Anthony Albanese was furiously lashed in the Twitterverse last week for deciding to go on conservative talk show host Piers Morgan’s UK TalkTV show for the coronation of King Charles.
But Albanese’s surprise appearance with Morgan – while catching the media off-guard – was no spur-of-the-moment decision by the PM. Labor sources tell Diary the interview was the result of around a year of persuasion by Morgan.
In a wide-ranging 62-minute interview that took out Morgan’s entire hour-long UK show, the biggest controversy in progressive circles came when Morgan asked him: “What is a woman?” To which Albanese quickly replied: “An adult female.”
The pair first spent 30 minutes one-on-one together at Sky News’s 25th anniversary party at the Sydney Opera House in February last year, but we’re told by insiders Morgan’s campaign to win an interview with Albo really revved up around the time of the late Queen Elizabeth’s funeral last September.
At the time, Albanese granted two big interviews screened in Britain: one with Sky News UK, and the other with the BBC … but no Piers.
We’re told Morgan – who has been on a roll in landing viral international interviews with the likes of Andrew Tate, Stormy Daniels and Cristiano Ronaldo in recent months – pitched hard for a sit-down with Albo last September, but the PM knocked him back. However, he did privately promise an interview with Morgan down the track.
That sit-down finally happened within a couple of hours of Albanese landing in London last week. We’re told the genesis of his interview with Morgan dates all the way back to his edict to Labor frontbenchers four years ago when he first took over the Labor leadership. At the time, he told Labor thought leaders it was “essential” they engage with conservative media outlets, including the likes of Sky News: “It’s a way for us to communicate, for us to get our ideas out,” he addressed them at the time.
One party insider said he adopted a similar philosophy in the Morgan interview: “You’ve got to engage with media outlets of all political persuasions. You can’t pick and choose.”
The feeling in the Labor camp was the interview – which showcased some of Albo’s anti-woke views – played well in middle Australia, even if the ever-opinionated Twitterverse wasn’t happy.
‘He’s vanilla’: Credlin shuts down ex-Lib leader
Departed Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy caused quite some consternation in the conservative political ranks last week, when he blamed seemingly everyone but himself for being comprehensively whipped for a second time by the seemingly indomitable Dan Andrews.
Guy turned his guns on everyone from his colleagues in the Liberal Party to Sky News hosts for his defeat, as part of a new podcast interview series hosted by 3AW morning presenter Neil Mitchell.
But it was the former Victorian Liberal leader’s special brickbat for one Sky host, Peta Credlin – a prominent critic of Guy’s leadership in the lead-up to his landslide election loss last November — which really raised some eyebrows.
He invoked the ghost of none other than Malcolm Turnbull to provide an explanation of why Credlin didn’t like him.
Guy claimed the real reason Credlin didn’t like him was because his loyalties at a federal leadership level had been with Turnbull, while her loyalties had obviously been with Tony Abbott, the man for whom she had served as chief of staff during his prime ministership.
“She’s no friend of mine, quite obviously,” Guy told Mitchell. “I was a supporter of Malcolm Turnbull, and she was the chief staffer of Tony Abbott. That’s like asking a South Australian to barrack for Collingwood.”
Just to underline the chasm between himself and Credlin, Guy confirmed his continuing loyalties to Turnbull – who has spoken out continually against the Liberals in recent years – to an audibly astonished Mitchell.
After Mitchell asked him: “A supporter of Malcolm Turnbull: you wouldn’t admit to that now, would you?”, Guy replied emphatically: “Absolutely I would. Absolutely I would … Look, I don’t like what Malcolm says in part about the Liberal Party. But I’m not going to be so disloyal as to turn on someone like that.”
When Diary contacted Credlin about Guy’s claims, she delivered some tough love for Guy’s lack of “self-awareness”, in her inimitable style.
“State politics relies on big personalities, but unfortunately, Matthew is vanilla – he just doesn’t leave an impression. And the guy he was up against in Dan Andrews is technicolour.
“The people may not always like him, but at least they know who he is.”
Credlin also said she wasn’t remotely bothered by Guy’s personal views on her.
“I’m not perturbed or pissed off by what he said,” she said.
