The campaign is finally under way, and Leigh Sales is making no secret of her demand that Scott Morrison appear at least twice on 7.30 before election day on May 21.
In total, Sales wants the PM to have appeared on her show three times in the space of little more than six weeks. In a feisty pre-campaign interview between Sales and Morrison last Tuesday, the 7.30 host continually grilled the PM in an attempt to extract a commitment that he would do two interviews with her once the campaign was under way.
But Diary is told that while the Morrison camp isn’t at this point ruling out two campaign interviews with Sales, they’re definitely not ruling it in either. Some on the government side believe that allowing two more interviews with the 7.30 host after last week’s effort on 7.30 could add up to overkill.
As one senior government source puts it: “We like Leigh, but we were never going to commit to two interviews with 7.30 in the campaign. We wouldn’t commit two interviews to Paul Murray on Sky now either. That’s not to say we won’t do it, but we can’t commit just yet.”
Another government source pointed out that the PM had to spread the love around when it came to campaign interviews to ensure he maximised getting his message out to swinging voters: “There are big numbers of swinging voters watching a show like (Nine’s) A Current Affair. But the people watching 7.30 aren’t generally changing their vote, whether Labor or Liberal. They’re rusted on.”
Still, that didn’t stop Sales going back to Morrison four times during her combative chat with him last Tuesday to demand he agree to undergo more campaign interrogations from her.
Sales started by asking him if he would be “happy” to match Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s commitment to two interviews with her.
When Morrison gave a noncommittal answer, she repeated the question more forcefully, prompting the PM to fire back: “Well, the election isn’t about the 7.30 report. It’s about the Australian people and we’ll make ourselves available to the ABC and all the networks, and I’ll be standing up every day.”
At this point, neither Morrison nor Sales were about to back down. Sales amped up the pressure by asking: “Are you going to be the first prime minister in 27 years to not do two interviews on the main prime time current affairs program in the country?”
Morrison shot back: “Surprisingly, I don’t think the major issue that people are thinking about at the next election is the 7.30 Report.”
Sales had the last word on this occasion, saying: “All right, well we’ll put a bid in every day and see how we go.” But round two of Sales versus ScoMo, if the PM allows it to happen in the campaign, could get lively.
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Palmer vs Hanson: ‘Mavericks’ debate is set
Eat your heart out, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese. There’s another debate on the agenda this month – and it’s already sounding infinitely more entertaining.
Diary can reveal that Sky News has landed what has become known internally at the network as the “Mavericks Debate”, highlighted by the campaign’s first and most likely only face-off between Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer.
But it gets better, with the stetson-wearing Bob Katter and former Queensland premier and Liberal Democrat Senate wannabe Campbell Newman adding to the theatre of the occasion by joining the debate. Break out the popcorn – with that colourful line-up, anything could happen.
Diary is reliably informed the highly entertaining face-off between the four Queensland mavericks – which will take place on April 19 — had originally been planned for the Twin Towns RSL Club on the NSW/Queensland border to accommodate the unvaccinated Hanson and Palmer.
But the plans are said to have changed last week when the previously Covid-shy Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk surprised nearly everyone by announcing that unvaccinated people would now be able to enter pubs and clubs in Queensland, eliminating the need for the two mavericks to cross the border.
The debate, which is officially being badged as the mavericks’ “Pub Test”, will be hosted by Paul Murray. But while he will be the ringmaster of the debate, questions will come from an audience of at least 100 Queenslanders.
There will also be an analysis panel for the occasion, headed by Sky Queensland editor Peter Gleeson. Word around the traps is that it is Gleeson who took charge of the herculean task of convincing the unruly political crew to even agree to be in the same room together.
Palmer and Hanson are sworn political rivals who are competing for essentially the same voters, many of whom are pro-choice when it comes to vaccination. Newman and Palmer also have a chequered history, with many believing Palmer played a critical role in Newman’s defeat by Palaszczuk in the 2015 Queensland election.
Interestingly, the mavericks’ face-off looks like being the first actual debate of the campaign, with the main Morrison versus Albanese confrontation – also on Sky – at this point scheduled for April 20, one day later. But with Palmer, Hanson and Katter all involved, it’s easy to see the entree debate trumping the main course.
