Leaking claims: Kristina Keneally’s ‘baffling’ Canberra corridor confrontation with Deborah O’Neill
It started innocently enough: a polite ‘how are you?’ Then Kristina Keneally’s alleged teammate accused her of leaking to media.
There’s never a dull moment in the world of Kristina Keneally, particularly when it comes to her relations with the media.
First there was her shouty July phone altercation with a junior female producer on Nine’s Today show. Now, in the latest colourful Keneally caper, her alleged teammate — NSW Labor senator Deborah O’Neill — confronted Keneally in the corridor outside the Senate chamber in Canberra on August 24 and accused her of leaking to the media — a claim Keneally emphatically denied.
The encounter was first revealed by Sky News’s political editor, Andrew Clennell, in a version that Diary has now verified independently.
From what we hear, it started innocently enough with a: “How’re you going?” from Keneally to O’Neill, before things quickly degenerated.
O’Neill replied, pointedly: “I’d be better if someone from my own side wasn’t leaking on me.”
Keneally responded she had “no idea” who was leaking, to which, we hear, O’Neill replied: “You keep sticking to that line … no one believes you anymore, Kristina.”
Ouch! And what stories led to O’Neill’s accusatory tone? Diary hears there were two. The first was a much-publicised Daily Telegraph story from April alleging that O’Neill was hosting guests at her Airbnb on the NSW Central Coast in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown.
The second was a column item in the Sunday Telegraph’s The Sauce the day before the altercation, stating that O’Neill had “raised eyebrows” by “only claiming part of the cost of her trips to Tasmania”.
The same column concluded by pointing out that O’Neill was “fighting for political survival over a winnable Senate ticket spot against Kristina Keneally”.
By last Thursday, even Finance Minister Mathias Cormann picked at the Keneally/O’Neill wounds, accusing Keneally of “look at me” tactics in the Senate and taunting her: “I would be very interested in what Senator O’Neill … thinks about this particular self-indulgent stunt.”
Keneally, for her part, says she is “baffled” by the corridor confrontation. “Senator Keneally has never leaked against her colleagues and does not operate this way,” a spokesman told Diary on Sunday. “Simply, she would never do it.”
Palaszczuk ‘Dixers’ caught on hot mic
Is the Brisbane press gallery bowling up softball “Dorothy Dixers” to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk?
You be the judge. The claim came up in a candid exchange between Nine Brisbane political reporter Lane Calcutt and two fellow Brisbane press gallery journalists, straight after Palaszczuk’s daily COVID-19 briefing on Friday.
Luckily for Diary readers, the exchange was picked up by a Seven News hot mike, which kept recording the unsuspecting reporters after the Premier had walked away.
Claims of an easy run for Palaszczuk were front of mind for Calcutt in the exchange, with the Prime Minister’s Office accusing the Canberra veteran in texts of asking Dorothy Dixers of the Premier on Friday. Hilariously, two of his giggling press gallery colleagues then made the same charge.
The exchange went as follows:
Calcutt: “Getting text messages from the Prime Minister’s Office saying: ‘You guys aren’t interested in this material (inaudible) mega-Dorothy Dixers.’”
Journalist 2 (male): “That was a Dorothy Dixer! Twice! (laughs)”
Journalist 3 (female, simultaneously): “You did! (laughs)”
Calcutt: “Hang on, you want a story or not?”
Hot mic at the end of press conference:
— David Marler (@Qldaah) September 4, 2020
J1: Getting text messages from the Prime Minister's Office saying you guys aren't interested in this material (inaudible) Dorothy Dixers
J2: That was a DD
J3: You did (laughs)
J1: Hang on, you want a story or not? #MedaWatch #qldpol pic.twitter.com/3JQE3fhDNZ
Interesting to hear that the PMO had been texting Calcutt about Dixers being asked of Palaszczuk — particularly given that some in Nine’s Canberra bureau are also whispering that the Premier could be getting a tougher run in the media. And some Brisbane media veterans swear that Nine and the ABC seem to get most of the good story drops out of Palaszczuk’s office.
What Calcutt Dixers to the Premier were his colleagues joking about on Friday?
Here’s one candidate: “Given the pile-on that Queensland and you in particular have received over the last 24-48 hours, do you feel it’s a form of bullying against Queensland?” Calcutt asked Palaszczuk.
Palaszczuk regally responded: “I’ll let others make comment about that. But can I thank Queenslanders? I am really overwhelmed from the number of emails (and) personally handwritten cards. That’s what keeps me going.”
Calcutt also asked: “You’re fed up with this criticism, aren’t you? The pointscoring?”
