Stan Grant out, Anthony Albanese in at Peter Fitzimons and Lisa Wilkinson’s annual bash

ABC Q+A host Stan Grant. Picture: Jane Dempster

After a two-year absence, one of the most famous soirees on the annual media calendar returned on Saturday night. Yes folks, Peter FitzSimons and Lisa Wilkinson’s annual Australia Day bash is back – only this year, it ran exactly one month after the national day.

Peter FitzSimons and Lisa Wilkinson.

As has become well-known, Fitzy moved his 2020 version of the party at his Sydney harbourside mansion away from Australia Day, and renamed it as his “Independence Day” bash, in a nod to his new push to change the date of the national day.

And that wasn’t the only political statement Fitzy and Lisa’s party was making on its return on the weekend.

One pointed snub for this year’s event was saved for ABC Q+A host Stan Grant. As you may recall, Grant ruffled the media power couple’s feathers last year when he wrote a chapter for The Australian’s summer novel, “Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her?”.

There, he made headlines by describing Fitzy and Lisa’s annual bash as “a woke lefty love-in”, full of “journos, actors, writers, a couple of ex-Wallabies, a few washed-up politicians … and a former managing director of the ABC”.

Happily for Fitzy, he was rapidly able to fill Grant’s place with some Labor Party firepower. The most notable inclusion on Saturday night was Labor leader Anthony Albanese, attending with his girlfriend Jodie Haydon, fresh from their Women’s Weekly shoot that went public during the week.

Anthony Albanese.

It was the clearest signal possible that the media power pair have anointed Albo as Australia’s next PM, after increasingly strident commentary against Scott Morrison by Lisa on The Project and Fitzy in The Sydney Morning Herald.

NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns – currently challenging for favouritism with bookies for the 2023 election – was also there.

Some of the attendees became emotional during one of the night’s highlights, when an Indigenous performer recited from memory the Uluru Statement.

Meanwhile, the guest list was largely reflective of the power couple’s respective workplaces and ideological peers.

On the Lisa side, The Project’s Peter Meakin attended, along with other producers and some of the show’s regular hosts, including her Sunday Project co-presenters Hamish Macdonald and Jan Fran. Other Ten talent also attended, including ex-Chaser and new Would I Lie to You permanent panellist Chris Taylor, and The Bachelor’s Osher Gunsberg.

For Fitzy, plenty of past and present SMH talent attended, including ex-editor Lisa Davies, investigative reporter Kate McClymont, columnists Jacqueline Maley and Jane Caro, as well as the Bandana Man’s former 2UE radio on-air partner, Mike ­Carlton.

But Fitzy and Lisa also made sure to include a smattering of Aunty favourites, including, as Grant presciently predicted, a “former managing director of the ABC”: Mark Scott, along with The Drum host Julia Baird, One Plus One host Kurt Fearnley, and Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan.

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Palaszczuk: Integrity ‘not big for voters’

Behind closed doors, Annastacia Palaszczuk was keeping up a brave face on Friday to maintain that a new opinion poll on the front page of Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper that day wasn’t a sign that her government’s well-chronicled integrity issues were cutting through with voters.

The YouGov poll showed that Labor’s 2PP support in Queensland versus the LNP had fallen from 53.2/46.8 at the last election to 52/48 in the latest YouGov poll.  But Diary has learnt from well-placed sources that Palaszczuk was spinning the poll result among her own cabinet colleagues on Friday. Our spies say she branded the widespread reporting of the integrity issue as just “a Courier Mail/Australian campaign,” and quickly added words to the effect of: “It isn’t working. It isn’t a big issue for them (voters).”

However, some cynical Brisbane media types are already sensing that Palaszczuk may not be as relaxed as she’s letting on.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Buried in the sugar hit of Palaszczuk’s announcement last Tuesday that she would drop Queensland’s mask mandate and other Covid restrictions was another equally important development. Palaszczuk said in parliament that when the restrictions go on Friday, so will the daily Covid press conferences that have become part of every Queenslander’s life.

Brisbane political journalists are already speculating that the real reason for that decision has very little to do with Covid, and everything to do with Palaszczuk wanting to avoid the scrutiny of an increasingly hostile press gallery and unwanted questions.

