You might have thought the State of Origin was a brutal sporting event played between NSW and Queensland.
But the real State of Origin of recent times has been an equally brutal gladiatorial battle between the premiers of NSW and Victoria, played out in the full glare of the media, about the “origin” of the latest Delta strain of Covid-19.
The back and forth media slanging match between NSW’s Gladys Berejiklian and Victoria’s Dan Andrews has become a sport all of its own, as the egos of two stubborn leaders deliver the big hits in a media face-off over who has handled their respective outbreaks better.
And what started the outbreak of hostilities?
Diary can now reveal that it was Berejiklian’s dismissive response to a grilling by a reporter at one of her daily press conferences on July 15, when she was asked why she hadn’t until then defined “essential work” for the NSW lockdown.
The reporter had asked the NSW Premier: “Why not tighten the rules about who an essential worker is? Victoria did it very successfully.”
Berejiklian chuckled sarcastically at the last line, and immediately replied with a put-down: “No, they didn’t!”
Victorian Labor sources tell Diary it was this dismissive response that earned Andrews’ ire, and was the starting point for a sharp escalation of hostilities from the Victorian Premier’s office. Within days, Andrews had taken the gloves off in announcing that state’s one-week lockdown extension to avoid a “NSW-style long, lengthy, very challenging lockdown where you just lose control of cases”.
That was certainly an interesting take. Had Dan’s much-publicised fall earlier this year somehow given him amnesia about Victoria’s strict four-month lockdown in 2020?
Apart from that apparent selective memory lapse, we’re told Andrews definitely hadn’t forgotten Berejiklian’s dismissiveness about Victoria’s plea for more vaccines during its fourth lockdown two months ago.
In an interview with Kyle and Jackie O in June, Berejiklian had given short shrift to the suggestion that Victoria should get more Pfizer.
“They’re not getting (it),” an annoyed Berejiklian told the shock jocks. “I can’t. The feds are giving them more anyway … The federal government has from last week given them more AstraZeneca.”
The boot was on the other foot when Berejiklian declared a “national emergency” in NSW 10 days ago, in a press conference where she demanded more Pfizer vaccines from the other states.
But Andrews was having none of it: “If Sydney has been declared a national emergency, then my message is very clear,” he told reporters.
“On behalf of all Victorians, I am saying there is a national responsibility to put a ring of steel around Sydney.”
When NSW predictably ignored Andrews’ “ring of steel” demand, the Victorian government last week took the extra step of placing ads in Seven’s Olympic coverage and elsewhere.
The ads wouldn’t have been out of place in Soviet-era Russia, dubbing NSW an “extreme risk zone”.
The stern male voice on the ad barked at startled NSW Olympic viewers: “To stop the spread of coronavirus, new restrictions are now in place for extreme risk zones. If you’re in NSW, you cannot get a permit to enter Victoria. If you try to enter, you could be fined.”
As the slogan for the real State of Origin goes, it’s ‘‘state versus state’’ now – but definitely not ‘‘mate versus mate’’.
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Alberici’s version of ABC saga off till 2022
It’s one of the most anticipated non-fiction books of the year, which definitely won’t be for sale in an ABC Shop when it’s printed.
But Diary has now learnt that “Rewrite the Story”, Emma Alberici’s keenly awaited account of what really happened behind the scenes with her controversial, rewritten corporate tax story in 2018 will no longer be coming out in 2021.
The book’s publisher, Sandy Grant of Hardie Grant, has confirmed to us that the Alberici tome, which had been scheduled to be released in September, has now been unavoidably “delayed” and was now likely to be “six to 12 months away”.
It has certainly been an eventful year or so for the former Lateline host. She left the ABC last August after reaching a settlement in a legal dispute in which she had taken action against the public broadcaster in the Fair Work Commission. That action came after the ABC informed her that her position was to be made redundant.
But despite the settlement, Alberici didn’t exactly leave ABC quietly, engaging in a Twitter war of words with ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull on the way out, claiming that he had pressured ABC news and current affairs management over the much-debated corporate tax stories. Tagging Turnbull, she wrote: “Just cos you bully people doesn’t make you correct and others not. The countless letters you sent to the ABC were ridiculous.”
