Alan Kohler, the finance guru for the ABC’s nightly 7PM news bulletin, has long included some quirky statistics to help illustrate pronouncements.
But even by his standards, Kohler expanded into new frontiers last Monday when he concluded his report with a radical departure from his regular analysis of commodities, currencies and the like, to – wait for it – analyse the size of sea ice in the Antarctic.
Revealing a graph showing the sea ice had shrunk by millions of square kilometres due to climate change, Kohler told viewers: “Finally, the extent of Antarctic sea ice is at a new record low this year – quite a bit lower than last year’s previous record low.”
He soon revealed what he saw as the significance of the Antarctic ice melting statistic to finance nerds, by shaking up his usual “that’s finance” sign-off in the ABC news bulletin, by instead saying: “That’s not finance yet, but it soon will be.” The implication was that the impact of climate change could soon cause a massive impact on financial markets.
Indeed, the impacts of climate change were clearly front of mind for Kohler last week. In a separate column for the Industry Super Funds-backed New Daily online newspaper, he lashed out at the apparent ineffectiveness of carbon credit schemes – again in the wake of revelations the planet was melting. Kohler this time noted that July 5 was the planet’s hottest day in history. In a scathing take-down of the Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU) scheme, Kohler claimed that he could only find one offset project “in which the tree cover had materially increased”: in the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.
He noted research had found $825m worth of ACCU credits had been issued in Australia “for projects where the tree cover has decreased, or the increase has been negligible”. He concluded the piece by pointing to the overall futility of the offset projects under the Albanese government’s new carbon pricing scheme.
“What if the offsets don’t offset? According to Carbon Integrity Explorer, 27.5 million – or about half of the ACCUs issued so far – don’t offset. This is going to be one of those train crashes that everybody involved can see coming, but they are hiding their eyes, hoping to make it through till tomorrow.”
Karvelas joins ABC Twitter exodus ... for four days
As it turned out, Patricia Karvelas’s shock decision to quit Twitter lasted all of four days.
The Radio National Breakfast host had abruptly told her 160,000 Twitter followers 10 days ago: “So I’m done here I’m on threads Same name bye #auspol”.
At that point, Karvelas appeared to have joined a number of high-profile ABC women, including Leigh Sales and Lisa Millar, who had departed Twitter because of vicious abuse. Millar told Diary two years ago, on leaving the platform, that Twitter had officially “jumped the shark”.
Sales quit Twitter last year due to abuse she described as “non-stop, personal, often vile, frequently unhinged and regularly based on fabrications”.
Karvelas’s apparent decision to join Millar and Sales in the exodus of big ABC names from Twitter came just a few days before a rare outing for her on the ABC’s flagship current affairs show, Four Corners, with the story “Blocked’’ on the battle over transgender youth healthcare. The episode dealt with the highly sensitive subject of “whether medical interventions, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, should be administered to young people”.
Karvelas was initially true to her word to move over to the Facebook-owned Threads, which is trying to compete with Twitter as a microblogging platform. The RN Breakfast host took to Threads to explain her departure from Twitter: “Apparently it’s unreasonable to want to live in a world where vile homophobic and sexist abuse isn’t randomly thrown at me. Hmmmmmm. It’s time to have debate and discussion without degrading and harmful language.”
Karvelas quickly clarified that her departure from Twitter had nothing to do with any problem with the platform’s controversial and politically incorrect owner, Elon Musk. “The other criticism … that I’m OK with Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg) but not Elon … Ummmm … I am in a world of big corporate giants just trying to share story telling without abuse. That’s it.”
But by last Tuesday, Karvelas was back on Twitter, liking tweets and posting videos. “People have reached out and asked me to post daily videos here still,” she told her followers. “So I will – but if you want proper engagement I’m at the other place.”
Alinta departs cricket after Cummins send-off
The major sponsor of the Australian men’s cricket team, energy group Alinta, has formally ended its corporate partnership with the sport after five years.