“It’s not a personal thing for me – I’ve got a thick skin. I’m just disappointed he was so poor. You can’t walk away from the fact voters took two looks at him – and they walked away twice.” Ouch.
ABC ends Barrie Cassidy’s Insiders legacy
The ABC’s Insiders is meant to be the ultimate show about events in Canberra – featuring numerous members of the national capital’s press gallery — but weirdly, for its entire 22-year run, it has been shot in Melbourne.
Insiders’ Melbourne home has been a persistent legacy of the fact its founding host, Barrie Cassidy, was based in the southern capital.
But, finally, after more than two decades as a Melbourne show, Insiders is sensibly relocating to its spiritual home from July.
Gallery journalists who feature regularly on the show were delighted when told on Thursday they’ll no longer have to fly on Qantas’s Saturday afternoon shuttle from Canberra to Melbourne just to appear on the show.
Diary is told ABC beancounters are also thrilled, at a time they are said to be planning redundancies in June to save on staff salaries.
There will be hundreds of thousands in savings on talent costs at Insiders each year from no longer having to pay Alan Joyce’s inflated post-Covid Qantas airfares to fly Canberra-based panellists to Melbourne, as well as provide for accommodation and meals in the southern capital on a Saturday night, just so the show can air on a Sunday morning.
And that’s not to mention the $600-per-appearance talent fee paid to each panellist who appears on Insiders, as well as the hefty cab fares currently forked out so they can travel to and from various airports.
From July onwards, all the ABC will have to provide – apart from the $600 talent fee – will be a parking spot at Insiders’ new home at Aunty’s Northbourne Ave studios in Canberra.
Another cost saving will come from the fact current host David Speers moved back to Canberra from Melbourne at the end of last year – meaning the ABC also won’t have to fork out for his flights, accommodation and cabs to Melbourne each week. We’re told Speers, for his part, is happy the show has returned to the national capital.
Diary hears the ABC’s decision was made easier given Insiders’ cameras are now fully automated, meaning there are fewer technical staff required to put the show to air than was previously the case.
MasterChef’s urgent review of Jock Zonfrillo scenes
It has been an exhausting week at Ten’s MasterChef Australia. In the aftermath of the sudden death of MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo, and Ten’s decision to continue to screen the show from Sunday night, sources close to the production tell Diary staff have been burning the midnight oil to watch as many episodes as possible of the show.
Why? Because the show’s producers are concerned something he said – which would normally be entirely innocuous if he were still alive – could now unwittingly draw attention to his death.
But one source close to the production stressed that while the episodes were being scrutinised, care needed to be taken not to eliminate Zonfrillo’s natural exuberance from the show.
“There are two schools of thought,” one source said. “If there is too much of an edit, it can take away from what he was as well. For example, if he tries a dish and says, ‘That one’s a killer’, well, that’s him.”
The source stressed that any changes made to the show “won’t be too heavy-handed” and would “try to remain true” to Zonfrillo.
With his valedictory season of MasterChef now in full swing, we hear Ten has dropped the “Secrets and Surprises” tag from all promotional material for the show.
But major sponsors have given Ten’s decision to proceed with the season their full blessing. A source at Coles, the show’s major sponsor for 15 years, told Diary it would “continue to support the program” this year in the wake of the chef’s death, adding that the company was “deeply saddened” by his passing.
Another sponsor, Leggo’s, also said it would “continue to support MasterChef Australia” while passing on condolences to his family. Other corporate partners, who didn’t wish to be named, agreed, with one in particular enthusiastically supportive of Ten’s decision to proceed with the season by dedicating it as a tribute to Zonfrillo.
Nine’s Tim Arvier goes nuclear at Annastacia Palaszczuk
Simmering tensions that have built up over months between Annastacia Palaszczuk and one of Brisbane’s key political journalists, Nine’s Tim Arvier, finally erupted into open hostilities last week.
Arvier reached the end of his tether after what he saw as increasing question-dodging by the Premier recently. The Nine reporter suddenly took to the network’s main news website on Wednesday with a brutal 600-word take-down, in which he directly accused Palaszczuk of engaging in “A-grade issue avoidance”, and compared her methods to the well-chronicled question-avoiding techniques of Kevin Rudd and Scott Morrison.
