Two months after what she sensationally dubbed the “ruthless king hit” that ended her 30-year stint as a columnist at The Sydney Morning Herald after she briefly joined the Labor Party, Elizabeth Farrelly has seemingly decided to permanently leave the media.
And it seems the media’s loss may be politics’ gain.
Undeterred by a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful tilt at the inner-western Sydney seat of Strathfield in a by-election a week or so back, where she has so far won around 9 per cent of the vote, Farrelly tells Diary she is closely contemplating a second tilt at politics – this time in the NSW upper house.
The outspoken environment and architecture columnist and advocate says she wants to make a difference to the environment in Sydney.
“A lot of people have said to me that I should run in the NSW upper house, the Legislative Council,” she tells Diary. “They say, ‘Your profile is Sydney-wide, and you could get into the upper house’. They have told me that I have the same following across Sydney that I do in Strathfield, and it’s an advantage in an upper house vote. That’s why it could be tempting. It’s an eight-year term. It might be a good way of having an influence on the future of the city, and that would be an interesting thing to do.”
And this time, she may look for some help by calling Climate 200 founder and independent backer Simon Holmes a Court to try to make it happen. “I might give him a call,” she says.
Farrelly says the decision may come down to a “core group of about half a dozen” supporters and a larger group of volunteers who helped her on election day. “The volunteers want me to have another go,” she says. “They say it makes sense. I just need to see how my core team feels.”
Interestingly, Farrelly says that she expects to almost break even on her Strathfield campaign, through donations and Australian Electoral Commission funding. “I’ve spent around $30,000 on the by-election. You get a few dollars per vote if you’re over about 4 per cent. So with the combination of that and what I got in donations, I’ll almost break even.”
Meanwhile, amid her political ambitions, going back to professional journalism seems a more distant prospect. “I could go back to writing, but I’ll need someone with a platform and someone who will pay you.”
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Sharma accuses Q+A of Climate 200 ‘set-up’
Why did Liberal MP Dave Sharma pull out of what looked like being a head-to-head debate with independent Climate 200-supported candidate Allegra Spender, his high-profile challenger in Malcolm Turnbull’s old Sydney seat of Wentworth, on last week’s Q+A?
At the start of Thursday night’s show, Q+A host Stan Grant first revealed Sharma’s surprise withdrawal: “We should point out that Liberal member for Wentworth Dave Sharma, who Allegra Spender is challenging, was initially planning to join us on the panel but later declined.”
When Diary approached Sharma about what prompted Grant’s statement, he claimed it was because Q+A producers shifted the goalposts on how the show would look, from when he initially agreed to appear on the show in early February to when he pulled out last Monday. Sharma says that by the time he pulled out, he sensed an ambush was afoot. “I first agreed to go on Q+A earlier this month, when it was confirmed that Chris Bowen and Allegra Spender would be on the show,” Sharma told Diary on the weekend. “At that point, I was told that the issues would be a mix of the Religious Discrimination Bill and overseas politics, together with whatever was in the media on the day of the show.”
But he says the proposed shape of the program had changed significantly by the time Q+A got in touch to confirm topics and guests with him last Monday. By then, a Q+A producer told him that the “broader theme” of the show would now be “disaffected voters, the election, independents and integrity”. He was also told the show had added another Climate 200 favourite, ACT Senate candidate and former Wallaby David Pocock, to a panel also featuring Spender and Bowen.
A furious Sharma told the producer: “This now looks like a set-up to me,” and pulled the plug, saying he didn’t want to give the show “legitimacy” and sardonically adding: “Why don’t you just get (Climate 200 founder) Simon Holmes a Court on the show as well, and make it an independents love-in?”
Sharma says he later explained his withdrawal to Grant, and that having opposition climate change spokesman Chris Bowen and two climate-friendly independents on the panel made it feel unbalanced. Grant, he says, heard him out.
