‘Drivel’: ABC election panellist slams coverage

Election coverage is traditionally a time for brutal assessments, but it’s not often you see panel guests dump on their own show. We get the feeling this party strategist won’t be asked back.

ABC election coverage anchor David Speers. Picture: Matt Roberts/ABC

Far be it from Diary to make a ­unilateral judgment on which TV network can lay claim to having hosted the most outstanding election night coverage, what the hell do we know about these things!

Instead, let’s take a look at some reflections from those who were intimately involved in the various broadcasts.

First up, we’ll peruse some social media posts by former Liberal Party strategist Tony Barry, who was a key member of ABC TV’s election panel on Saturday night.

“The ABC was the only telecast of 6 hours (with) no data, analysis and insight — just endless ‘what I reckon’ journalism. Unwatchable drivel,” Barry posted on Facebook at the conclusion of Aunty’s marathon coverage.

Tony Barry.

Sheesh! We know election coverage is traditionally a time for brutal assessments, but it’s not often you see panel guests dump on their own show.

Obviously, Diary sought to conduct its due diligence on Sunday to determine if Barry’s musings on social media were legit. And to the man’s credit, he didn’t shy away from what he wrote the night before.

“It’s not a fake account (and I) wasn’t hacked,” he told us.

Barry also posted “it’s the last time” he will appear on an ABC election night panel, although we’re willing to hazard a guess invitations from Aunty might now dry up of their own ­accord.

Diary also reckons LNP senator James McGrath, who sat on the ABC’s election night panel beside Treasurer Jim Chalmers, might also struggle to get a callback for election 2028.

McGrath gave an early indication of his fence-sitting with his first prognostication of the night being “Australians won’t know who their next Prime Minister is when they go to bed tonight”.

That may have been true for the nation’s demographic of under-5s — but anyone who wasn’t tucked under the covers by 8pm could clearly see what was happening. Except McGrath himself.

Senator James McGrath may not have a future as an elections prognosticator. Picture: Liam Kidston

The Queensland MP persisted, though, maintaining that until the counting of all pre-polling ballots and postal votes, Australia wouldn’t know the final result until the week after next.

McGrath’s fellow panellists were perhaps too polite to snigger, although Annabel Crabb came closest when she compared his election assessments to the infamous — and absurdist — daily press briefings of Iraqi Foreign Minister “Comical Ali”, whose media statements during the war in 2003 were barely related to reality.

It was Crabb’s best line of the night. And it distracted us enough to stop looking at Crabb’s oversized beige leather tie for a brief moment

Is it a tie? Is it a cravat? Is it some kind of weird scarf?

Crabb’s tie (let’s go with “tie”) was the most impressive piece of neckwear in the Australian political sphere since former Labor minister Al Grassby’s colourful ties were all the rage during the Gough Whitlam era.

Calling it early

The good news for the ABC’s election coverage, anchored by David Speers and Sarah Ferguson, was it was easily the most-watched polling special of all the free-to-air networks, with a 48.4 per cent prime time share, and an average audience peak of 2.36 million viewers.

The closest commercial competitor was Nine, with an average of 594,000 for part of the night, and Seven close behind on 580,000.

Network 10’s audience dropped to a lowly average of 97,000 for coverage of the vote count.

Ten did, however, provide one of the more entertaining few minutes of the night, when its coverage cut to the vision of a car — purportedly carrying Anthony Albanese — travelling through the streets from Kirribilli just after 8.30pm.

But, as the car made its way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Ten’s crew seemingly lost touch with the prime ministerial vehicle. So for the next several minutes, viewers were treated to a car chase without the relevant car in shot. The Bourne Identity, it was not.

Eventually, Ten’s producers wisely decided it was better to return to the in-studio panel. And the car chase was never spoken of again.

Elsewhere, Seven’s election night analyst Hugh Whitfeld was the first TV commentator to call the result as a Labor majority, making the declaration at 8.08pm, followed by Ten’s Hugh Riminton at 8.16pm.

