But less than five years later, Diary has now learnt Chris Uhlmann is planning to quit the plum role. Indeed, there’s early talk around Nine circles the network is already in the early stages of canvassing potential replacements for Uhlmann’s position.
When we reached Uhlmann late last week, he quietly confirmed our mail. He told us while he intended to cover the likely May federal election and its aftermath, 2022 would most likely be his last year in the coveted job.
“My contract runs out at the end of this year,” he told Diary.
“I am not at this point planning to go any longer than that. I’m 61, I will be 62 this year, and I’m approaching retirement.
“It’s time to give someone else a crack.”
There have been signs in recent months Uhlmann is tiring of the state of political discourse among news outlets. In a speech missed by the media over the silly season to the Australian Catholic University, he called out “people who style themselves as progressives” for embarking on a “relentless assault on the Western liberal democratic tradition” in Australia.
“All change is not progress,” he said in the speech. “We have been on this journey to nothingness for a long time.”
Indeed, for Uhlmann, there appears to have been rising frustration about the reporting of some sections of the media about the pandemic in recent months. In comments to this column last year, he accused some progressive media outlets of perpetuating “boilerplate leftie outrage” in support of Covid-19 lockdowns he believed effectively “imprisoned” Australians.
Similarly, in a column he wrote for the Nine papers last August, he lamented the role of sections of the media in perpetuating “rank authoritarianism” as a result of the coronavirus.
“Much of it has become a cheer squad for the blunt instrument of lockdowns and a moral hall monitor that polices thought crimes,” he wrote at the time. “The same organs that ritually hyperventilate about the detention of asylum seekers are the loudest voices in advocating imprisoning entire states.”
Diary asked Uhlmann if there was any chance he could go back on his decision: “Could things change? Anything could change. A year is a long time in politics.”
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The Project prepares Tame special
A mere broken collarbone from her recent self-described “bike stack” hasn’t been enough to stop Grace Tame from fronting up for her sold-out double act speech to the National Press Club with Brittany Higgins in Canberra on Wednesday.
Press Club sources say several relatives of the 2021 Australian of the Year have long been booked in to support Tame’s Wednesday speech, and there is zero prospect she’ll be letting them down.
Diary hears the speech will be receiving blanket coverage from Ten’s The Project, which is apparently planning a Tame and Higgins “special” for the Wednesday night instalment of the show.
Lisa Wilkinson, who normally doesn’t appear on the Waleed Aly-Carrie Bickmore edition of The Project that screens on Wednesday nights, will make an exception this week as a special correspondent for the Ten panel show from the Press Club speech.
It’s understood Higgins and Tame, who are friends with Wilkinson, are expected to front up for a joint interview on The Project. Brace yourself, Scott Morrison!
But there won’t be any repeat on The Project of the headline-making debate about Tame a fortnight ago between Bickmore and Ten political editor Peter van Onselen.
Press Club insiders say van Onselen has RSVPd to say he won’t be attending the Tame and Higgins Press Club appearance.
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Speers punishes Barnaby’s dropout
Barnaby Joyce made himself uncharacteristically scarce over the weekend after the release of text messages from last year in which he called Scott Morrison “a hypocrite and a liar”.
The biggest casualty of the Deputy PM’s absence was his planned interview with David Speers on Insiders on Sunday morning.
But it wasn’t for want of trying on Speers’s part.
Diary is told Joyce and Speers first talked on Friday night, when the deputy PM gave the bad news to the Insiders host. But Speers wouldn’t take no for an answer, trying to persuade Joyce to appear on the show.
Joyce was adamant he wouldn’t, but Speers had one more crack on Saturday morning by text message, only to be rebuffed once more.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews appeared in Joyce’s place, but Speers wasn’t about to let the Deputy PM get away with not showing up.
Speers opened the show by noting: “The Deputy PM has apologised, but rather than fronting up this morning to explain why he felt that way, he’s pulled out of his scheduled appearance on today’s program.”
And it’d be fair to say Speers didn’t try to hide his displeasure throughout the show. In scathing commentaries, he described Joyce as a “ticking bomb” that had detonated “at the worst possible time for the government”; suggested the deputy PM’s claim that he had “changed his view” of Morrison was disingenuous; and asked loaded questions to the unfortunate Andrews, such as: “Have you had a gutful of being asked to mop up when the blokes won’t front up?”
Even Labor leader Anthony Albanese was quoted on the show, in a grab where he lashed out at Joyce’s dropout from Insiders.
The message to the government ahead of an imminent election campaign was unmistakeable: if you commit to interviews and then drop out, expect to be punished.