Her “no more masks” announcement seemed ideally placed to distract from a story less than 24 hours earlier that Queensland’s Integrity Commissioner Nikola Stepanov was demanding an inquiry into government integrity and interference.

Seven, Nine, The Australian and the Courier Mail have all been grilling Palaszczuk about integrity in recent weeks, as a succession of government tactics that appeared designed to avoid scrutiny fell flat.

There have been a growing number of out-of-town government press conferences on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast where the Brisbane media was given an hour’s notice to attend, as well as increasingly regular disappearing acts by Palaszczuk, and with alarming frequency, snippy remarks from the Premier to reporters who ask tough questions.

Amid the integrity questions, Palaszczuk’s vanishing act has even extended to breakfast TV, which had been her “happy place” to announce border re-openings and tourism vouchers last year. But lately, the Premier’s large team of spinners clearly think that interviews with Karl Stefanovic and David Koch are just too risky for their boss to front up for.

The question being asked in the Brisbane media now is if Palaszczuk won’t front up for the daily Covid press conferences, when exactly will Queenslanders see her after Friday, and when will journalists next get to ask her questions? Maybe she’ll just leave it to her anointed heir apparent and government attack dog, Deputy Premier Steven Miles, to do the heavy lifting with the media from now on.

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Palmer exposes ABC News vacuum

We’re now little more than two months out from a federal election – but the ABC, oddly, still remains without a head of news. Equally strangely, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Aunty is in no hurry to find one.

It was all the way back in early October 2021 when ABC news chief Gaven Morris resigned as the public broadcaster’s head of news and current affairs. That announcement followed a lead-up year during which Morris’s private desire to move on from the ABC became one of the worst-kept secrets in the Australian media.

Temporarily at least, Gavin Fang has since been left to fill the big shoes of Morris in the role of acting news director while the search continues.

Clive Palmer. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

But the perils of a lengthy power vacuum at the top of ABC News during an election year became obvious last week, when Diary learnt of the internal sensitivity about a National Press Club speech by controversial billionaire Clive Palmer scheduled for last Tuesday. We’re told there were two sides to the debate within the ABC about whether to air the United Australia Party boss’s speech. The ABC hawks apparently argued that Palmer should never be given a national platform to air his anti-vaccination views. But those in favour of airing Palmer live argued he is a major player in the upcoming federal election, and that the public deserved to see him held up to vigorous scrutiny by journalists at the Press Club.

As the host of ABC Radio’s AM program, Sabra Lane, pointed out on Twitter, Palmer’s speech was “a chance to question him about policies, what he intends doing *if* the party wins seats in what could be quite a close election. More sunlight on people/policies is better for all voters to be informed”.

After Diary’s story appeared, Aunty clarified that Palmer’s speech would be running, not live, but on a 90-minute delay at 2pm on the ABC News Channel.

But that decision had all the hallmarks of being a late one. The ABC’s electronic program guides on Freeview and Foxtel TV schedules were hurriedly updated on Monday to include Palmer’s delayed Press Club telecast, after Diary pointed out that they had previously advertised “ABC News at Noon” as Aunty’s only program between 12 and 3pm for the day of Palmer’s speech.

Prominent ABC identities privately expressed surprise that Palmer’s speech wouldn’t be aired live on the main channel, given his huge ad budget and potential impact on the outcome of the federal election. They pointed out that other Press Club speeches, like that of Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court a week earlier, ran live – in full – on the ABC main channel.

So you can imagine the sighs of relief around the corridors of Aunty’s Ultimo headquarters on Tuesday morning when an ailing Palmer, battling multiple illnesses and exhibiting “Covid-like symptoms”, pulled out hours before his Press Club speech.

But the issues raised by the internal Palmer debate won’t go away as easily as his address did.

The ABC has loudly and consistently maintained in its arguments about funding with the government that its news division is an “essential services provider” to keep city and regional communities “fully informed”.

But with no permanent news boss while a crucial federal election is looming and an international war has started in Ukraine, doesn’t the ABC see the urgency of filling such an “essential” role?

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Insiders’ David Speers ducks Sky homecoming

Guests at the Sky 25th anniversary celebrations at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday night were surprised at a no-show from one high-profile invitee.

