before.

It was a tradition almost denied us by a door enforcer at Parliament House’s Great Hall.

“The door has closed,” she told us.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham arrived minutes later, and got the same treatment. No special treatment with this lady.

“It’s started. You can’t come in,” she told him. Pity the cabinet minister. First he gets saddled spruiking a non-decision on the university sector, now they cut him out of lunch.

After a few minutes’ discussion, a persuasive member of Birmingham’s office changed the door lady’s mind. We followed the South Australian senator’s slipstream.

And it wasn’t a bad crowd along to listen (again) to Superannuation Slasher ScoMo’s “economic plan”.

There was Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s chief public servant Martin Parkinson on one side and the outgoing secretary of foreign affairs Peter Varghese on the other.

If his predecessor Michael L’Estrange hadn’t beaten him to it, we’d expect him to pop on the airline’s board.

The effervescent former chair of ex-PM Tony Abbott’s Commission of Audit and now company director Tony Shepherd (the Benjamin Button of corporate Australia) exhibited no signs of a hangover after his night at Julie Bishop’s platinum pre-budget party.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann sat next to Westpac boss Brian Hartzer, who was fresh from his bank’s profit announcement on Monday, while there were a few tables over from fellow American-accented optimist, the ANU’s Nobel prize winning vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt.

And, of course, there were the hundreds of lobbyists and hangers-on who make up the moveable feast that is a federal budget, including Newgate boss (and history tragic) Brian Tyson, who was fresh from a night’s sleep in the Hotel Kurrajong’s room 205, in which prime minister Ben Chifley died in 1951.

Sweet dreams.

Host with the most

For another year, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was voted budget night’s host with the most.

Even Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes (who last year only donated to the Libs) flew in for the party in her ministerial office, one of the few Coalition budget events that is not a fundraiser.

Bishop’s partner David Panton was along, as was his doppelganger Warwick Smith (recently made ANZ’s chairman of Greater China).

Also there was former defence minister Robert Hill and Mike’s dad, former NSW and federal conservative member Bruce Baird.

And then there were the ambassadors, including those from the US, Britain, failed submarine bidder Germany and successful submarine bidder France.

And two weeks after Japan missed out on the $50 billion subs contract, the country’s Ambassador Sumio Kusaka was gracious enough to attend the party in her office.

Her hosting duties done, JBish dropped by News Corp’s budget dinner at The Ottoman restaurant, bumping into her former leader Tony Abbott who was also there.

That wasn’t awkward at all.

Stamina to burn

Nothing could dampen the spirits of NSW Liberal powerbroker Michael Photios.

There he was at JBish’s party, next at the Great Hall, then at a knees-up in member for North Sydney Trent Zimmerman’s parliamentary office, and he was still going strong in the political class’s bar of choice, Public, at 2am. That was only hours before his lawyer pleaded guilty on his behalf to drink-driving charges in Waverley Local Court yesterday.

The resilient Photios still showed up at lunchtime in the Great Hall at almost the same time his drinking capacity was being discussed before the judge. He’s a life force.

Pickhaver on track

It might not be all tears at Nick Moore’s Macquarie on news that ScoMo is shelving the $5 billion privatisation of the Helen Nugent-chaired Australian Rail Track Corporation.

MacBank’s infrastructure and utilities boss John Pickhaver had been beavering away on a scoping study for the feds since winning the gig in mid-December, but now Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has decided he wants to keep the ARTC in his hands while the Libs push through the $10bn inland rail scheme.

It’s the latest in a list of mooted privatisations that the conservatives never got off the ground — including Defence Housing Australia, Australian Hearing Services and Royal Australian Mint.

Sale of the ASIC registry business continues in the hands of Roger Feletto at Greenhill, with final bids due at the end of August, but an outcome from that process (which may end up a tech contract) is also far from certain.

Still, it might turn out all right for Pickhaver, who’s been a Macbanker for more than a decade and before that was a civil engineer.

Word is that Moore’s beavers have already embedded the bank into a long-term role associated with the Melbourne-to-Brissie rail project, which the government has been dishing out consultancy contracts for since mid-2014.