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Kristina Keneally and the ‘offensive’ poster
Labor’s Senate deputy leader Kristina Keneally isn’t said to be the biggest fan of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Maybe it has something to do with last week’s move by One Nation to start printing ‘Mean Girls’ stickers — featuring uncanny caricatures of herself, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher — to raise campaign funds.
Whatever the reason, Labor’s aversion to One Nation was put on full display during a regional goodwill tour with local media in tow last week, where Keneally was acting as the senior ambassador for Anthony Albanese in a key marginal seat.
Diary hears Keneally embarked on a goodwill tour of Cessnock on Friday to support Dan Repacholi, Labor’s candidate to replace Joel Fitzgibbon in the crucial federal seat of Hunter.
Some locals were wondering what Keneally was even doing in Cessnock, 200-odd kilometres away from the western Sydney seat of Fowler that they thought she’d be fighting to win to enable her to move from the Senate to the lower house.
On Friday, Keneally and Repacholi were about to enter one of the town’s main hot food takeaways, Blanchie’s Café and Diner on Cessnock’s main street to press the flesh as part of her PR tour. But just as Keneally was about to enter the shop, someone in the Labor entourage noticed that it featured on prominent display a poster featuring One Nation’s Hunter candidate, Dale McNamara, together with the party’s NSW leader, Mark Latham.
As Blanchies’ owner Matt Blanch tells Diary, the unfortunate Repacholi was dispatched to have a quiet word with him about the poster. Blanch says he was told he needed to remove the One Nation poster before Keneally would enter the shop. He recalls Repacholi’s words being: “Kristina wants you to take down the One Nation poster. Do you mind doing that?
Because then she’ll come to talk to you.”
Not only that, but Blanch was also requested to put Repacholi’s poster up in place of the One Nation placard while Keneally was there.
Blanch says he temporarily agreed to the request to remove the offensive poster, because he “wanted to hear” what Keneally had to say. The newly-installed Repacholi poster was helpfully visible in the background for the local media’s cameras as Keneally had her chat with Blanch.
But the takeaway owner was ultimately unimpressed with the substance of his Keneally chat. “She didn’t say much about anything about what Labor was going to do,” Blanch confides. “If you want my vote, you’ve got to at least tell me what you’re going to do for my vote.”
Once the Keneally circus moved on from Blanchie’s to three other lucky Cessnock shop owners, Blanch says he quickly restored the One Nation poster. “I’ve put Dale’s poster back up,” he says. “Labor’s out for me as a voter. I’ll be voting for Dale.”
When Diary reached a spokeswoman for the shadow home affairs Minister on Sunday, she was adamant the poster request hadn’t come from Keneally: “Kristina doesn’t care about One Nation posters. It was probably a joke. It sounds like a joke. People are welcome to put up whatever posters they want in their shops around the country.”
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Stefanovic returns to Queensland roots
Queensland looks like it’s about to see a lot more of one of its favourite sons, Today host Karl Stefanovic – along with his partner, Jasmine.
Last month, Stefanovic’s luxury Sunshine Beach property on Seaview Terrace, the very same street on which Gina Rinehart and Kevin Rudd have holiday properties, passed in after it failed to meet his lofty $7.5m reserve at auction.
Stefanovic purchased the property in 2019 – just before the Covid-19 pandemic – for $3.5m, and is understood to have spent around $1m on renovations and additions including a teenage retreat and a wine cellar.
The word around the traps just before the auction was that Stefanovic only planned to sell the five-bedroom, five-bathroom hillside property – about 200m from the Coral Sea, of which it has panoramic views — if he got “silly money” to capitalise on the recent Sunshine Coast boom.
Diary is now told by Stefanovic associates that the Today host developed a serious case of seller’s remorse while he went through the sale process for the luxury property, despite having spent little time there because of border lockdowns during 2020 and 2021.
Word is that he’s secretly happy the property passed in. As one close friend tells Diary: “Karl has been very sanguine about it not being sold. The prospect of losing it has crystallised his belief that he needs to spend more time there. He loves the place.” So now there’s apparently a new plan. With borders now fully open, Stefanovic has privately confided to friends and Nine types that he wants to spend two weekends a month at the property.
