She might have started a retirement home for ex-Nine reporters, as Diary has previously noted, but there’s clearly no love lost between Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and senior journalists at the rival Seven network.
Palaszczuk tried one of her signature distraction tactics with the media, amid a range of controversies, when she bowled up to a news conference on Wednesday – the day of the deciding State of Origin in Brisbane – wearing Maroons fan gear.
But it was senior Seven Brisbane reporter Samantha Heathwood who was seeing red, refusing to engage in the Premier’s clear pitch to reporters for some Origin footy banter.
Instead, to the Premier’s disapproval, Heathwood launched into a multi-question cross-examination of Palaszczuk over a damning independent report exposing massive growth in the state’s waiting list for public housing.
After Heathwood started by grilling Palaszczuk about why so many Queenslanders were “sleeping in cars” rather than social housing, the Premier started by defensively noting there were “pressures across the nation”. That wasn’t good enough for Heathwood, who went on to ask why the Premier’s much-trumpeted $200m Wellcamp quarantine facility – now widely regarded in Queensland as a white elephant – was “sitting virtually empty” in the face of the housing crisis.
When Palaszczuk claimed that some people “don’t want to move from their communities”, Heathwood was having none of it.
“There are some people who would love to have the opportunity to go there (Wellcamp),” Heathwood corrected the Premier.
At this point, things got heated. Palaszczuk fixed the Seven reporter with a death stare and told her: “Well, I’m happy to talk to those people and happy to get the Housing Minister to talk to those people. Because it is available!”
The press conference threatened to reach boiling point, with an exchange of verbal biffo worthy of the all-in brawl in Wednesday’s Origin decider:
Heathwood: I’m out there! I’m talking to people every single day! And the degree of desperation …
Premier interrupts … No, no, I do understand it!
Heathwood (snappily): I don’t think you do!
Premier (indignantly): I represent social housing! I represent a social housing community! Please do not say I do not understand this issue! That is incorrect! That is false!”
At this point, a still-seething Palaszczuk put Heathwood in the media sin bin, and turned away for only a few questions from other journalists before ending the press conference.
Clearly, Palaszczuk doesn’t like Seven journalists. Most famously, the Premier dubbed Sunrise Brisbane reporter Bianca Stone “very rude” in a Covid-19 press conference exactly a year ago, after the Seven reporter had grilled her about why she’d sunk the boot into the AstraZeneca vaccine at a sensitive moment in Australia’s jab rollout.
Palaszczuk also had a standing 12-question battle in a February press conference this year with another Seven reporter, Emily Arnold.
Little wonder that Palaszczuk keeps raiding Nine’s Brisbane newsroom – and not Seven’s – to bolster her burgeoning 30-something media team.
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Lisa’s Project back on hold as Ten star escapes to LA
It’s amazing the impact that one Logies winner’s speech can have.
Sources close to Lisa Wilkinson have confirmed to Diary that she has now headed off to America, and will now probably not return to her role as The Project’s co-host until late August at the earliest.
It had initially been thought that Wilkinson would return to The Project panel on the Sunday night just passed, after a taking a four-week break from the show.
The Wilkinson camp told Diary at the time that her absence was largely due to a high emotional ‘‘toll’’ from her speech at the Logies, which caused a media storm.
But nearly a month on from the June 19 event, we’ve learnt that her absence as co-host will continue. The Wilkinson camp appears to be reasoning that right now may not be best timing for a return to live appearances on the panel for the The Project.
So instead, Wilkinson has enacted a ‘‘Plan B’’. Diary understands that she was quietly and securely whisked out of Australia and into Los Angeles over the weekend, and will now make the US her base for at least the next few weeks while she files stories for The Project.
After her US trip, Wilkinson is also expected to take some leave which we’re told she had already booked, to extend her absence from the show until at least the end of August.
We’re told Wilkinson will be filing interviews and packaged stories for The Project from the US, mainly from Hollywood and New York.
It is understood that high up on her interview agenda will be a combination of household name musicians and A-list film stars, with many key US movie releases expected in August and September at the end of the northern summer.
We’re told she will also file an interview with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, known for her pursuit of women’s rights cases, which are known to be close to Wilkinson’s heart.
This follows her first interview a week ago with gold-medal-winning Olympic swimmer Michael Klim about his battle with the debilitating illness, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP).
Interestingly, we’re told Wilkinson will make her first tentative steps back towards live broadcasting during the trip, crossing into The Project panel on occasions over the next few weeks.
