Diary’s eagle-eyed media spies at the lunch to welcome Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Canberra last Monday noticed something fascinating on the sidelines.
It was an extremely warm embrace between two political heavyweights previously thought to be sworn enemies: Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce.
The odd couple, who were the Coalition’s key leadership team between 2016 and 2018, fell out spectacularly in the aftermath of the February 2018 front-page bombshell of Joyce’s baby-to-be with his former staffer Vikki Campion, published in Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph.
Days after the revelations, Turnbull introduced a “bonk ban” on all cabinet ministers, and Joyce quit as Nationals leader and returned to the backbench.
A furious Joyce later claimed that Turnbull “threw me under the bus”.
But clearly time heals all wounds. Exactly two years after the momentous events of February 2018, the Widodo lunch unveiled a new paradigm: one with Joyce and Turnbull as freshly minted besties.
Diary’s spies did a double-take at the warm hugs and happy chats between Barnaby, Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull.
What could have brought them back together?
A few days back, this paper revealed that in the wake of his failed leadership coup against Michael McCormack, Joyce bluntly told Scott Morrison that his cabinet reshuffle rewarding McCormack loyalists was “not smart” and had put the government in a “precarious position”.
Meanwhile, Turnbull used a BBC interview last month to take a much-publicised swipe at Morrison over the bushfire crisis.
So Diary wonders if the odd couple’s reunion at the Widodo lunch may be a case of old adversaries uniting in a common cause.
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All of the media spotlight about new political books has been on the April release of Malcolm Turnbull’s A Bigger Picture, and the front page headaches that the ex-PM’s memoir is likely to cause the Morrison government.
But starting this week, another book tour that has so far had no fanfare, featuring another prominent ex-journalist Liberal PM, threatens to bring big media headlines of its own.
A rejuvenated Tony Abbott, the action man of Australian politics who (to twist Scott Morrison’s words) “does hold a hose, mate”, will on Monday night start the whirlwind first stage of a national tour, beginning in Sydney and taking in four cities in five days to mark the launch of his book, Abbott: The Defining Speeches.
And with Abbott set to use the speaking tour as a platform for his forthright views on hot topics like climate change and the bushfires, it has the potential to catapult the former PM right back to the centre of the national political agenda.
Interestingly, the tour is being conducted under the auspices of the Liberal Party’s very own think-tank, the Menzies Research Centre, which has its head office in the Libs’ federal headquarters. Attendees will fork out anything from $55 to $120 to hear Abbott speak at the events.
But would ScoMo be thrilled at the thought of yet another former leader or PM giving their two cents’ worth about what the party needs, at a delicate moment when the unity of the Coalition is already under threat from wildly differing views on its direction? We’d bet the answer is no.
Oddly, the book tour comes four months after Abbott: The Defining Speeches was published in October. Maybe the timing now has something to do with Abbott’s renewed popularity from his recent firefighting efforts, winning praise from political allies and adversaries alike for heroically running into burning homes in the midst of the bushfire crisis.
Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Geelong will be the first places to benefit from Abbott’s wisdom this week. Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland will all follow shortly.
No doubt Liberal HQ will be keeping a nervous eye on each and every gig.
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Karl runs to Seven
Could Karl Stefanovic be running to another network? Or was his jog past Seven’s Martin Place headquarters in Sydney simply part of his new “get fit” campaign, amid plenty of jesting from his on-air partner Allison Langdon and others about his expanded physical form since returning to Nine’s Today Show?
Diary can reveal that the unmistakeable jogging form of Stefanovic, resplendent in black running shorts, matching black T-shirt and joggers, was last Wednesday spotted right outside the office of Craig McPherson, who, as Seven’s head of news and current affairs, is one of the Nine Network’s chief adversaries.
What made it even more surreal was that a beaming Stefanovic was spied vigorously waving to McPherson, while the Seven executive enthusiastically reciprocated. Very chummy indeed.
How do we know this? Because unbeknown to Stefanovic, McPherson was being interviewed by this paper’s media writer Lilly Vitorovich.
The Stefanovic/McPherson love-in might (like Karl’s exercise program) raise a sweat among executives at Nine’s Willoughby headquarters, given they have only just restored Stefanovic to his rightful Today show home with months left on his contract.
After all, it was McPherson who four years ago played a key role in trying to lure Stefanovic to Seven to launch a new prime-time TV show.
Stefanovic ultimately stayed at Nine in 2015, but not before Seven’s interest forced the network to shell out millions more to hang on to their restless star.
Luckily for Nine, McPherson claims to have no plans to bid for Stefanovic in 2020.
“No, I’m happy with my team, and there’s no room for Karl on my team,” he tells Diary.
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Clarkes’ lightning deal
Diary has more revelations about Michael and Kyly Clarke, following our front page scoop revealing their $40m divorce on Thursday.
The first is that the media and sporting couple’s negotiation of the terms of their divorce was a lightning affair that was a virtual shut-out for the legal fraternity. Diary is told that the couple simply initiated a conversation in which they very quickly agreed on a fair division of assets.
Clarke’s sale of his Campbell Parade Bondi beachfront apartment for an amount in the “early $7 millions” — just as The Australian’s front page story appeared on Thursday — has freed up cash that he will put towards the divorce settlement.
