Did Daniel Andrews get the idea to cancel the Commonwealth Games from his media nemesis, 3AW’s Melbourne morning radio king, Neil Mitchell?
Two months ago, when the Games were still very much on, Mitchell floated an idea that sounds awfully like what the Victorian Premier ended up announcing last week.
“I’ve got an idea,” he told his audience. “The government won’t like it – I want your reaction. Cancel the Commonwealth Games. Should we cancel the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Victoria? I would argue that, whatever their benefits, we just can’t afford them! The cost is headed towards $3bn – and the way that blowouts work in this state, I’m sure it will be well ahead of that figure. After all, it’s three years off. So assume $3bn-plus.”
Mitchell noted that a KPMG report had suggested the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006 had cost $2.9bn to stage, while only bringing in $1.6bn – a deficit of $1.3bn.
In this light, Mitchell said, the 2026 Games needed a “very, very close look”.
When Diary reached Mitchell on the weekend, he was predictably scathing of the decision by the Victorian government and his least favourite person, Andrews, to sign up to the Games in the first place.
“We should never have entered into that deal in the first place,” he told Diary. “But having entered it, we should have found a better exit point than something that could cost us $1bn in penalties.”
A year on, Lisa Wilkinson dodges the Logies
It was supposed to be Lisa Wilkinson’s crowning career moment. At last year’s Logies on the Gold Coast, Wilkinson, still host of Ten’s The Project at that point, had just been announced winner of the Silver Logie for the Most Outstanding News Coverage or Public Affairs Report for her Brittany Higgins interview.
She stepped up to the stage in front of her peers to solemnly tell the by-then well lubricated Logies crowd: “This story is by far the most important work I have ever done. And I knew it from the very first phone call I had last year from a young woman whose name, she told me, was Brittany Higgins. As Brittany warned me before we went to air, her story would be seen by many of the most powerful people in this country not as a human problem, but as a political problem.”
But as the 2023 Logies loom next Sunday, Wilkinson must surely be having mixed feelings about what then appeared to be the biggest speech and moment of her media career. There will be no winner’s speech or Logie nomination for Wilkinson this time. Indeed, the departed Project host won’t even be present, with her TV career now on indefinite hold. Despite continuing to be paid a seven-figure salary by Ten, she hasn’t appeared on the network’s screens for eight whole months. And our mail says Wilkinson won’t be back on Ten’s screens until at least 2024.
The bitter irony is that the Logies victory speech was perhaps the major factor in her permanent disappearance from The Project last year. It started with the speech resulting in a three-month delay to the since aborted trial of Bruce Lehrmann.
After the Logies speech, Wilkinson went off The Project for a while before resuming last August. But it was only a fleeting return, with Wilkinson causing a new media storm when she announced on The Project that she would be leaving the show immediately, largely because of the media storm in the wake of the Logies speech and the delayed trial.
“The last six months have not been easy – and the relentless, targeted toxicity by some sections of the media has taken a toll,” she told The Project audience. Wilkinson also announced she was staying at Ten, and was “looking at some very exciting work ideas ahead”. But it is now clear that those ideas are not close to coming to fruition.
Meanwhile, another controversy emerged last month, when leaked tapes emerged of Wilkinson, Higgins, her partner David Sharaz and producer Angus Llewellyn at a five-hour meeting before The Project interview. In the previously secret tapes, Wilkinson told Higgins: “I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but if you can enunciate the fact that this place (Parliament House) is all about suppression of people’s natural sense of justice.”
The comment, seen by some as coaching, saw calls in the media for the former Project host to hand back the Logie for the interview. It was just the latest bitter postscript to Wilkinson’s career-defining moment at the Logies a year ago.
Betty from Blacktown’s red carpet debut
New host Seven has made huge changes to this year’s Logies at Sydney’s The Star next Sunday, including moving TV’s night of nights back to Sydney for the first time in decades – and even selling tickets for the event to the general public.
But it turns out this won’t be a case of Betty from Blacktown sitting at the same table as Sandra Sully, Hamish Blake or Dr Chris Brown. Diary hears that the celebrities will have their very own entrance separate from the riff-raff, and the closest Betty will get to the action will be in the bleacher seats on the red carpet, followed by viewing the actual event in theatrette seats two floors above the action.
