“It’s not really nice being shouted at, can I say?” With those words, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian kicked off round two of her very public running battle with Sky News’s national political editor Andrew Clennell.
In the first round, Clennell famously put Berejiklian through the wringer about her controversial former relationship with disgraced Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire. And last week, the Sky reporter returned to the NSW Press Gallery for only the second time since last year’s face-off with the Premier.
But this time “Mr Clennell”, as Berejiklian grudgingly refers to him, wasn’t grilling her about her private life: but rather about her handling of the private lives of the state’s eight million or so other citizens.
Clennell opened the short-pitched bowling with the line: “Premier, you have locked us down for three weeks and now you are looking at locking us down for another two weeks. We are all homeschooling and locked down. What’s to say it won’t be another two weeks on top of that? When are you going to acknowledge it’s time to lock it down harder to get rid of this thing?”
An absorbing to-and-fro between the pair followed over Clennell’s continued claims Sydney needed a tougher lockdown, with a clearly irritated Berejiklian asking Clennell to allow her to “finish my answer” and note she had used the advice of “the best health experts in our nation”, and Clennell replying: “With respect, the best health advice got us a five-week lockdown.”
On Thursday, the NSW Premier had still been insisting the health advice was for a limited lockdown. But 48 hours later, that advice had clearly changed, with tough local lockdowns in southwestern Sydney, and other much stricter measures governing non-essential retail and construction.
Gladys will no doubt be overjoyed Clennell plans to be back for more jousting with her this week. When Diary reached him over the weekend, Clennell said he was simply holding her to account: “As a journalist, I have the ability to make a difference on behalf of the citizens of NSW who have been locked in their homes and homeschooling, and who may be incarcerated for weeks.”
Meanwhile, a source close to the Premier has maintained she is happier when he does show up: “It’s better when he turns up, because there’s a lot of positive support and sympathy for Gladys when he does.”
Break out the popcorn.
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Oops! Frydenberg leaks PM’s Dan lockdown text
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will be thinking twice before he ever reads out his personal text messages from the Prime Minister in front of a hungry media pack again any time soon.
Diary has learnt it was none other than Frydenberg who accidentally leaked Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’s announcement of Melbourne’s nation-leading fifth lockdown on Thursday, when in shock he blurted out the news in a “private” chat with his minders.
Unfortunately for Frydenberg, his stunned reaction to a private text message he had just received from Scott Morrison about the lockdown came within earshot of the Herald Sun’s state political editor Shannon Deery, the lucky journalist in the right place at the right time to capitalise on the treasurer’s accidental revelation.
Your columnist can now reveal the full story behind how Frydenberg unwittingly gave the Herald Sun a national scoop by revealing news of Victoria’s latest lockdown. The treasurer had just walked away from a press conference in Melbourne (where he triumphantly crowed unemployment had just fallen to a 10-year low) when he looked down at a message on his phone from the PM.
On the version of events we were initially told, Frydenberg was alleged to have exclaimed in shock to his advisers: “Message from Scott. He’s spoken to Dan. Lockdown confirmed.”
On another witness’s version of events, Frydenberg is said to have let out a sharp exclamation, followed by: “Victoria’s going into lockdown. I just got a text from the PM”.
However, sources close to Frydenberg are adamant while the Treasurer did indeed mention a text he had just received from the PM on a possible Victorian lockdown, he wasn’t definitive about its timing, and also didn’t mention Dan at all. As one source put it: “There was no reference to any conversation by the PM with Daniel Andrews, and it wasn’t said with 100 per cent surety.”
What isn’t in dispute from either side was Deery picked up on Frydenberg’s general vibe that a lockdown was imminent.
Diary is also told Deery picked up on a “death stare” directed at Frydenberg from his own director of communications Kane Silom, after the Treasurer experienced such a public disconnect between brain and mouth by accidentally spilling out the information.
By 1.30pm, Deery had tweeted out his story to make sure everyone knew he was first with news of the imminent lockdown, noting: “Sources say the PM has been briefed.”
And what “sources” could possibly be more impeccable than the federal Treasurer himself?