The energy group’s multi-year, $20m-plus sponsorship quietly expired in recent days, after what was a rocky final year of its association with cricket. Alinta – which generates most of its electricity from coal – is understood to have been anything but ecstatic last October, when Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins used a media interview to launch what appeared to be a sledge of the cricket sponsor’s climate credentials.
Cummins told the Nine newspapers at the time: “I hope that when we think of who we want to align with, who we want to invite into being part of cricket, I hope climate is a real priority.”
Cummins’ stance was backed earlier this year by Cricket Australia chairman Mike Baird, who told the Nine papers it was “really important” that the Australian captain was allowed to be “authentic”.
But in the outcry following Cummins’ comments, many saw it as a case of a sports star biting the hand that feeds him, given team members – including the Australian captain – are given a sizeable cut of all revenues flowing into cricket, including sponsorships.
One of the country’s top sports sponsorship experts, former NRL commercial chief Paul Kind, told Diary Cummins’ comments had ensured future sponsors would seek cast-iron “assurances” from Cricket Australia that they wouldn’t be treated the same way as Alinta, and that they had “learnt something” from senior players suddenly having a ‘‘big influence’’ on how sponsors were perceived.
“The true value of sponsorship is that it enhances a company’s reputation,” Kind said.
“But given the public position taken by Cummins and others, the consideration now for companies who are thinking about becoming the new blue-chip sponsor is what Cricket Australia will do to … protect them.”
What is said to have made last year’s comments particularly galling for Alinta was that it had stepped in to rescue Australian cricket when no one else would, after previous corporate partner, fund manager Magellan, had abruptly turned off the tap for its own sponsorship millions following the 2018 “Sandpapergate” scandal in South Africa.
One source close to Alinta reveals the company did get some farewell “thank you” messages from Australian cricket team members as an olive branch after the dramas of last year. The source also noted the international headlines that the current Ashes series was making – this time on the field, in the wake of the now-infamous Jonny Bairstow stumping. “(We’re) happy it’s the cricket and geopolitical relations making the headlines – not the sponsors.” Diary hears Alinta is working on a plan for its next marketing move – given the weighty $4m a year it was paying to cricket is suddenly freed up. Expect a decision in the next three months.
Andrew who? Super Speers’s Probyn succession
There may have been a widespread outcry in recent weeks about the ABC’s unceremonious axing of its national political editor Andrew Probyn.
But whatever people think of the decision, it’s hard to argue with the versatility of his replacement, Insiders host David Speers, as he embraces his new beefed-up job as the ABC’s national political lead.
On Friday, it was hard to avoid “Super Speers” on the ABC’s diverse TV and audio outlets, as he proved himself to be the ultimate multi-platform journalist. In various guises across the same day, Speers more than proved his worth to the ABC: first writing an online breaking news story, before working variously as a radio reporter, RN Breakfast guest, ABC News 24 anchor, and finally as an expert commentator for the 7pm bulletin, as the news broke that Treasurer Jim Chalmers had dumped Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe for his deputy, Michele Bullock.
Speers first took to the ABC News website shortly after 7am with a written story, breaking the news Lowe would “not be reappointed”. Within minutes, Speers had switched to Radio National’s Breakfast program as a resident expert to talk through the RBA news with the show’s Friday host Hamish Macdonald. By 8am, the ever-versatile Speers had filed his first story as a radio reporter in years, in the lead story about Lowe’s dumping in the 8am ABC bulletin.
By 10am, Speers had moved over to the ABC’s News24 TV channel to anchor its rolling coverage of the replacement of Lowe by Bullock, after a press conference by PM Anthony Albanese and Chalmers confirmed the news.
Speers stuck around for an hour on the news channel to interview a series of business and political analysts on the RBA move, before handing back to the channel’s regular morning host, Karina Carvalho, at 11am.
But still Speers wasn’t done. As Diary revealed last week, the Insiders host will from now on be a contributor to the ABC’s 7pm news “for bigger political news stories”. On Friday’s 7pm bulletin, Speers fronted up for an expert comment piece on the significance of the dumping of Lowe.