So it’s very much a case of BYO water and snacks for Betty, as she lays out $99.85 to Ticketek for her seat, while the celebrities enjoy free canapes down below from The Star’s head chef, along with an open bar.
Meanwhile, because the Logies are finally back in Sydney (where most of the talent is located) rather than the Gold Coast, we’re told that the RSVPs to this year’s event have been through the roof – meaning that something had to give.
As a result, tickets have been cut back to zero for the likes of working media (some of whom are making no secret of grumbling about their omission), Logies judges, non-nominated production houses and talent agents. Of course, the new Sydney location also means there will, sadly, be no more Logies red carpet appearances by Annastacia Palaszczuk.
The other big change this year is that Gold Logie voting will now run virtually right up to when the winner of the big gong is announced, around 10.30pm next Sunday.
It’s no coincidence that Seven, as host network this year, has been campaigning strongly in recent days for its leading Gold Logie contender, Sonia Kruger, who also happens to be hosting Seven’s red carpet coverage from the Logies.
On Friday, Seven’s Sunrise hosts unveiled the ONYA SONIA-branded T-shirts to campaign for Kruger to win the Gold Logie. What are the chances that Seven will campaign with “ONYA SONIA” ads throughout its coverage on the night?
‘No snub’: Garage door halts Ita’s ABC Perth visit
Ita Buttrose has a message for ABC viewers and listeners in Western Australia: her decision not to fly to Perth for an ABC board meeting last month was not remotely a “snub” of the state, but a medical necessity.
The ABC chair has taken to her own network’s local radio station in Perth to directly address the issue, amid recent media publicity. “I’d just like to address the issue of why I didn’t come to Perth – because I see The West Australian seems to be making a feature of it, as though I’ve snubbed the people of Western Australia,” Buttrose told ABC Radio Perth weekend breakfast presenter Roanna Edwards.
Buttrose took umbrage at one story in particular in The West Australian last month, which noted she had “cancelled” her trip to WA “at the 11th hour”, in a story that also outlined “fears the state had become an afterthought” for the ABC.
The story noted the cancellation meant that Buttrose was also not hosting “a cocktails and canapes party” for new WA Premier Roger Cook at the ABC’s East Perth headquarters. But Buttrose said that a close encounter with a garage door was the real reason she wasn’t present.
“I unfortunately was recovering from back surgery – and a couple of weeks before I was due to depart for Perth, I accidentally shut the garage door on myself,” she told Edwards. “Now this was a pretty stupid thing to do, I know – but I looked up and there it was. It was descending and I couldn’t get out of its way – so it knocked me over. And that required me to go to hospital.”
Buttrose said she had still intended to go, but was given a stern talking to by her specialist. “The doctor said to me: ‘I don’t want you to fly to Perth.’ I said, ‘I’ve really got to go’. ‘No,’ he said, ‘if you go, I’m going to wipe my hands of you.’ I said, ‘Okay, I won’t go’. So I chaired the board from Sydney, virtually, and the board of course went to Perth and had a great time – and I was very envious. So that’s why I didn’t come to Perth. No snub. It was a medical matter caused by my own stupidity.”
Podcasting career on hold for 3AW’s Felgate
Former Seven Melbourne sports presenter Jacqui Felgate may be the short-odds favourite to land the plum gig as afternoon host at Melbourne’s top-rating station, 3AW, following Dee Dee Dunleavy’s dumping in June. But her fledgling podcasting career appears to be on hold.
Amid plenty of social media promotion, Felgate – along with her media mate, Melbourne PR maven and former fellow TV news reporter Alicia Grabowski – launched the It’s Been a
Week podcast at the end of last year, self-described as “two mums getting it done”.
The podcast went straight to number one on Apple’s Australian news podcasts on its launch episode. It seemed like a match made in heaven, with Grabowski attracting sponsorships from some of her heavyweight corporate contacts as owner of top Melbourne media relations agency Project PR, and Felgate bringing to the table her position as a social media influencer, with her 243,000 Instagram followers.