But Turnbull wasn’t backing down, noting on Twitter the same day: “The claim that I called (ABC news boss Gaven) Morris about Emma is denied both by me and the ABC. As to her 14 Feb 2018 article on tax, it was full of errors, confused basic accounting concepts and was widely and publicly criticised.”
It didn’t take Alberici long to bounce back from her ABC departure. The next month, she announced both her book deal and a new job with insurance comparison website Compare the Market (best known for its meerkat ads) as its head of strategy, government and communications.
But Alberici quietly departed Compare the Market earlier this year to “pursue other opportunities”.
We presume those “other opportunities” included finishing her book, which Alberici has hinted will give the definitive account of her ABC departure: “In the aftermath of my corporate tax story and analysis … I’ve got a new story to write. The whole story.”
That “whole story” is said to include Alberici’s take on perceived pressure applied by the Turnbull government over the tax story and some of her other work.
But the biggest-name author in the stable of Alberici’s publisher, Hardie Grant, is … you guessed it … one Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. It was Hardie Grant that last year published Turnbull’s weighty autobiography, A Bigger Picture. Could in-house tensions between Hardie Grant’s two highest-profile authors have caused problems for the Alberici book?
We’re assured not. Hardie Grant tells us the delay to publication is simply because Alberici “ran out of time” to finish the book by the original deadline, but it will definitely be published in 2022.
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Palaszczuk’s suite deal in ‘heavenly’ quarantine
Yoga, selfies and “scented pillows”. While her beloved Brisbane locks down yet again, that’s about the sum of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s tough life in quarantine in her $400-a-night five-star suite.
On Thursday, the day NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was visibly emotional after Sky News’s Andrew Clennell suggested her Covid-19 strategy had “failed”, Palaszczuk gave her first post-Tokyo interview to News Corp’s Greg Stolz, confiding she was doing “yoga to stay in shape”, teleconferences and a bit of “keeping an eye on the Olympics” in Brisbane’s Westin hotel.
Heavy stuff. And the selfie she posted to Twitter only confirmed her hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone approach. The photo showed her slumming it in a Westin Premium Renewal CitySuite (featuring the hotel’s signature “heavenly” lavender-scented beds), in front of an iPad, a face mask, a colour printout of the Olympic rings and an A4 folder with a cover reading: “TOKYO OLYMPICS General Information PREMIER.”
Day four working from hotel quarantine. Paused to watch Ariarne's epic win - how good was that 👠#Tokyo2020pic.twitter.com/h5J95BbGTP
— Annastacia Palaszczuk (@AnnastaciaMP) July 28, 2021
Hopefully by now she’s been sent some reading material more pertinent to Queensland’s sudden Covid-19 predicament.
But publicly at least, Palaszczuk appears to have been steering well clear of the lockdown from her hotel suite.
There have been no Zoom cameo appearances, allowing the Premier to lend her air of authority to Queensland’s increasingly fraught pandemic press conferences.
Instead, it has been left to Deputy Premier Steven Miles and chief health officer Jeannette Young to carry the heavy media load of the lockdown.
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Gerry’s bargain TV ad deal with Titmus
Everyone knows billionaire retailer Gerry Harvey loves a deal. But we’d previously thought his deal-making skills were primarily focused on appliances like toasters and fridges.
Turns out we were wrong. Two years before Tokyo, Harvey’s canny wife, Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page, nutted out a deal for Australian breakout Olympic star swimmer Ariarne Titmus to become a brand “ambassador” for the appliance and furniture chain. And from what we’re reliably informed, the Titmus deal put any trademark Harvey Norman “hot deal” to shame.
But the billionaire admits that the deal that spawned a thousand Harvey Norman TV ads was actually the work of Page.
Harvey tells Diary: “Kate looks like a genius now because she’s identified this girl two years ago as a potential future champion. It’s gold, gold, gold, because she gets up on TV and says: ‘I’m an ambassador for Harvey Norman.’ But it was a bit of a long shot two years ago. You only pull one of those off on very rare occasions.”
In fact, with a bit more digging, it turns out Harvey didn’t know anything upfront about Page’s ambassadorship arrangement with Titmus. “I didn’t know she did the deal until last week. I asked her: ‘What the hell did you do there?’ ”
But the big question is: does Titmus have a performance bonus built into her Harvey Norman contract for winning gold in Tokyo?