By Saturday night, Super Speers was co-anchoring ABC News24’s TV coverage of the LNP’s comfortable win in the Fadden by-election.
And by Sunday, as if we needed any more proof of Speers’s versatility, he had landed an interview with Chalmers on his regular gig as host of Insiders, where he grilled the Treasurer on the dumping of Lowe.
Hanson’s ‘book’ on voice races up bestseller list
Amid the usual suspects on Australian political bestseller lists, one new entry is something of a surprise. At No.4 on Amazon’s list of political bestsellers (just below the likes of Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien’s The Voice to Parliament Handbook and Niki Savva’s Bulldozed about the demise of the Morrison government) is an unheralded entry: Reasons to vote for Albanese’s Voice by Pauline Hanson.
Que?
Diary never had Hanson pegged as a voice supporter, so we were curious to see what possible arguments the One Nation leader could possibly be advancing on behalf of the Yes case for the upcoming referendum.
The notes from Hanson on the back of her book only made us more confused: “We have released this concise yet comprehensive book, outlining all the reasons to vote Yes in Anthony Albanese’s Voice referendum.”
It is only when Diary opened the book that its not-so-subtle conceit became clear. Every one of the 40 pages of Reasons to vote for Albanese’s Voice is blank. In others words, the One Nation leader can’t find any reasons.
Despite the fact the book’s value is purely as an exercise pad rather than a literary work, it hasn’t bothered loyal One Nation fans. Diary hears the book is already on a second print run, after selling out its entire first run of 2000 books.
Albanese’s interrogator joins PM’s media team
The very first day of the 2022 federal election campaign saw the-then Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese famously shirtfronted by Ten reporter Stela Todorovic about official interest rates.
Todorovic asked the-then opposition leader: “Do you know the official cash rate off the top of your head?”, continually repeating the question as he stumbled over his answer. It quickly became clear Albanese had no idea that the Reserve Bank’s cash rate at the time was a minuscule 0.1 per cent – despite the fact it had been stable at that number for 18 months. The best poor Albo could do was filibuster to the best of his ability: “Oh look, we can do the old, uh, Q&A stuff over 50 different figures,” he falteringly responded to Todorovic’s question.
Albanese’s inability to name the cash rate on the first day of the campaign, of course, made front page news across the country just as the campaign began.
It wasn’t the ideal start for Albanese. But as we all know now, the gaffe didn’t turn out to be as damaging to his election prospects as many predicted at the time, with Albanese resoundingly winning the election six weeks later.
And now Albanese has shown there are no hard feelings, by hiring his one-time tormentor onto his media team.
Diary understands Todorovic will commence on Monday as one of the PM’s press secretaries, working under Albo’s media boss Brett Mason.
Todorovic resigned from her previous employer, Ten, last month, shortly after this column revealed Ashleigh Raper had been appointed to replace Peter van Onselen as Ten’s political editor. Todorovic is said to have been unhappy at being passed over for the role, after having previously been told she was in contention.
New venture’s D-Day with host of ex-Nine journos
Monday is D-Day for Scire, the new online venture started by Chris Janz. The former Nine publishing boss has poached a number of his former colleagues to gather for the first time at the venture’s Sydney CBD HQ on O’Connell St from this week.
Scire’s new publication – which has built a team of about 10 staff so far – will be named Capital Brief, and cover business, technology and politics. Capital Brief’s editor-in-chief, John McDuling, is the former national business editor of the Nine papers which Janz used to run. Together, Janz and McDuling have hired a bunch of ex-Nine and Fairfax types to launch the venture.
Journalists hired include former Australian Financial Review banking specialist Andrew Cornell, ex-Fairfax Media China and Wall Street Journal correspondent Philip Wen, Nine’s departing foreign affairs and national security correspondent Anthony Galloway, and ex-Sydney Morning Herald and The Age economics correspondent Jennifer Duke.
While Monday is the venture’s first day, it will be some weeks before any copy is seen – with a likely launch in early September.
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