The final straw that prompted Arvier’s poison pen piece – provocatively titled: “The Queensland Premier, Wellcamp and the political art of the non-answer” – appears to have been Palaszczuk’s performance at a press conference following a Brisbane meeting of national cabinet 10 days ago. Arvier used the presser to call out Queensland’s most notorious white elephant from the Covid era: the Wellcamp quarantine facility near Toowoomba.
Palaszczuk had built the facility as a political get-square with Scott Morrison’s former federal regime, which had resisted pressure from the Queensland government to throw money at the quarantine facility.
But Wellcamp has now cost the Queensland taxpayer a total of $220m, despite sitting empty for most of its short life.
In recent months, the Premier has been promising to come up with ideas for repurposing the facility. But when Arvier asked questions of Palaszczuk after the Brisbane national cabinet meeting about what those actual ideas were, she pointedly ignored the question, simply replying: “We were in a different scenario than what we are today.”
When pulled up by Arvier and Ten’s Brendan Smith on her “non-answer answer”, the Premier simply replied: “I’ve answered your question”, before ultimately being rescued from the media onslaught by no less than Albanese.
Embarrassingly for Palaszczuk, the confrontation with Arvier and co was witnessed not only by the PM himself, but fellow Labor state premiers, including NSW’s Chris Minns, Victoria’s Dan Andrews and WA’s Mark McGowan.
And Arvier wasn’t about to let her forget it last week.
Publishing every word of the exchange, the Nine reporter noted Palaszczuk was “not impressed” the questions were asked in front of the country’s top leaders, including the PM: “People can draw their own conclusions, but one takeaway is voters don’t care about the circumstances in which a question is asked. But when it comes to their taxpayer dollars, they would like it answered.”
Coronation blues: no Lisa Wilkinson or the ‘Spare-ess’
With no Lisa Wilkinson on the box, Saturday’s coronation ceremony was something of an anticlimax for your columnist.
For a “break out the popcorn” moment, Diary had to content himself with the brief frowning appearance of Prince Harry (aka “The Spare”), minus his normally constant companion Meghan Markle (aka “The Spare-ess”).
But still, it just wasn’t the same witnessing a major royal event without Wilkinson. A slightly naughty reader of this column reminded us last week of one of Wilkinson’s most-celebrated royal commentary moments, when she was still at Nine’s Today show presiding over the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton at the same venue as Saturday’s coronation, Westminster Abbey, for Australian viewers.
As the former Fairfax papers reported at the time, when a mystery man entered the Abbey, an excited Wilkinson memorably piped up: “Is that Dodi al-Fayed?”
Her co-commentator on the night, royal “expert” James Whittaker, answered in the affirmative: “Yes, that’s Dodi al-Fayed”. But after some back and forth, the pair arrived at the conclusion that it wasn’t Dodi (who they finally twigged had died with Princess Diana in the tragic car crash in Paris in 1997) but rather, his father, Mohamed al-Fayed.
As the comedy of errors continued apace, Wilkinson then professed surprise the Egyptian-born businessman was invited at all, given his long-expressed hostility towards the royal family following Dodi’s death.
Alas, it turned out that both Wilkinson and Whittaker were marginally wide of the mark with their facial recognition. The object of their speculation turned out to be … wait for it … the King of Tonga, and not any member of the al-Fayed family.
If only we’d had such entertainment on Saturday night …
Minister hunts ‘digital’ experience for ABC board
Laura Tingle may now have stepped up as a fully-fledged director of the ABC, but in case you haven’t noticed, Aunty’s board will this week be short two members, following the expiry of Joe Gersh’s five-year term on Wednesday. Another Coalition appointee to the board, Fiona Balfour, already resigned at the end of January, with her position remaining vacant since.
Until last week, there had been few signs that Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was moving to replace Gersh and Balfour. But on Friday, government job ads suddenly materialised, calling for applications “to fill 2 non-executive director vacancies on the ABC board”.
And a longer advertisement published on the Department of Communications website added an interesting paragraph not in print ads. “Given the ABC’s desire to attract younger audiences and make better use of its digital platforms, applications are also invited from innovative candidates with up to date experience in digital and social media, digital transformation and/or cybersecurity.” Diary hears the ABC requested these skills be highlighted.
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