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Palaszczuk’s gold medal for question dodging
“Gotta go!” This has been the frequent refrain from Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk when she wants to wind up pesky press conferences that are not going her way.
Now, after crunching the numbers, Diary can reveal the Queensland Premier has won the gold medal among all state and federal leaders when it comes to dodging tough questions from reporters.
From June 30 to July 5 — the week that Palaszczuk was grilled by journalists over her controversial AstraZeneca vaccine stance — we measured the average length of question times for Australia’s leaders in their daily Covid-19 press conferences.
Palaszczuk took an average of just 13 minutes and 55 seconds to answer questions from the Brisbane press before winding them up, often with her signature “Gotta go”.
That’s 16 minutes short of her Victorian Labor counterpart, Dan Andrews, who famously tells reporters: “I’ll answer every single question you ask.”
It’s also an average of six minutes short of the time Prime Minister Scott Morrison took to answer media queries during the same week. Gladys Berejiklian beats Palaszczuk by seven minutes, Western Australia’s Mark McGowan is 11 minutes ahead and South Australia’s Steven Marshall defeats the Queenslander by 14 minutes.
Palaszczuk won’t be around this week to celebrate her gold medal from Diary, as she is already enjoying the Japanese hospitality at the Tokyo Olympics (it would have been a “disaster” for Queensland if she hadn’t attended, apparently).
The Queensland Premier’s Tokyo sojourn means a holiday from any tough Covid-19 questions while she’s at the Olympics — and an even more welcome two weeks of media-free quarantine on the way home. No wonder she’s so keen to go.
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Nine papers’ editorial writer attacks Uhlmann
It’s no mean feat to simultaneously annoy most of Nine’s top political journalists, including Chris Uhlmann, Phil Coorey, Rob Harris, Bevan Shields and David Crowe.
But the Sydney Morning Herald’s editorial writer Geoff Winestock has managed that rare achievement, taking to Twitter to offer his unvarnished opinions on articles written by his high-profile Nine colleagues.
It seems Winestock is frustrated by anonymously writing editorials in his own paper, when he has some very strong opinions he clearly wants to get out there. So he has instead taken to the alternative platform of Twitter to say what he really thinks about Nine’s pre-eminent political minds.
For instance, when Nine’s political editor Uhlmann wrote an opinion piece 10 days or so back that criticised the “lie” at the heart of claims by “state and territory chief health officers” that they can eliminate Covid-19, Winestock couldn’t stay silent: “Such a divisive way to discuss a complex issue,” he tweeted. “No one is lying.”
When the AFR’s political editor Coorey dared to suggest last month in a balanced opinion piece that “vaccination levels higher than those in Australia are not preventing lockdowns”, Winestock was also straight on to Twitter: “A very odd claim from @PhillipCoorey.”
He also actively encouraged a Twitter user to write a letter to criticise a piece on Israel by the SMH/Age national affairs editor Harris, and levelled similar criticisms at the Nine papers’ chief political correspondent Crowe and European correspondent Shields.
Senior Nine editors strongly disapprove of its editorial staff openly criticising colleagues on Twitter, with clauses in the company’s social media policies understood to govern the practice.
Meanwhile, some of Winestock’s colleagues haven’t taken his Twitter critiques lightly. In March, Crowe gave Winestock a public dressing down: “What a rubbish tweet Geoff. You really should take a break from Twitter. Those Canberra journalists include your colleagues, working with you on the paper that employs you.”
Shields, an ex-federal editor and Canberra bureau chief for the Nine papers, also sarcastically posted in response to another curmudgeonly Winestock tweet: “Thanks for supporting my work, Geoff!”
When Diary reached Uhlmann, he said: “Let 1000 opinions bloom. He can write an editorial if he likes. I don’t care.”
Meanwhile, Coorey has told us: “If Geoff wants to have a crack, good luck to him.”
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Alan Jones back to breakfast radio
You heard it here first: Alan Jones returns to morning radio this week. But in case you were in any doubt, it definitely won’t be on 2GB.
Jones has a busy schedule of non-2GB radio commitments this week, starting on Monday morning when he turns up for the first time ever with Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson on their top-rating breakfast show on KIIS FM, in a segment we’re told is being billed as the “Kings of Radio”.