That would involve him jetting out from his adopted home of Sydney after the Today show finishes on Friday morning for the Sunshine Coast property and returning before he has to be back on breakfast TV on Monday morning. As we all know, Karl’s world can be a colourful place and things can turn on a dime. But right now, it’s looking like the Today host is at least partly returning to his roots as a Queenslander.
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‘Disaster after disaster’: Hadley’s brutal radio sledge
When your columnist chanced to call 2GB and 4BC morning radio king Ray Hadley last week, he had something he urgently wanted to get off his chest: a brutal assessment of the bosses of radio giant Southern Cross Austereo, owner of the Hit and Triple M networks.
“They have presided over disaster after disaster after disaster,” he unloaded to Diary. “You wonder how long shareholders will cop the people who lead this network down a path of mediocrity.”
What prompted Hadley’s highly colourful assessment of the rival radio giant’s performance?
Last July, Austereo decided, in its wisdom, to stop using Hadley on many of its regional Triple M radio stations in NSW, including in Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie, in favour of in-house personalities. But last week, the first substantial numbers came in since that decision was made, with the ratings for Coffs Harbour (country radio ratings are only assessed on an irregular basis).
They show that a third of the record-breaking 34 per cent of the radio audience Hadley had previously held in the last ratings audit had evaporated.
And Hadley wasn’t about to waste an opportunity with Diary to give it to his one-time employer. “The last time I had judgment passed on me by Southern Cross was in 2001 (at a time Southern Cross owned Hadley’s then-employer, Sydney radio station 2UE). Its then-CEO Tony Bell told me I was a competent sports broadcaster but not a talk host. But this current team of Austereo executives make Tony Bell look like Australia’s greatest-ever radio guru!”
Hadley also invoked the departure of Kyle & Jackie O from 2DayFM in 2013 as evidence of the company’s inability to keep talent. “It takes a special kind of shareholder to be comfortable with leadership that got rid of Kyle & Jackie O and Ray Hadley on their talk-based network stations,” he told Diary.
“Instead of juggling breakfast teams in Sydney on 2Day and Triple M, they need to look at just who stuffed both Sydney breakfast shows. All they do is sack the talent. It’s akin to an NRL team leaving the coach in place after failure after failure, but getting rid of all the players.”
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‘Bin chicken for Brisbane 2032’ madness
An apparent attempt at humour by one of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s closest political allies accidentally became one of Brisbane’s biggest stories of last week.
Queensland Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe decided to liven up proceedings up at a sleepy Sunday press conference in his local park that was meant to be about encouraging Queenslanders to holiday at home.
Just as it was about to turn into a snoozefest, Hinchliffe was asked what he thought the logo for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics should be.
Hinchliffe made things interesting by putting the case for one of his electorate’s most ubiquitous constituents: the humble bin chicken. “As the Member for Sandgate, I’ve got a soft touch for the idea that the ibis might play a role (in the Olympics),” the Tourism Minister replied. “I know there are plenty of Queenslanders who think that might be appropriate as well.”
Ahem … really?
Hinchliffe’s intervention as chief spinner for the ibis unwittingly set off a media storm, with suddenly no outlet safe from predictions that the ibis would be the face of the 2032 Olympics.
It all started on page two of the Courier Mail on Monday morning, with the booming headline: “Bin chicken for Olympic mascot”. Following that story, the “ibis for Brisbane 2032” media juggernaut built an unstoppable momentum. Both Sunrise and Today nationally crossed live to their reporters in Brisbane to get the latest breathless developments on the bin chicken media storm.
Even ABC News Breakfast joined in, with hourly updates that spilt over onto the ABC News Channel nationally throughout the day.
By Monday night – 33 hours after Hinchliffe’s one-liner — the story was then promoted at the very top of Seven, Nine and Ten’s Brisbane news bulletins, jockeying with the Russia/Ukraine war and the looming federal election.
Nine and Seven also featured viewer polls on their Facebook pages on whether the ibis should get the nod.
By Tuesday, Sportsbet had posted the bin chicken as the new $3 favourite in a novelty betting market to become the Brisbane Olympics mascot, ahead of other Queensland icons, such as the cane toad and Karl Stefanovic.
It took Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli to put the ibis mania into perspective. “Fair dinkum?! The ibis? That idea should be put in the bin … where the chicken lives.”
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