Harvey will only say: “The day she gets married, you can bet Harvey Norman will fill the house with furniture and appliances. That’ll be the bonus.”
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Jones: An editor can do what he wants
Alan Jones is philosophical about last week’s decision by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph’s to drop his weekly column, saying that the paper’s editor Ben English is “entitled” to make any decision he chooses.
It is understood that the news was broken to Jones during a midafternoon phone conversation between the pair last Tuesday, in which English told him the column hadn’t attracted enough audience numbers in terms of clicks by the paper’s subscribers.
In confirming the conversation with English, Jones told Diary on the weekend: “An editor is entitled to do what he wants. But if the argument is that my material doesn’t resonate, then the figures clearly dispute that. My record as a broadcaster, and Facebook responses to my newspaper column and online responses to my television program, all of which are a matter of public record, dispute any argument that my views don’t resonate.”
When we contacted English for his response to Jones’s remarks, he would only say: “It might well be the case that Alan attracts people on Facebook, but we’re a subscription site.”
Jones has also hit out at claims he is opposed to vaccination against Covid-19, and that his strong views on the pandemic may have played a role in his departure from the Telegraph.
“I have never, ever, argued against vaccination in my life,” he tells Diary. “My argument with this vaccine is simply that we ought to be told everything by the government, including that there are risks. That is evidenced by the fact that we’re told AstraZeneca for some people, and Pfizer for others. No wonder people are confused!”
A News Corp spokesman said decisions about what to publish in the company’s mastheads were “the responsibility of the editor”.
“These decisions should not be confused with the company’s corporate position or, in this case, a signal that News Corp Australia no longer supports Alan.”
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Fake crowd noise for Seven’s Games coverage
Everyone knows Bruce McAvaney has the ability to generate an atmosphere all of his own in his Olympic calls. But with no crowds in Tokyo allowed to watch the Olympics, Seven has decided to give him a boost, with a little help from some authentic “fake crowd” noise.
As one Seven insider confides to Diary: “Are we using special effects for crowd sound? Yes we are. In everything? No.” The source adds that its feed of the Games coverage arrives “without special effects”.
We hear that the fake crowd noise will be an increasingly prominent feature during the second week of Seven’s Olympics coverage. It’s all about creating atmosphere to compensate for the 68,000 empty seats that would be filled in a normal Olympics in the main arena, the cavernous Japan National Stadium.
As we all know, this is no normal Olympics, so Seven is said to have called in the same experts who helped them fake the crowd noise for the AFL as well, particularly for the 2020 season, much of which was played without fans.
The fake noise is definitely a horses for courses consideration for Seven.
From what we’re told, during the first week of the Olympics, the fake noise was particularly used in outdoor events like tennis, and with hockey for the Hockeyroos and Kookaburras – but not for the swimming, where the echo of the cheers of teammates in the indoor arena was considered sufficient to generate atmosphere for viewers.
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‘Aussie’ Leigh’s golden Olympic ticket with NBC
Australia had Bruce McAvaney to call Sunday night’s blue ribbon event of the Tokyo Olympics, the men’s 100m sprint. But over in the US, it was another Australian voice who called the 10-second race for tens of millions of Americans.
Leigh Diffey is his name, and if you’ve never heard of him, you wouldn’t be alone.
Diffey, 50, made his first move into commentary aged 19 for a paltry $60 a day, calling Ipswich Motorcycle Club races at the glamorous Tivoli raceway, after giving up a brief career as a motorbike rider.
From what we’re told, you could add several zeros to that take-home pay for “Aussie Leigh” these days, now that he’s the main athletics caller for the US Olympics host network, NBC.
Diffey’s rags to riches path to NBC from a Brisbane housing commission complex has included calling truck racing at Sydney’s Oran Park, novelty events at the Royal Easter Show, and V8 supercars for the Ten Network in Australia.
Finally, he made it big when he was poached by NBC in 2013 to call Formula One.
And Diffey’s star has continued to rise at NBC since, taking over in Tokyo as America’s answer to McAvaney, replacing legendary Olympics sportscaster Tom Hammond, who had called seven Games since Barcelona in 1992.
With a local Olympics now beckoning in his home city, will Seven be tempted to lure Diffey back to Australia as McAvaney’s successor in time for 2032?
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