With the ABC staff director election campaign in full swing, being a high-profile network star has its perks. Since announcing her candidacy just over a month ago, bookies’ favourite Laura Tingle has been quickly able to convince some of the public broadcaster’s best known on-air talent to go out on a limb and endorse her publicly, without as much as having to leave the ABC’s Canberra bureau.
ABC News Breakfast co-host Michael Rowland has become the latest of Tingle’s fellow ABC on-air talent to publicly and glowingly back the 7.30 chief political correspondent in the keenly contested ABC election campaign.
Rowland took to Twitter on Wednesday with the modern-day digital equivalent of a campaign flyer on Tingle’s behalf for ABC staff: “I am proudly voting for Laura Tingle to be the ABC’s next staff-elected director,” Rowland tweeted. “In a field of very fine candidates, Laura’s experience, gravitas and ideas are just what we need on the ABC board right at the moment. She’ll be a fierce advocate. @latingle”
That ringing endorsement came just over a week after another high-profile ABC on-air personality, Louise Milligan, delivered a similar message to rate Tingle above the rest of the pack among the prospective directors. “For me, @latingle is the pick,” Milligan wrote. “Of course she’s whip-smart. She’s also unafraid, collaborative, incredibly decent & loyal, has strong ideas for the ABC’s future. She won’t let us down.”
Lisa Wilkinson re-emerges at grungy Brisbane pub
Ever since Lisa Wilkinson dramatically walked away from The Project four months ago, citing “targeted toxicity” from the media, she hasn’t been sighted anywhere on the screens of her employer, Channel 10 – despite still collecting a seven-figure annual salary from the network under her watertight long-term contract.
But Diary has learnt that while she continues to twiddle her thumbs with her actual employer, Wilkinson will be making some decent coin on the side this week, as she launches her long-awaited comeback to public life.
On Friday, Wilkinson will address a business luncheon in Brisbane, apparently to explain “how a young girl from Sydney’s western suburbs came to be such a force in Australian media and our cultural life”. To make a business case for charging patrons a lofty $140 a head to hear Wilkinson speak, the flyer gushes that she is “one of Australia’s most admired and respected media personalities, with a warm, intelligent and elegant presence gracing our television screens now for more than 25 years”.
It also rather grandly makes the claim that Wilkinson “caused a media storm across Australia and the world on the issue of the gender pay gap when she moved to Channel Ten as co-host of The Project”.
However, the venue for Wilkinson’s grand return seems a world away from the glamorous lifestyle and harbourside mansion of the woman whose signature was once relentlessly pursued by commercial TV networks.
Wilkinson’s much-vaunted comeback will be deep in Brisbane suburbia at one of city’s largest working class pubs, the Eaton’s Hill Hotel – 15km north of the Brisbane CBD and famous for its regular boxing events.
To put it mildly, it’s not the Savoy, and not exactly on-brand for Wilkinson.
The pub has been constantly in the news in Brisbane in recent years because of a number of assaults and other incidents involving patrons, including NRL stars, who’ve had rather too much to drink.
Diary’s Brisbane spies mischievously suggest that given the recent incidents, Wilkinson should consider beefing up her security for the event. Perhaps her high-profile husband Peter FitzSimons could act as a bodyguard.
Even the organisers of the Wilkinson business lunch seem wary of the prospect for trouble, with the event’s rules sternly informing attendees that “protest paraphernalia and banners are not allowed”.
The Brisbane suburban gig represents a low-key start to 2023 for Wilkinson, less than a year after the former Project host’s controversial speech at the Logies sparked yet another ‘‘media storm’’.
Chris Uhlmann dumps politics for kids’ books
When Chris Uhlmann last September walked away from one of the country’s most coveted reporting gigs as Nine’s political editor, he did little on the way out to hide his disillusionment with sections of the political media in Australia.
“Too many journalists think they are the news,” he told this column at the time. “I am done.”