Soon after, at 8.19pm, Sky News chief election analyst Tom Connell correctly announced the Albanese government had won with an increased majority. Earlier, at 7.40pm, Connell was the first to call that the Coalition could not win a majority.

Nine’s Peter Overton called the result as a Labor majority at 8.24pm, followed by the ABC at 8.27pm.

Green signs off

And finally, goodbye and good luck to the ABC’s revered election analyst Antony Green.

In a poll-watching career spanning 36 years, Green has set a high bar for his industry successors — such as Connell and Whitfeld — to follow.

Nearing the end of Saturday’s broadcast, Green — who had briefly struggled earlier in the night with some technical issues on his digital election map — told viewers: “If I’m going out in an election this is an extraordinary one to go out on.”

Green said his TV career had been “fabulous fun” but admitted that he got his start in the role only because he was willing to work “stupid hours”.

Antony Green has called time on a brilliant career.

He was farewelled with a bunch of flowers (hey, there are rules about these sorts of things at the ABC) and some nice words from Crabb.

“Millions of Australians have loved watching and learning from you over the years,” Crabb said.

“Your brain doesn’t need ­anything to call an election. You could do it on papyrus, and we’ve all benefited from your abilities and skills”.

Well played, Mr Green.

Kim’s ‘crime’

ABC chair Kim Williams took quite a public belting last week, after Media Watch exposed his intervention in the editorial operations of the national broadcaster — such as they are. For those readers who missed the Media Watch investigation, here’s the short version: Williams is apparently old mates with comedian Austen Tayshus, and the ABC chair suggested to a few peeps at the broadcaster’s local radio division it might be worth giving the funnyman a bit of airtime as he rode into various regional towns on his ­recent tour of NSW. Cue meltdowns across Aunty’s newsrooms!

How dare the chair tell us who to interview? Who does he think he is? We can’t work under these circumstances! We Don’t Stand with Kim! Should we strike?

ABC Chair Kim Williams has had a rough go of it lately. Picture: Diego Fedele

The outrage was similarly unhinged at The Sydney Morning Herald, aka the media arm of the Friends of the ABC.

SMH columnist Jenna Price said Media Watch host Linton Besser and his team had exposed Williams as “an activist chair with no business running the most important media institution in the country”.

Price dismissed Williams as a “celebrity chair”, and called for him to be dumped. “Or he could display some courage himself and quit,” Price wrote.

First point: the only people who might view Williams as a “celebrity chair” are inner-city media types who live and breathe the ins-and-outs of the ABC like no other demographic cohort in the country. In other words: total numpties.

Second point: Sack him??!! Over Austen-Tayshus-gate? Really?

Strangely, we don’t recall Price being so energised about the issue of taxpayers having to fork out $200,000 to cover a court-ordered payout on behalf of ABC journalist Louise Milligan, when she defamed former Liberal MP Andrew Laming in 2021.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Jenna Price.

And where was Price’s outrage last year when ABC news director Justin Stevens was forced to apologise for the broadcaster’s inclusion of additional audio of gunshots in a series of stories, led by veteran reporter Mark Willacy, about an Australian military operation in Afghanistan in 2012?

Diary is not suggesting Williams followed the ABC rule-book when he suggested it might be a good idea for local radio programs to give a well-known (albeit retro) Australian comedy act a bit of airtime.

Williams should have stayed in his lane, if only because the functions and role of the ABC chair are clearly spelled out in the organisation’s manifesto. So, it probably warrants at least a mild rebuke from managing director Hugh Marks, who is the ABC’s editor-in-chief.

Also, memo to Kim: if you’re going to do anything mildly out-of-order at the ABC — even if it is actually a good idea — don’t put it in a neat, easily-leakable written form.

Of course, when you take a step back and assess his actions through a non-hysterical prism, Williams — who is, if nothing else, extraordinarily passionate about the ABC — was trying to make the national broadcaster just a little bit more attractive to its rapidly diminishing radio audience.