While Carrie Bickmore made her long-awaited return to the hosting of the Monday to Wednesday editions of The Project last week, the show will still have to find a temporary female host to fill in for Wilkinson on the Thursday, Friday and Sunday instalments in coming weeks.
Diary understands that this void will be filled by a combination of regular The Project stand-in host Georgie Tunny, Studio 10 host Sarah Harris and Sydney radio personality Rachel Corbett.
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Wilkinson’s first post-Logies speech
Despite her absence from The Project’s panel, Lisa Wilkinson is still finding time this week for some reputedly well-rewarded activities outside of her day job. Wilkinson is listed as the “VIP Keynote” speaker for this week’s “Public Sector Women in Leadership Summit 2022”.
According to the pamphlet, she’ll bring her “warm, intelligent and elegant presence” to talk about “blazing trails and shaping conversations in the public eye”.
She’ll be dialling in from her new-found Hollywood base as The Project’s roving reporter, as revealed above, for her first big speech since the Logies. Having Wilkinson as the headline act to add some sizzle to what is essentially a bunch of senior bureaucrats making addresses is clearly a money-spinner for the event’s organiser, The Hatchery.
The event’s brochure reveals attendees will have to fork out $3000 each just for a ‘‘basic’’ ticket for the online two-day conference. Nice work if you can get it.
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Ardern locks out Australian media
It has only been days since Jacinda Ardern crossed the Tasman to beg potential Australian tourists to return to New Zealand, after Covid-19 had prompted her to lock them out for two years.
“You will get a welcome like no other right now, because we‘re so excited to have people back,” she assured Aussies.
But Ardern knew how to hit the off-switch on her charm offensive when it came to the Australian media at last week’s Pacific Islands Forum.
A contingent of Aussie reporters, led by Sky News’s Jonathan Lea (Bill Shorten’s nemesis during the 2019 federal election campaign), Ten’s Chloe Bouras and SBS’s Shuba Krishnan, copped the brush-off from Ardern. That came after Lea, in particular, had tried multiple times to ask her a tricky question at a half-hour press conference before the forum last week.
Eventually, Ardern sternly told the Aussie contingent: “I will just say this is a New Zealand press conference, so I will stick to the New Zealand gallery.”
Surprised NZ PM @jacindaardern refused to take questions from a small group of Aust journalists. Aust Foreign Minister @SenatorWong has made an effort to engage with local and international media at the Pacific Islands Forum. More power to her. #auspoI#PIF2022 âœˆï¸ ðŸš˜ 🚌 pic.twitter.com/MAHjjgZNoW
— Jonathan Lea (@JonathanLea10) July 13, 2022
Ardern’s arbitrary ruling on who could ask questions clearly didn’t go down well with reporters from across the ditch, including Lea, who quickly tweeted that he was “surprised NZ PM @jacindaardern refused to take questions from … Aust journalists”. He even compared Ardern unfavourably with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who he said had “made an effort to engage with local and international media at the Pacific Islands Forum. More power to her”.
What perhaps had made Lea’s praise of Wong more surprising was that, just 24 hours earlier, he had been locked in a combative exchange with the Foreign Minister at a similar press conference over the issue of coal and climate change.
Lea had asked about Australia’s position on new coal mines, given that coal was “now Australia’s number one export”. His question attracted a terse response from Wong: “You know what the position is.”
When we reached Lea to ask about the Ardern ban, he said: “Strong democracies can’t exist in tents. It’s to the Albanese government’s credit that it repeatedly took questions from foreign journalists.”
Lea is right. Both Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accepted questions from a wide range of reporters from throughout the region at their press conferences, with the word that Australia’s new leadership is going out of its way to show openness to media from other Pacific nations.
Perhaps Ardern should consider taking a leaf out of her Australian counterparts’ book.
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Smith ‘counselled’ by 2GB after Hadley attack
Nine radio chief Tom Malone was forced to make an extraordinary intervention on Sunday between two of his on-air personalities, after nearly a week of furious public sledging between 2GB’s Ray Hadley and Chris Smith.
Matters threatened to boil over on Saturday, when Smith took to his regular weekend morning show to launch an angry attack on Hadley, accusing him of being a bully and claiming that he had “elected to go down a twisted path and get personal to hurt me”.
But within 24 hours, Nine Radio management took the unprecedented step of editing the portion of Smith’s rant containing the personal shots from the podcast of his radio show.