Within weeks, he embarked on a solo tour up the east coast, which former press gallery colleagues dubbed his “anti-woke tour of Australia”. Uhlmann proceeded to send them happy snaps from Queensland’s largest coal-fired power station, as well as retracing the exploration path of the now-cancelled Captain James Cook.
Six months on from his departure, Uhlmann has embarked on a new career. He now tells Diary that in April, he will launch a series of children’s books. The first is called The Useless Tune, about a magpie named Maggie who is searching for a home which, in a family affair, is illustrated with watercolours by his brother Paul.
With the launch of his first children’s book imminent, Uhlmann says he is destined never to return to his former life, which had seen him serve as the political editor for both Nine and the ABC.
“I’ll always be grateful to my former employers from across the media,” he says.
“But I don’t miss it at all. In fact, it’s a great joy to be liberated from the daily grind of news and politics.”
But Uhlmann mischievously hints that there is more common ground between being a journalist covering Canberra’s notorious parliamentary playpen and writing books for kids.
“Are there similarities between kids and politicians? People can draw their own conclusions about that,” he says.
It was evident to those in the know that Uhlmann’s disillusionment with the national discourse in media and politics was building for years, leading to his departure from journalism last September.
In comments to this column at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021, Uhlmann accused some progressive media outlets of perpetuating “boilerplate leftie outrage” in support of lockdowns he believed “imprisoned” Australians, particularly in Victoria.
It is a subject that continues to infuriate Uhlmann, six months on from his days in the political hot seat. Even now, he questions why there has not been a royal commission into the handling of the coronavirus by governments at all levels.
Uhlmann has a special salvo reserved for Victorian Premier Dan Andrews: “Why did Victoria have the longest lockdown in all of the world? Truth is stranger than fiction.” But Uhlmann believes no royal commission will happen, because there is no will among leaders still in power who were present at the time.
Meanwhile, Uhlmann says he has already rejected several approaches to return to journalism. “I’ve had no shortage of job offers in journalism, but I’ve said no to all of them. I would never go back to daily news. However, I still watch it with great interest, and I wish them all well.”
Pulled Folau documentary to reappear
The ABC is bringing back a documentary on Israel Folau that mysteriously disappeared at the end of last year, Diary has learnt.
Conspiracy theories were flying around at the end of last year when the two-part documentary – which is said to take a “balanced” approach to Folau’s controversial comments that gay people would go to hell unless they repent – was yanked from the ABC’s schedule with just four days’ notice last November. This led to suggestions that the show had been “killed” and wasn’t coming back.
The ABC was already running on-air promos for the documentary – entitled Folau – before it disappeared, which only fuelled the conspiracy theories.
But Diary is told the show is now well and truly back in roster – scheduled to appear in the ABC line-up “before the middle of the year”.
ABC insiders assure us there is nothing sinister in this move, other than the fact that not all necessary permissions were obtained by producers by the time the documentary was due to air last November. Claims the show was hastily re-edited because it was too sympathetic to Folau, are incorrect, Diary is told. It was simply a stuff-up.
The reason for the delay is that a suitable spot needed to be found in the schedule. The program was due to run in the vacant Four Corners slot when that the ABC investigative show went on hiatus, as part of a series of sports documentaries which ran on Monday nights late in the year, including one about the late racing driver Peter Brock.
It will now run as a self contained, two-part special in the next three months.
Ziffer: ‘I’d never use union money’
The battle to become the next staff-elected director of the ABC is hotting up after polls opened 10 days ago, with some of the organisation’s favourites to win the role prominent at the public broadcaster’s Ultimo headquarters last week as they pleaded their case.
The most prominent was business reporter Dan Ziffer, the candidate endorsed by the main union for the ABC’s journalists, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), and regarded internally as the second favourite after 7.30’s Laura Tingle to win the director position.
Ziffer was sighted bright and early at the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters handing out flyers to Sydney staff filing into work on Monday and Tuesday, through the office’s familiar back entrance. Fellow candidate Indira Naidoo, who’s electioneering on an “anti-Parramatta” platform, was also handing out material in Ultimo during a busy week in the ABC campaign.