The Premier replied: “It is relentless. It is intimidating. But I will not be intimidated.”
When Diary caught up with Calcutt on Sunday, he would only say: “I want to make it clear that I was not being given Dorothy Dixers from the Prime Minister’s Office to ask Annastacia Palaszczuk on their behalf.”
Sam v Annastacia
One person definitely not offering Dixers to Annastacia Palaszczuk is Samantha Armytage. With the Queensland Premier a persistent absentee in recent weeks, the Sunrise co-host lost it on-air last week, saying she was “fed up” that the Queensland Premier “won’t come on the show”, as part of a wider expression of frustration with the state’s border controls.
Diary has since reached out to the Palaszczuk camp, which has strongly defended itself against Armytage’s take-down.
Senior government sources claim the real reason for the Premier’s absence is that much has changed in the past month, particularly the recent Brisbane youth detention centre outbreak.
“Sadly, Sam falls into a lower priority than life and death issues,” one government insider tells Diary. “What’s new to us is that we’ve got an outbreak in Queensland. We didn’t have cases before, but we do now. And that means we can’t do breakfast TV until the outbreak is under control.”
The Queensland insider said the big problem is that the Premier is, like Dan Andrews, giving daily briefings — in her case at 9am. “Going on Sunrise is helpful, but not as helpful as our 9am briefing. It’s our most effective way of communicating with Queenslanders — even more important than satisfying the breakfast TV beast.”
The insider is, however, hopeful that the Premier will be able to come back on Sunrise in as little as two weeks if the outbreak is controlled.
And Sunrise is waiting. Its executive producer Michael Pell tells Diary: “They keep saying no. But we won’t stop asking.”
Hadley’s lost hour
Diary has learnt Nine radio programmers will lop off the opening hour of the Brisbane version of Ray Hadley’s morning show once daylight saving starts in October. That’s right — 4BC listeners will until April get only the last two hours of Australia’s highest-paid radio broadcaster’s show.
So with Hadley running only 9am to 11am in Brisbane, who’ll pick up that extra hour from the $4m-a-year man?
Well, the drive show of former Queensland minister Scott Emerson, 4BC’s shock-jock-on-training-wheels, will be a four-hour marathon until autumn.
As Sir Humphrey Appleby would say: “A courageous decision, Minister.”
Pearson pulled
Last Monday, Patricia Karvelas took to Twitter to promote a good “get”: an interview on the ABC News Channel that day with Indigenous leader Noel Pearson. But oddly, the interview didn’t screen that day — nor, for that matter, for the rest of the week.
Diary has now been told of the real reason: the Karvelas/Pearson chat was so hot that the ABC felt certain parts needed editing before being put to air.
In recent weeks, Pearson has been outspoken in The Australian on some big Indigenous issues. On Saturday, he wrote a scathing op-ed piece about Rio Tinto’s “destruction” of the Juukan Gorge cultural site, weeks after another piece that claimed the extension of JobKeeper was heading down “the wrong path” for Indigenous Australians.
The good news is the Pearson interview is not lost. Diary hears a re-cut version could be ready to air on the ABC News Channel and on Karvelas’s RN drive show as early as Tuesday.
An ABC spokesman confirmed it would air this week, but had no other comment.
Masked Queen
A fortnight’s quarantine finished for 280 Masked Singer cast and crew in Melbourne on Sunday. And after 17 positive cases, Diary hears they are wasting almost no time in getting back to business, with the show’s grand finale to be filmed this Tuesday.
It’ll be a quick turnaround, with the finale aired next Monday. And in further good news, we’re also told the show’s odds-on favourite, Queen — widely thought to be songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke — has now conclusively tested negative for COVID-19. As we noted, there were fears on-set after two of her close contacts were found to be COVID-positive.
Dan goads the media
Is “Dan TV”, the surprise daytime ratings smash of the year, Daniel Andrews’s most brazen attempt yet to sideline the media?
That was the gist of a probing question by ABC Radio Melbourne’s drive host Rafael Epstein that put the Victorian Premier on the spot at one of his press conferences. And it received a frosty reception from Dan.
Epstein asked Andrews on Wednesday: “Do you think this press conference makes the mainstream media less relevant to your political fortunes because you’ve got more direct communication (with the public)?,” Epstein asked.
That implication clearly rankled with Dan: “I wouldn’t agree with that analysis at all, Raf. Do you really think I’m motivated by bad headlines? Really?
“I get on and get my job done … and it’s why I stand here every day to take questions from the media and to answer them until you’ve got no more to ask.”
He also goaded the media, suggesting the importance of negative headlines about his handling of COVID-19 in Victoria had been way overstated.