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Probyn avoids ScoMo text story
Still on texts, Ten political editor Peter van Onselen last week evoked memories of Laurie Oakes confronting then-PM Julia Gillard in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election, when using Scott Morrison’s Tuesday National Press Club speech to drop a bomb of alleged derogatory text messages about him between Gladys Berejiklian and an unnamed cabinet minister.
As is now well-known, Morrison was allegedly referred to in the texts variously as a “horrible person” and a “psycho”.
PVO’s story about the texts led Ten’s 5pm news bulletin on Tuesday night. It was followed up an hour later with similarly prominent stories on the 6pm bulletins of Seven and Nine.
But intriguingly, ABC political editor Andrew Probyn – who also led the ABC 7pm bulletin with a story about Morrison’s Press Club appearance – avoided any mention of the texts about the PM.
When your columnist reached Probyn on Thursday, he confirmed there had been “some robust editorial discussion” about whether to include the texts in his story, before he opted not to.
“I decided the text messages did not reach the bar for inclusion in my 7pm news TV package,” the ABC political editor told Diary. “It’s a fine judgment, but an explosive question based on uncorroborated text messages has to be balanced against other considerations. In the ABC’s case, independent judgment and process are high among those considerations.”
Probyn went on: “The text exchange could not be verified (I called and texted Gladys Berejiklian, for a start), nor was the identity of the minister revealed, whether he/she was a federal or state minister or the date the texts were sent. Context is key here.
“The next day it emerged that the text exchange was two years old, and wholly from the time of the bushfire crisis in January 2020. It is still unclear whether the exchange was with a state or federal minister. PVO has had the texts in his possession for quite some time.”
But 24 hours later, Probyn appeared to have a change of heart, filing a report on the subject of the texts. But he says by then, the story had evolved. “I did report on the matter on Wednesday,” he says. “But that was in the context of the PM declaring confidence federal ministers weren’t involved and several ministers denying it was them.”
Meanwhile, PVO wrote in his column in The Weekend Australian on Saturday while he was provided with the texts “two years ago”, he couldn’t use them at the time. His ministerial source “did not authorise me to use (them)” until “more recently”.
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Sales’s prep in iso for ScoMo interview
Laura Tingle’s extended stint as summer host of the ABC’s 7.30 has finally come to an end, with a negative RAT test last week finally giving Leigh Sales the all-clear she needed to return to the show on Monday night after her recent Covid-19 diagnosis.
Diary hears a stir-crazy Sales, who has been in isolation with her two kids while showing very few symptoms, was using the time productively. She may have been officially on sick leave, but the word is she was keeping busy ahead of her 7.30 return, lining up interviews and performing other preparations.
One key focus for Sales is said to have been prepping for an imminent one-on-one interview with Scott Morrison.
As this column revealed last week, the PM has been waiting for Sales to return before granting 7.30 an interview. That’s because there is no love lost between Morrison and Tingle, with the PM refusing to have any sit-down with Tingle because of a series of run-ins with the 7.30 chief political correspondent.
Diary’s Tingle revelation last week made for an awkward encounter during Morrison’s speech on Tuesday to the National Press Club, where she is president.
When Tingle asked Morrison after the speech to say sorry for “the mistakes you’ve made as Prime Minister”, Morrison replied: “Well, thanks for the question”. That prompted Tingle to reply, quick as a flash: “Always happy to ask you questions, Prime Minister” – a clear dig at Morrison’s apparent boycott of an interview with her.
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Dutton names his media foes
While Scott Morrison gives Laura Tingle a wide berth, Defence Minister Peter Dutton made a rare appearance with Tingle on Thursday night, during her last show as 7.30 host before Leigh Sales’s return.
Dutton appeared straight after an interview with his nemesis Malcolm Turnbull, where the ex-PM lashed out at the AUKUS submarine deal which torpedoed Australia’s previous deal with the French.
And as soon as Dutton came on, it quickly became very apparent which media outlets he wasn’t terribly fond of, in response to Tingle’s suggestion the French had been blindsided by the federal government.
The Defence Minister pointedly singled out the ABC and The Guardian – as well as Turnbull – for what he saw as their stubborn preoccupation with the subs deal.
“My job is to keep Australians safe,” he told Tingle. “That’s the Prime Minister’s job as well and we’ve taken the decision based on the expert advice that is in our country’s best interests and I think the French have moved on. You and the ABC haven’t … and the Guardian of course … and Malcolm.”
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Media fury over Anna’s spin unit
After seven years in government, the Queensland press gallery has finally had enough of the shenanigans of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s army of 30 media spinners.
The snapping point came last Wednesday, when Palaszczuk’s media team played one too many games of cat and mouse to shield the Premier from a media interrogation about the state’s burgeoning integrity crisis.