Diary hears Insiders host David Speers had been invited to return to his home of more than two decades, having been Sky’s Canberra bureau chief and best-known face in its early years when John Howard was still PM.

David Speers was a no-show at the Sky 25th anniversary celebrations.

We’re told the ABC star had initially warmly accepted the invitation to visit the organisation he quit just over two years ago. But he pulled out shortly before the event kicked off.

Could his last-minute cancellation have anything to do with the strong mail that he’s a leading contender to take over as 7.30 host when Leigh Sales departs after the federal election? After all, attending a big Sky bash mightn’t be the best move when pitching for one of the ABC’s top presenting roles.

Nothing so dramatic, it seems. Sources close to Speers are adamant that he very much wanted to attend, but he was waylaid by an unavoidable family situation.

Speers would be cursing that he missed out on a smorgasbord of potential interview subjects for Insiders ahead of the election, with virtually the entire Liberal frontbench in attendance, including Scott Morrison (and wife Jenny), Josh Frydenberg, Peter Dutton and Paul Fletcher, along with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, and Labor’s Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek.

The Insiders host also missed out on a video package of Sky’s 25 years that featured snippets of some of his most memorable moments, such as his infamous “metadata” interview with George Brandis.

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Banks’s ‘emergency’ stash

Last week’s death of larger-than-life David Banks has triggered an outpouring of colourful stories about the legendary newspaper editor, who left his mark everywhere from London’s Sun newspaper to The Australian and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

One of the best Banks yarns comes from News Corp Australia’s corporate affairs boss Campbell Reid, who recalls him having a bottle of scotch in his bottom drawer at all times “in case of emergency”.

And “emergencies” happened with great frequency, with Reid recalling that Banks swigged directly from his liquid stash in afternoon news conference as he performed a rousing rendition of the famous “Broadsword calling Danny Boy” scene from the Richard Burton classic, Where Eagles Dare.

Banks also had a unique attitude to conducting job interviews. Reid recalls: “He believed that if he recited a random line from The Blues Brothers and the interviewee came back with the next line, then they got the job.

“He was a giant of a personality (who) constantly reminded us that our job was meant to be fun.”

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‘Bitter’: Editor storms off Age Facebook group

It’s been a rough week for The Age’s editor Gay Alcorn, with the paper forced to remove an article about Melbourne entrepreneur Geoff Bainbridge from its online platforms after admitting the paper had been “misled” by him over a video of him smoking an ice pipe. And the strain was clearly showing in a public forum last week.

The Age editor Gay Alcorn.

On Friday, Alcorn announced that she was quitting a Facebook group called The Age Journalist Alumni, because she was fed up with what she described as “bitter” criticism of the paper that the group was meant to celebrate.

She posted: “Jeez, I will get out of this because I am no longer an ‘alumni’ and rarely have time for Facebook anymore, but honestly, do you guys give a damn about The Age really, or just get off on slagging from the sidelines? Always open for constructive discussion and critique – truly – but seems mostly bitter to me.”

Her post came days after a separate post on the same site by Ranald Macdonald, a former editor-in-chief and publisher of The Age, talked of the “good and very bad” of The Age. Macdonald wrote he was “appalled” by the Bainbridge story, and claimed the paper had been “conned and ­motivated by discrediting” the scoop by The Australian’s Sharri Markson.

Macdonald concluded: “All associates should be ashamed from the editor down.”

Given the tone of Macdonald’s comments and others like it, few were surprised when Alcorn decided to pull the pin on the alumni site.

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Stefanovic’s plugs for Morgan’s new show

Sky News mustn’t have been able to believe its luck on Friday when its star new recruit, British broadcaster Piers Morgan, surprisingly popped up on rival network Nine’s Today show with Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon.

Even Morgan was shocked by the torrent of gushing praise for him on Nine, with Stefanovic describing him variously as a “fearless international commentator, journalist and Sky News Australia host”, as just one of numerous free plugs for his new show.

At one point, Morgan felt compelled to interject because the praise was too much: “There’s two of you having to read this. Come on, Karl!”

Stefanovic jokingly responded: “Who wrote this rubbish?”. But he still managed to sneak in plenty more free plugs for Morgan’s new show on Sky, even telling viewers to “tune in on Foxtel or stream it on Flash”.

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Making the news