When Diary reached Nine Radio boss Malone on Sunday, he revealed that he had spoken to both broadcasters, and ‘‘counselled’’ Smith over the editorial: “We encourage vigorous debate, but not personal attacks,” Malone told Diary. “And I’ve counselled Chris on this matter.”
Malone also made it clear that after five days of public exchanges between the broadcasters, he expected this to rule a line under the matter: “Enough is enough,” he said.
It all started on Wednesday morning when Smith – standing in for regular 2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham – urged listeners not to worry about the much-publicised Covid-19 outbreak on Carnival’s cruise ship, the Coral Princess, claiming it was no repeat of the infamous 2020 Ruby Princess debacle. “This is very different,” Smith claimed.
But without directly naming Smith, on the same morning Hadley made no secret of his opinion of the view of his 2GB counterpart: “One of my colleagues this morning was saying: ‘Nothing to see here, it‘s all wonderful!’ Well, he’s a foolish person, in my opinion … I’m almost embarrassed I’m on the same broadcast network as that bloke,” he told his listeners.
After Smith returned serve by accusing him of “peddling fear”, Hadley seemingly took another shot at Smith through a cryptic declaration on Friday. “It’s interesting that we’ve had this debate … between me and another person on the network about cruising,” he said. “So I declare I have no connection with the cruises. None whatsoever!”
Nine radio insiders read this as a direct shot at Smith, who has previously hosted two cruises on behalf of 2GB advertiser and tour operator Travelrite.
By the Saturday, a furious Smith was in no mood to mince words, launching into a tirade against Hadley: “Do not listen to anyone in this place who tries to imply that I had any official affiliation with a cruise line which impacts my opinion. It’s garbage! It’s muckraking!”
Smith vehemently defended his role in hosting cruises for Travelrite in the past, claiming that it was “hard work” which he took “personal leave” for. (There’s) no payment for the work. They just cover the fare.”
But then things got very personal in his rant against Hadley, which Nine Radio has now chosen to censor: “I hold my head up high on this subject, and won’t be intimidated, bullied or scared into acquiescence, ever,” he said. “Those that have elected to go down a twisted path and get personal to hurt me have terrible glass jaws … I will not be bullied, even by lifetime bullies. I love a good rumble. I look forward to further disagreements. And I look forward to standing up for myself – each and every single time.”
When Diary reached Hadley on Sunday, he would only say: “My comments this week speak for themselves.”
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McGuire to ‘sort out’ spat with Mitchell
There was clearly something in the air at Nine’s radio stations last week. Once Ray Hadley had given some frank assessments about his 2GB colleague Chris Smith on Wednesday, Neil Mitchell decided to get in on the aggro with Eddie McGuire on the pair’s regular segment on Mitchell’s program on 2GB’s sister station, 3AW on Thursday.
In their first on-air interaction since a spectacular bust-up on the show a month ago, you might have thought it was time for an olive branch.
Not so. When Mitchell promoted their on-air reunion on Thursday, he made it clear he wasn’t about to let McGuire off the hook, threatening to ‘‘ban’’ him from his show.
Mitchell announced to his listeners: “Last time I spoke to Eddie McGuire he was shouting at me. That won’t happen today. No shouting today, or he’s banned.”
When McGuire eventually came on, he returned serve. “It’s good to be here, by the way. Glad you haven’t banned me, or anything like that. Why do you keep saying that in your intros to me, Neil? Why do you do that? You were so condescending this morning.”
Mitchell replied by telling McGuire to “stop taking yourself so seriously”, and adding: “You’ve still got that nasty streak to you. I really thought you were going to be sensible.”
But Mitchell wouldn’t have been thrilled to hear the reaction later that day from 3AW drive host Tom Elliott, who seemed to side not with his colleague, but McGuire: “I don’t know why Neil invites Eddie on his program. Neil was rude to him this morning … You don’t invite guests on your program and then start by clipping them and then being rude to them.”
So the big question: will McGuire continue to do Mitchell’s show?
When Diary reached him on the weekend, McGuire made it clear the pair needed to “sort out” the spat once and for all.
“I don’t need rose petals – I’m happy to have a debate – but I’m not coming on to have people twist the truth and condescend to me with snide, disparaging and inaccurate remarks,” he told your diarist. “I’m keen for our segment to work, but we need to sort out our relationship in the next fortnight.”
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