“If I might be as bold as to say, if they (the headlines) were the start and the finish of how things worked in Victoria, then perhaps I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Andrews has long disdained traditional media. Like another one-time premier, Mike Baird of NSW — who strongly supported Dan on Facebook last month — he prefers social media.
As Andrews’s legendary three-year feud with Neil Mitchell will attest, he avoids talk radio, and he also tends not to engage with newspapers — other than on Dan TV, of course.
RIP POO
Plate of Origin (affectionately known as POO), Seven’s new star vehicle for MasterChef alumni Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan, is definitely not starring in the ratings.
Its third outing on Tuesday night screened to a paltry 419,000 viewers in the capital cities.
That means we can probably already say that POO won’t be back in 2021.
Interestingly, both Preston and Mehigan made a point of stating repeatedly in lead-up interviews that they hadn’t watched this year’s version of MasterChef, which rated so well without them. But now that POO’s numbers are officially down the toilet, can Diary suggest that maybe they should have?
Smith wars with 3AW
Diary recently helped to unleash Sydney’s newest Melbourne-based radio star: Victoria’s opposition leader-in-waiting, Tim Smith.
Now the Ben Fordham 2GB breakfast show regular has for the first time revealed to us the thinking behind his unusual foray into Sydney, just as Melbourne’s top-rating breakfast show on 3AW has dubbed him a “buffoon”.
The ambitious member for Kew, for his part, is giving it back to 3AW.
“If I’m listening to radio before 8.30am, I’m listening to Ben Fordham,” he tells Diary. “There’s not the will for hard news in Melbourne breakfast radio. You have to wait for Virginia Trioli and Neil Mitchell. So when Ben started asking me on, I thought: ‘You’re getting the biggest conservative audience in the country.’ So why not?”
He even turned to Twitter on Thursday to sledge 3AW’s top-rating Ross and Russel breakfast show, tagging Fordham, claiming that one comment was “further evidence why more of us are listening to @2GB873 before 8.30”.
That prompted a furious response from 3AW breakfast producer Mikkayla Mossop, who tweeted: “This is why no one in Victoria wants to speak to you, you uninformed, agenda-pushing buffoon.”
Emma’s last adieu
The Emma Alberici redundancy saga at the ABC has finally come to an end, with her lawyer Chris McArdle telling us on Friday the departed chief economics correspondent was given a final farewell along with other Aunty staff departing from her floor last week.
That would explain the snaps that Alberici posted with giant stuffed versions of Play School characters Little Ted, Big Ted, Jemima and Humpty at the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters.
“For a final time, here’s a picture of me at the ABC with some of my trusted colleagues,” she tweeted mischievously.
She also noted her redundancy process had been “difficult, especially in a recession” — but that she had reached a “mutually satisfying resolution” with the ABC.
The ABC’s Sales-driven war on thugs
Last week, Nine’s Chris Uhlmann used Diary to launch a war on ugly left-wing Twitter “thugs” trolling the ABC’s biggest name, 7.30’s Leigh Sales.
Within days of Uhlmann’s take-down, the ABC has now sprung into action as well. On Friday afternoon, the ABC’s managing director David Anderson and news supremo Gaven Morris issued synchronised urgent emails to staff — obtained by Diary — strongly supportive of a “Get off Twitter” approach.
Already, some big-name ABC personalities haven’t needed any encouragement. Hamish Macdonald, initially thought to simply be taking a social media hiatus, has now deleted his @hamishNews Twitter account altogether.
In his note, Morris delivered a wide-ranging take-down of Twitter, saying there was “absolutely no requirement for any ABC News staff member to maintain a personal brand” there.
“If you don’t like the experience of being there, please don’t think you need to maintain a presence for the ABC.
“If you choose to … not be on there at all, that’s fine. Although Twitter can be useful … it isn’t an essential platform for us … we have official ABC social accounts to promote content and engage audiences. We don’t gain new audiences through promoting anything on Twitter.”
Morris also revealed the ABC would be looking at training courses to help staff to “navigate the difficult issues involved”.
Anderson also called out Twitter and other platforms in a message expressing deep worries about “abuse” and even “criminal behaviour” towards ABC employees
“I’ve become increasingly concerned at the abusive commentary sometimes directed at ABC employees,” he wrote.
“(This) has been getting steadily worse for several years, and has now reached a point where we are seeing sometimes extreme bullying, abuse and even criminal behaviour.”
Uhlmann last week lashed trolls targeting Sales and Insiders’ David Speers as “flogs”. He also dubbed Twitter a “self-basting platform” and home to the “bigoted pitchfork brigade”
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