But that won’t be Jones’s only radio appearance.
Diary understands the one-time breakfast radio king has also been approached by his ex-2UE colleague John Laws about appearing on Laws’s 2SM radio show by the end of the week, and is likely to accept.
The Jones appearance on KIIS comes after Sandilands confessed to watching ex-Sydney breakfast radio king Jones on his Sky News TV show, after being crowned the city’s new breakfast slot king earlier this month.
Jones has also been warm in his praise of Kyle and Jackie O, posting to Instagram on Sunday: “Knowing these two, it’ll be a fun listen.”
Meanwhile, Jones and Laws may have had a fierce rivalry years ago when they were both top-rating colleagues on 2UE, but these days their relationship is cordial, with the pair spotted lunching together in recent months after Jones had paid his respects at the funeral of Laws’ wife Caroline.
Jones’ sudden return to radio this week follows the formal expiry on June 30 of the 2GB contract which had until then forbidden him from even making appearances on other radio stations.
Meanwhile, one station we’re told Jones definitely won’t be appearing on any time soon is 2GB.
Diary hears there is no love lost between Jones and 2GB over his treatment at the time of his departure.
Sources close to the Sky broadcaster say the station didn’t arrange a fitting farewell or even any tribute for the person who won them 226 surveys in a row, following his “retirement” from its airwaves last year.
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Dan locks down removalist’s names
There was a scramble last week among Melbourne news outlets to get to the bottom of the identity of the three Sydney removalists who spread the highly contagious coronavirus Delta variant to Victoria.
But they have so far met an information wall from the Victorian government, which has point blank refused to do anything to identify the removalists who breached their permit conditions and didn’t wear masks while contagious in Melbourne.
Victoria’s Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar made it clear “books will be thrown” at the so-far unidentified removalists when the time is right.
That aside, Diary is reliably informed the Victorian government is determined they won’t be responsible for the removalists being publicly shamed, after an experience early in the pandemic in 2020 when one public naming backfired.
Former Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos made the mistake of indirectly identifying doctor Chris Higgins, the father of singer Missy Higgins, as an early victim of Covid-19 in March last year. Mikakos publicly criticised his decision to return to work. But she picked on the wrong doctor, with Higgins getting plenty of media coverage by demanding an apology for “inaccuracies” in Mikakos’s version of events.
So the news chasers have so far been unable to identify who the removalists are, although, as Diary is told, it’s not for want of trying. Residents of the Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, the block that has been locked down as the result of one of the deliveries, have been contacted and asked for any photos they took from the day.
Unfortunately for the hungry news outlets, it appears none of the residents snapped off any shots, nor have they been able to cast any light on who the removalists are. So the media’s wild goose chase continues.
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Ash Barty trumped by little-known skateboarder
Which Australian Olympian is taking the biggest social media profile to Tokyo this week?
No, it’s not Wimbledon champion Ash Barty, soccer star Sam Kerr or Boomers stars like Patty Mills.
Instead, it’s someone who is nearly anonymous in the mainstream media: a skateboarder named Shane O’Neill.
O’Neill, who appeared in a paltry 49 media items in the past 12 months, compared with Barty’s 9300, has a massive 1.67 million Instagram and Twitter followers, according to research from media monitoring firm Streem who compared the mainstream and social media profiles of Australia’s Olympic team. That puts him way ahead of Barty, who has only 472,400 Twitter and Instagram followers despite being the women’s world tennis number one.
But O’Neill could still have been topped on the list of Instagram and Twitter followers by two now-famous Olympic pikers: the NBA’s Ben Simmons (6.6m followers) or Nick Kyrgios (2.1m) if they could have been bothered to turn up in Tokyo.
On the social media totem pole of those Olympians who did choose to turn up, there are eight basketballers, four surfers, three cyclists, two tennis players and a soccer player who made the cut.
Just one swimmer scraped into the social media top 20, despite Australia’s prominent standing in the sport: sprinter Cameron McEvoy, who came in at 20th. But freestyle golden girl Cate Campbell fell just outside the top 20 in 21st place, with less than 100,000 social media fans.
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