Where do we draw the line when it comes to political donations? Allegra Spender says there should be reform to make sure the political sphere is "truly accessible to everybody who wants to participate†#QandApic.twitter.com/tMY7WuY7qQ
— QandA (@QandA) February 19, 2022
For whatever reason, the panel was changed significantly after Sharma’s withdrawal. While Spender and Bowen still appeared, Pocock ultimately did not. Instead, Liberal Gilmore candidate Andrew Constance was scrambled late, along with two international relations specialists to talk about the Ukraine crisis: The Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan and Lavina Lee.
Sharma, meanwhile, has held out an olive branch to Q+A. “I have a high respect for Stan Grant. I’ve been on Q+A with Stan before, and I hope to do so again, provided that it’s a good faith and balanced panel.” When Diary reached Grant on the weekend, he said: “I’d love to have had Dave on the show last week, but I’m glad to hear he wants to come back.”
Still, it’s not the first time Sharma has fallen out with Q+A. Just last May, he appeared on a controversial Hamish Macdonald-hosted Israel/Hamas Q+A episode – featuring two prominent pro-Palestinian advocates – which was widely criticised for lack of balance, after the term “apartheid” was used 11 separate times on the show to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. With no formal pro-Israel groups appearing, Sharma acted as the sole defender against the apartheid claims on the Q+A panel. Sharma confirms he later told Q+A producers the panel was unbalanced, and that he felt he had been “set up”.
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The ABC’s shock Clive Palmer ban
The ABC is refusing to broadcast Clive Palmer’s appearance at the Australian Press Club in Canberra live on Tuesday.
Palmer was going to use the ABC’s live telecast of his speech as a national platform to launch the United Australia Party’s election campaign.
But Diary understands that a rare editorial decision was made at the highest levels of the ABC to not screen Palmer’s address live on the main channel or news channel.
The ABC telecasts the vast majority of Press Club addresses live. Last Wednesday it ran in full the speech at the club by clean energy investor and Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court – titled “Independents and Climate: The Hope to End the Lost Decade”.
But when it came to the mining mogul and political disrupter, Aunty took a different view.
It appears the key reason is his view on Covid-19 vaccination. Aunty is understood to feel it would be irresponsible to propagate his jab stance on national television.
Instead, at the time that Palmer will be delivering his address, the Freeview program guide shows the ABC will be screening a repeat episode of All Creatures Great and Small.
Palmer has been one of the most vocal critics of vaccine mandates, picking fights with various premiers over the issue. Palmer said last year he and his family would not be vaccinated because he would “not give in to tyranny”.
In its spiel to promote Tuesday’s speech, the Press Club didn’t mention his views on Covid-19. “Mr Palmer’s projects and companies have been responsible for creating over 60,000 jobs in Australia over the last 10 years,” the promotion says.
Sky News is happy to broadcast the speech live. One Sky insider tells Diary: “Whatever you think of him, Clive Palmer is again trying to be a player, and that is newsworthy. We believe in letting our viewers make up their own minds.”
The ABC’s stance isn’t a total boycott. We’re told ABC reporters will attend the address to offer standard coverage.
After Diary revealed the decision on Sunday afternoon, the ABC clarified that the address would be aired, with a 90-minute delay, at 2pm on the news channel.
As of Monday morning, the only program showing on the Freeview and Foxtel program guides for the ABC news channel between 12pm and 3pm was “ABC News at Noon”.
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Press Club’s ‘vigorous debate’ on billionaire
It’s not only at the ABC where there was debate about the merits of whether Clive Palmer should be given a platform.
Insiders at the National Press Club tell Diary there was a long and vigorous debate at board level about whether he should be allowed to deliver his speech.
The dissenters at the Press Club were adamant that Palmer shouldn’t be given a platform to deliver his controversial views about vaccines.
But others suggested an appearance at the Press Club – where 7.30’s Laura Tingle is currently president – by Palmer would be an important opportunity to scrutinise him, because of the likely impact his enormous ad spend could have on the federal election. In the end, the free speech advocates won out. Diary understands that a decision was taken that a Press Club appearance featuring “robust” questioning of Palmer would be in the public interest.
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‘$100m a year’ for Aus Open rights
The record ratings for last month’s Australian Open – headlined by the fairytale victories of Ash Barty and Rafa Nadal – may be a double-edged sword, long term, for Nine.