Diary is also told that, paradoxically, separation has actually made things better for the Clarkes. Ever since Michael moved out of the couple’s Sydney harbourside home in Vaucluse in September, relations between the pair have improved to the point that they are at their best in years.
The celebrity couple know their priority is the wellbeing of their daughter, Kelsey Lee, 4. So the pair are now working “harmoniously” to this end.
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Kyly’s prime time debut
From a media perspective, it is Kyly Clarke who faces perhaps the most pressure, because she is only just starting a TV career.
With My Kitchen Rules currently bombing in the ratings, Seven now has a huge amount riding on Clarke’s debut in prime time TV as a judge on another one of Seven’s “Rules” franchises, renovation show House Rules.
Diary’s Seven spies tell us that in early filming for House Rules, Kyly Clarke has already developed a bubbly and likeable on-air persona, not unlike Catriona Rowntree, the former host of Nine’s travel show Getaway.
With the numerous front page stories following Diary’s revelations on Thursday, there will be a significant switch-on factor to go with the renewed public curiosity about the Clarkes.
The question is, will it last?
House Rules will start screening in April, at the end of MKR’s two-month run.
We’re told Kyly Clarke is currently not scheduled to appear until episode four, when the first judging takes place. Seven might be wise to bring that appearance date forward.
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Cruise ships ahoy
No, dear reader, you are not mistaken: the number of cruise ship ads on TV is up significantly, at seemingly the weirdest time.
The media stories of onboard coronavirus hell — which have so far seen poor passengers on the Diamond Princess in Japan forcibly confined to their cabins for well over a week — would seem a buzzkill to say the least.
The luxury ship has now morphed into a mega-sized, floating petri dish where hundreds of people have caught the potentially deadly bug.
So why the uptick in cruise advertising? We’re told it has absolutely nothing to do with cruise companies launching a positive publicity blitz in direct response to the disastrous Diamond Princess news.
Instead, Diary has learnt that the ads were pre-booked months in advance, well before the coronavirus was even known about.
Insiders at both Seven and Nine say that February is the peak season for cruise advertising by companies such as P&O and Royal Caribbean. Appropriately, it is known as the so-called “wave” season.
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Colin’s capers
In the space of two radio interviews with Kyle & Jackie O and Chris Smith last week, My Kitchen Rules’ Colin Fassnidge more than lived up to his reputation as an Irish hell-raiser, doing his best to explain the show’s low ratings.
In a spectacular series of unfiltered take-downs seldom heard from TV stars, he blamed “people in charge at Seven who don’t know how to program a show”, slammed “stupid decisions” by the network, dubbed the show’s rival on Nine “Botoxed at First Sight”, and said he’d be “at home looking for a job next year if ratings don’t improve”.
Awesome stuff for a media diarist; not so great for a network publicist. So it’s probably no surprise that by the time Diary caught him on his mobile on Thursday — in the aftermath of the two interviews — Fassnidge was less forthcoming with his opinions: “You’ll need to phone (Seven) publicity,” he told us politely.
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Ita’s cosy tete-a-tete
The naughty schoolboys were left outside the headmaster’s office when celebrity ABC chair Ita Buttrose came to Canberra to visit Prime Minister Scott Morrison for their high-stakes summit on Thursday morning, first revealed in this column last week.
Diary is reliably informed that before the formal summit proceedings could get under way with ABC and government entourages, ScoMo had a request: could he have some private time with his good buddy Ita?
And that meant that two of the country’s highest-profile media figures — ABC managing director David Anderson and federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher — were forced to wait outside the PM’s office twiddling their thumbs while Scott and Ita caught up.
The Ita and ScoMo tete-a-tete lasted about 15 minutes. Whatever they talked about, the two buddies clearly had time for selfies, as was evidenced by ScoMo’s Twitter page with a beaming close-up of the pair: “So glad Ita took on this job,” ScoMo gushed.
Diary hears that when Anderson and Fletcher were finally allowed into the room, the conversation quickly turned to the ABC’s role as an emergency broadcaster, as we predicted last week.
We’re told Buttrose and Anderson drove home the fact that the ABC’s role as an emergency broadcaster was not restricted to bushfires — it had also played a big role over the past week of keeping listeners informed on both floods and cyclones as well.
By all accounts, the summit was convivial, but ScoMo was noncommittal.
The ABC’s biggest worry is that it could win the battle by getting extra funding for emergency broadcasts, but lose the war through ongoing cuts to its overall $1bn-a-year budget.
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As costly as ABC...
Ita Buttrose was still making her case for a funding boost in a keynote Canberra speech for Heywire later that night — stressing that the national broadcaster did not only need funds for emergency broadcasting, but also, in her words, for “Australian drama, children’s content, independent public interest journalism and Australian music, arts, science and educational programs”.
She went on to warn: “As the media world changes, the costs of these services will only continue to rise, while at the same time, our ability to invest in all of them is decreasing.”
Ita’s message to her good mate ScoMo couldn’t be clearer: without more funding before the ABC announces major cuts in late March, some of its core services have to go.
Over to you, ScoMo.
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