But it’s Ziffer who’s been blazing something of a trail up and down the east coast of Australia in the last couple of weeks, having flown from his Melbourne base to ABC offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart – leading to some mutterings among fellow candidates about whether the MEAA or even the ABC itself was paying his flights.
When Diary reached Ziffer on Thursday, he was happy to put those mutterings to bed, confirming he is not passing on the costs to either the union or the taxpayer.
“I paid my own way,” Ziffer told us. “I would never use union money or ABC money, right down to the cabs. I’ve paid for accommodation, flights, everything. I’ve paid for my own flyers, and I’ve been staying in mates’ spare rooms.”
Ziffer said he was on a mission to help ABC staff. “I’m rolling the dice because it’s important to me – not because I’m ambitious to be on the board, but it’s a position where I can help people. Being careful with the money of others is also important to me.”
Dan Andrews hits back at media’s ‘retirement’ talk
The increasingly bitter war between Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and 3AW morning host Neil Mitchell has come to a head over the suggestion that Andrews may already be planning his retirement.
It started some days back when Mitchell organised for his station’s state political reporter Stefanie Waclawik to ask Andrews in a press conference whether there was any truth to rumours “that you might be resigning in June”. Mitchell had said on his radio show that the rumours were “all around town”.
Andrews responded combatively, in the process even choosing to name Mitchell (who he normally calls “that person”) for the first time since his boycott of the 3AW host commenced way back in 2017.
“Really? I heard Neil was resigning in June,” he responded to a collection of ‘oohs’ from the media pack. “Maybe I’ve been misinformed.”
So on the weekend, Diary put the suggestion to Mitchell that it was him, and not the Premier, who was about to quit.
Mitchell, 71, responded by revealing that he would be out of contract with 3AW mid-year, but had no intention of retiring from radio altogether. “Someone has clearly told Dan Andrews that my contract expires this June,” he said. “But I’ve already had a couple of meetings with (Nine Radio boss) Tom (Malone) about renewing my contract.”
The 3AW host has even suggested the possibility of organising a mutual retirement agreement with the Premier: “Maybe we should have a pact – if Daniel goes, I’ll go.” He was joking …. we think. Still, Mitchell has taken heart from the fact that Andrews has actually named him for the first time in years, suggesting it could even be the precursor to Andrews appearing on his show again.
“When you’re in the freezer, he calls you ‘that person’. Maybe the Premier has forgiven me – maybe I’m back. On the basis he normally never names people who he’s put in the freezer, the fact that he’s named me could mean that perhaps the ice is melting a little. Maybe he’s forgiven me – not that there’s anything to forgive.”
Hope springs eternal, Neil. But judging by our calls to Victorian Labor sources on Sunday, let’s just say that the prospects of Andrews’ deep freeze on Mitchell thawing any time soon appear remote.
Three debates for Perrottet and Minns
With the NSW election campaign officially under way after NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet went into caretaker mode on Friday, Diary hears there will be three campaign debates between Perrottet and Labor leader Chris Minns, involving Seven, Nine and Sky.
So far only Sky/The Daily Telegraph’s “People’s Forum” featuring Kieran Gilbert as host on March 22 – three days before the March 25 election, featuring an audience of 100 undecided voters who will ask the questions – has been officially announced.
But Nine and Seven are about to get a piece of the action. We’re told Nine’s debate to be held a week before the Sky debate on March 15 will feature media types from TV, print and radio. As we correctly predicted last month, Sydney newsreader Peter Overton will host the event, with Nine’s NSW political reporter Liz Daniels, the Sydney Morning Herald’s state political editor Alexandra Smith and 2GB’s drive host Chris O’Keefe asking the questions.
Meanwhile, Seven is said to have won an additional TV debate on March 8, which Diary is told at this point is likely to be hosted by weekend news anchor and The Latest host Michael Usher.
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