In a transparent bid to protect the Queen of Queensland from questioning, her spinners gave Brisbane political reporters a paltry 60 minutes’ notice of an 11am press conference she was calling in Caloundra, allegedly to talk about schools. The Sunshine Coast resort town is about 90 minutes from the Brisbane CBD, making attendance by Brisbane journalists a near mission impossible.
As a clear distraction ploy, they also scheduled two press conferences by Health Minister Yvette D’Ath and Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman within a half-hour of the Premier’s briefing.
But the clever tactics of Palaszczuk’s spinners to help her dodge the Brisbane media were, alas, unsuccessful.
Somehow, Nine’s Tim Arvier, the Courier Mail’s Jack McKay and The Australian’s Lydia Lynch managed to tear up the Bruce Highway to Caloundra and gatecrash the Premier’s plans to escape questioning about mounting allegations of government interference with corruption and integrity bodies.
Arvier, who only last year returned to Queensland after being Nine’s US correspondent, was determined to let Palaszczuk know, very publicly, of his extreme displeasure. In a four-question tirade against the Premier, he lashed the size of her 30-member media team, before going on to skewer her decision not to give adequate notice of the Caloundra press conference.
A clearly flustered Palaszczuk stumbled as she reached for a plausible explanation for the size of her media team, first blaming Covid-19, then trying on population growth in Queensland before finally blaming the Olympics.
The brief but spectacular exchange went as follows:
Arvier: You have one of the biggest media teams in political history …
Premier (interrupting): “NO! That’s, not correct.
Arvier: Let me rephrase then, you have a lot of media advisers …
Premier: No, I have a standard, um, we have been dealing with a pandemic … ah ah ah a Queensland that is growing … a Queensland that has achieved for the first time ever to get an Olympics, OK, so, we have a number of people who work on a whole range of projects across government.
Arvier: You have a big media team, and they weren’t able to tell the media gallery journalists what your events were today, a media alert went out giving an hour’s notice.
Premier: Well you’re all here!
Arvier: No, everyone isn’t here, everyone isn’t here. That’s the point!
Premier: Please, please, do not say that.
For the record, Arvier was right. The Brisbane gallery journalists from Sky News, the Ten and Seven networks, ABC Brisbane, AAP and the Brisbane Times were unable to make the briefing because of the ludicrously short notice. Newsroom insiders tell us like Arvier, they are definitely not amused with the Premier and her spin team.
Now Diary hears Palaszczuk’s spinners are now fighting fires with a number of clearly furious Brisbane newsrooms who missed out on the Caloundra press conference. They’ll now have to deal with the prospect of more confrontations with fired-up reporters in coming days and weeks.
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Fanning v Szeps over Joe Rogan
ABC Radio Sydney’s new afternoon host Josh Szeps has shown he isn’t afraid of a spot of controversy, after turning up for three hours last month on the world’s biggest (and most controversial) podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
Music stars like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young have pulled their content from Spotify, where the US comedian’s podcast appears, because of a belief that he has promoted vaccine hesitancy on the podcast.
Even Szeps’s own ABC stablemate, The Drum host Ellen Fanning, last week questioned whether he should have been appearing on Rogan’s show at all.
A stern Fanning told Szeps on The Drum: “You and I both know, if you’re going to do a conspiracy theorist whose got all these alternative facts memorised in their head, the young guy in the black T-shirt who’s Googling stuff at the rate of knots beside you is not going to be able to fact check that in real time. And that’s going to influence people.”
But Szeps – who got to know Rogan after meeting him during a lengthy stint in the US – tells Diary that with an estimated 200m people downloading Rogan’s podcast every month, his huge global audience is too important to ignore.
“He’s a polarising figure because he’s not a newscaster, and he interviews dissident figures. But he also interviews people who represent the orthodox view. Tens of millions listen to him. Are we going to win the hearts and minds of people by not talking to him?”
For the record, Szeps firmly contradicted Rogan on the podcast over his claim that there was a “two- to fourfold increase in the incidences of myocarditis” among boys who receive the vaccine.
Szeps replied to Rogan that the risk of contracting myocarditis from getting Covid-19 significantly “exceeds the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine” – a claim that Rogan’s producer later corroborated, to Rogan’s clear surprise, on the podcast.
The ABC afternoons host says he had represented “the orthodox view when it comes to the safety of vaccines” on Rogan’s show.
“I did it firmly in a way the stood my ground, but didn’t antagonise him,” Szeps says.
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Making the news
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Omnicom poised for Clemenger Group buyout
Omnicom is poised to assume full ownership of Clemenger Group, as it prepares to launch an Oceania management structure with ex-Omnicom staffer Nick Garrett tipped to take the top role.
He inherited the highest profile job in Australian political journalism in 2017, when he replaced a retiring Laurie Oakes as Nine’s chief political editor.