But, despite the instant success of the new venture – and from what Diary hears, some very decent revenue – the podcast mysteriously took a lengthy break after only 10 instalments in early March, when the pair suddenly noted at the end of their final recording: “This one will be our last for a while” – without mentioning any return date.
Nearly five months later, it’s increasingly clear the podcast won’t be coming back at any point in time, amid what some well-informed Melbourne sources suggest was some form of falling out over the podcast’s future direction.
Another clue that It’s Been a Week has been permanently shelved is that Diary hears word Grabowski has been approached by a podcasting network for a new opportunity. Meanwhile, Felgate is said to be focusing on her burgeoning radio career – including her role as a 3AW footy reporter and food reviewer – as well as servicing her sizeable Instagram following.
SBS’s very low key redundancy program
Amid last month’s media storm about the ABC’s redundancy program, most notably the departure of national political editor Andrew Probyn, its smaller public broadcasting sibling, SBS, slipped in a much quieter redundancy program of its own to mark the end of the 2022-23 financial year.
Diary understands SBS laid off up to 15 staff, including small numbers in radio and TV, as well as editorial staff from the online writers platform SBS Voices, which the public broadcaster announced it was ditching last month.
One of the SBS Voices departees, writer, editor and digital producer Caitlin Chang, put out a LinkedIn post on Friday to mark her departure last week. “It’s a real shame that there’s a SBS Voices hole in the media landscape,” she told her followers.
When we approached SBS for a comment on Friday, a spokesman responded: “SBS can confirm we have made a handful of redundancies as part of ensuring we meet the needs of our audiences as efficiently as possible.”
‘I’m an addict’: Trioli ditches lattes for mochas
In Australia’s great southern city so governed by coffee, it’s regarded as an act of virtual caffeine blasphemy: telling your fellow Melburnians that you’re swearing off lattes in favour of mochas – those strange half-coffee, half-hot chocolate concoctions.
But that’s what happened to ABC Radio Melbourne host Virginia Trioli last week, as she went from sampling her first mocha in her 57 years on Monday to becoming a full-blown mocha evangelist/addict by the end of the week, in the process entirely abandoning Melbourne’s latte set.
Trioli excitedly took to Instagram on Monday to share her first-ever mocha experience. “Today is the first day that I’ve first realised that there’s such a thing as a mocha drink, not a latte which I’ll sometimes have,” she told her 43,400 Instagram followers. “It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It’s actually just enough of this, and just enough of that. And I’m a complete mocha morning fan, it turns out.”
Self-deprecatingly, Trioli confessed: “My entire team thinks I’m a d...head for this, don’t you?” as she turned to them. “Yes, they’re all saying yes.”
By Wednesday, it was clear Trioli had reached the point of no return with Melbourne’s latte set. The first sign of Trioli’s rapidly evolving mocha addiction came with an Instagram post with six urgent words: “High level mocha bender! Send help!!”
Trioli, with the slightly manic look in the eye of someone who has clearly imbibed far too much caffeine, told her followers: “Guess what – turns out I’m an addict! Turns out I’ve now got a habit.”
Turning to one of her producers, she told her: “Julz, you’re my pusher. I’ve now got a mocha habit – and I love it!”
By Friday, it was clear Trioli’s fledgling switch to a mocha addiction was no fad. An evangelical Trioli was preaching to her new-found allies in Melbourne’s mocha set, showing off her new mocha KeepCup as she continued to urge the value of mocha to her fellow permanently jet-lagged early morning workers: “Morning everyone, and my fellow mocha tribe – getting ourselves through the week. See I’ve got a KeepCup now, so I’m doing better.”
She signed off with a “cheers”, as fellow mocha tribe members enthusiastically backed her defection from latte on her Instagram comments page.
More Coverage
Join the conversation
‘Distressing’: Nine’s bombshell report to be released
The findings of the troubled TV network’s independent review into workplace misconduct will be released this week and staff offered extensive support.
Read more
‘What you saw, is what you got’ with larger-than-life presenter Negus
George Negus was made for TV. The pioneering journalist, one of the three original members of 60 Minutes and the inaugural host of ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, has died at the age of 82.
Read more