While the dream results made the 2022 tournament Nine’s most successful instalment yet as the AO TV and streaming rights holder, they also underlined it as a highly desirable commodity as a new rights deal looms.
Under its current deal, Nine’s last year as AO rights holder is 2024. But it’s well-known that Seven is keen to drop the cricket, particularly the Big Bash, and move back to tennis when the rights come up.
The early talk after the Open was that Nine could need to pony up around $80m a year, or $400m over five years, to hang onto the rights between 2024 and 2029, compared with $60m a year under the current deal. But with Seven chief executive James Warburton last week finally confirming to this newspaper the worst kept secret in Australian sport – that his network was “in the market” for the tennis rights – that number could now prove to be an underestimate. Diary has received word that the winning bidder could now be forced to go as high as an unprecedented $100m a year – or $500m over the next five years – for the tennis rights.
Part of the attraction of the Australian Open, of course, is that it provides a value beyond mere tennis for any network. It also carries a formidable halo effect, for any host broadcaster, to cross-promote its coming year’s program line-up during blockbuster matches, mere days before the ratings year starts.
Tennis Australia’s recently appointed chief commercial officer Cedric Cornelis, who started last August, is fully aware of this – and may want to strike while the iron is hot to capitalise on the ratings catnip that was the 2022 Australian Open. And from what we hear, he’ll be firmly volleying away any attempts by networks to low ball on the rights.
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Hadley savages Perrottet as ‘next Keneally’
When NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet was looking to get his message out through a shock jock last Monday after a difficult weekend with the state’s four by-elections, he chose to go on Ben Fordham’s 2GB breakfast show.
The reaction to that choice from 2GB morning radio host Ray Hadley was swift. Not only did Hadley immediately have NSW Labor leader Chris Minns on his show the same morning for a free hit at the NSW Liberals, he made sure not to miss out on some unsolicited character assessments of the Premier himself – even accusing Perrottet of “insanity”.
Indeed, things haven’t been going so well lately between Hadley and Perrottet, with the 2GB broadcaster alleging last month that Perrottet had privately called him a “bedwetter” over his displeasure of the Premier’s rapid removal of Covid restrictions at the height of the Omicron outbreak in December. (Perrottet claimed he had “no recollection” of the comment). Hadley now also says that in a “private meeting” last year, he told Perrottet “a few home truths”.
“I predicted what was going to happen last Saturday, and it was worse than even I thought,” he tells Diary. “I predict that Dominic might be the Liberal equivalent of Kristina Keneally – unelected Premier shown the door at the first election after taking over from Gladys.”
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Nine’s Jaws switcheroo after shark attack
The catastrophic shark attack at Sydney’s Little Bay on Wednesday prompted a very last-minute – but critical – programming change at Nine the next day.
Diary is told quick action was taken by 2GB’s Ben Fordham, after he’d received some constructive early feedback from listeners on his open line early on Thursday morning.
Eagle-eyed Fordham listeners were taken aback after checking out their TV program guides for the day. By a stroke of exquisitely unfortunate timing, Nine’s scheduled 7.30pm movie that night on its digital multichannel 9Go happened to be Stephen Spielberg’s 1975 horror classic Jaws: undisputedly the most graphic and violent movie ever made about a killer shark.
It’d be fair to say that a straw poll of Fordham’s listeners was 100 per cent opposed to allowing Jaws to screen that night, little more than 24 hours after Sydney’s first fatal shark attack in nearly 60 years and with the country reeling from graphic eyewitness videos and details of the attack.
Diary hears that Fordham was sufficiently exercised to ping a text message to Nine’s director of television, Michael Healy, suggesting that it might be, to say the least, a bad PR move to leave the network’s programming unchanged in the circumstances.
Healy wisely took the advice on board, scrambling to replace Jaws with the Vin Diesel action movie XXX. Crisis averted.
But the late schedule change meant that while Diesel was the new feature act, 9Go’s on-screen electronic program guide didn’t have time to update and still featured Jaws as its Thursday night movie, with the description of a “killer shark (that) unleashes chaos on a beach community”.
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