It’s hardly the crime of the century.

C’mon Aussie, c’mon

Almost 600 people crammed into the dining room at the back of the MA Noble stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground last Wednesday night to help raise money for The Chappell Foundation, an organisation dedicated to tackling the scourge of youth homelessness.

The star attraction was some guy called Dennis Lillee, who also happens to be the greatest fast bowler who has ever lived.

This columnist — who may or may not have unsuccessfully mimicked Lillee’s bowling action for a great chunk of his sporting youth — was way too scared to approach the cricketing legend for a chat but as he was the evening’s guest speaker, we didn’t miss out on his wonderfully colourful recollections of his playing days alongside the likes of Greg Chappell, Rod Marsh, and West Indian kingpins Clive Lloyd and Andy Roberts.

Australian cricket great Greg Chappell. Picture: David Clark

Lillee, 75, doesn’t venture too far from his hometown of Perth these days, but Diary is reliably informed it took just one phone call from his old mate Greg Chappell to convince him to make the cross-country trek to Sydney for the charity event.

Among the audience on Wednesday were former Prime Minister John Howard (who is a patron of the foundation), Seven West Media CEO Jeff Howard, News Corp executive Campbell Reid, sporting bosses David Gallop and Todd Greenberg, Paralympian Louise Sauvage, as well as former Test cricketers Simon Katich, Stuart Clark, Geoff Lawson, Trent Copeland, Peter Neville and Phoebe Litchfield.

Plenty of media types also bowled up on the night, including Peter FitzSimons, Lisa Wilkinson, Seven’s sports reporter Mel McLaughlin and broadcaster Stephanie Brantz.

The annual dinner — replete with an array of silent auctions including an “It’s Time” poster from the 1972 federal election, signed by Gough Whitlam — raised about $450,000, 99.6 per cent of which will go directly to various charities that help the homeless.

The Whitlam-signed piece of memorabilia sold for $2300.

The night after the big event, Diary’s spies spotted Lillee in the company of the two other Chappell brothers, Ian and Trevor, ­bopping along at Sydney’s Paddington RSL to the tunes of local soul supergroup The Bluesberries, an 11-piece outfit put together by Australian entrepreneur John McMurtrie.

Given Lillee used to do some of his best work at the SCG’s Paddington End, it was a fitting end to the superstar’s Sydney sojourn.

Media snipes

There’s nothing commercial TV current affairs programs hate more than the naked truths behind their “exclusives” being laid bare before they’ve had a chance to air them.

And so it came to be with ­Spotlight’s heavily promoted interview with Lauren Fried, the widow of late MasterChef star Jock Zonfrillo.

The interview, which aired on Channel 7 on Sunday night, was conducted by Liz Hayes, but by the time it hit the nation’s screens, the air had already been sucked out of the show’s tyres.

Days earlier, the Daily Mail had revealed the program’s publicity boast that the sit-down chat with Hayes was Fried’s “first public interview” was false.

Late MasterChef host Jock Zonfrillo. Picture: Eugene Hyland

Furthermore, the promo’s teaser that the Hayes special “may offer an answer to the biggest mystery surrounding her husband’s death almost two years ago — exactly how he died” was deliberately misleading.

The news and gossip website also revealed the veteran cameraman who filmed the Hayes-Fried interview accidentally taped over one of the camera angles while filming additional ­sequences the next day.

That mistake didn’t delete any key questions from the interview, but it didn’t help.

However, the fallout from the Daily Mail’s story, which was authored by Steve Jackson — who, as it happens, will assume the reins of this column later this month — was just as interesting as the story itself.

Jackson was bombarded with abuse by various media figures soon after the story was published. And curiously, not all of the barbs and mild threats came from the Spotlight bunker.

It seems some other journos with tenuous links to the Spotlight brand also have personal axes to grind.

Luckily, Jacko has a thick skin.

We are looking forward to his arrival!