Media Diary: Ray Martin doubles down on ‘d…head’ call on Seven’s voice debate
Veteran journalist gets shot down by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, while Labor senator clumsily compares the voice to Australia’s kangaroo and emu emblems.
As the final week of campaigning for the voice kicked off on Sunday with polls around the country showing the Noes have it, Seven aired the only debate of the referendum.
The panel included yes campaigners journalist Ray Martin and Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy going up against the No camp’s Senator Lidia Thorpe and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
“There’s no politics involved in this,” Martin said making his pitch for the affirmative for the yes vote.
“We’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis and a housing crisis and the government has chosen this time to spend $364m of taxpayer money on a referendum no one wants,” Senator Thorpe replied on behalf of Team No.
Martin also doubled down on his comments made last week calling some voters “d…heads and dinosaurs” and also threw some of his fellow yes voters in the mix too.
“I‘ve said this is a really important referendum, If you‘re only yes, make sure that you know what you’re talking about. If you’re voting no make sure to talk,” Martin said.
“ … I didn‘t say no voters. If someone looks the issue and decides to vote no, that’s perfectly the democratic right … if a yes voter votes without bothering to look at this very important referendum, I think they’re are d…head as well.”
His comments were shot down by Senator Price as she defended Australians who intend to vote no are doing so because they want more detail about how the voice will work.
“You’re an intelligent bloke Ray … when people seek answers to their questions about how this whole thing will operate, how people are elected – we don’t know, we’re told it’ll come after the vote’s taken place. So if you don’t know, if you’re not clear, evidently the government is not clear as how this whole thing is supposed to operate. That’s a red flag to me,” Price said.
The worm turned like it was wriggling in cheap tequila all night as those in the audience – voters with “no bias” selected at random by Roy Morgan – listened intently to all sides.
Senator McCarthy was charged with delivering a romping closing argument for the yes vote. Instead she ended the night with a Ron Burgundy-esque monologue comparing the enshrined voice to our national emblems.
“It’s important to our future here. We see that the totems of the kangaroo and emu are really important,” McCarthy said as the worm nosedived in negative territory.
The results from the Spotlight special – with the crowd of “undecided” voters which were also shown an interview with Anthony Albanese – showed 30 per cent were then planning to vote yes, yet 53 per cent said they are planning to vote no.
About 17 per cent of the audience said they were still unsure.
Call it serendipitous or call Diary cynical, but either way the special Spotlight episode, hosted by Liam Bartlett, shared a title with the rating hit grand final of The Voice - the singing show - which also aired on Sunday night.
Coming off the back of the talent show, the debate did well for Seven, finishing in the top 10 programs on Sunday.
About 396,000 tuned in, 142,000 of those eyes were in Sydney.
Those in Adelaide were not as interested with just 45,000 watching.
Price considers legal action for AFR voice cartoon
As if things couldn’t get worse for The Australian Financial Review with the news its “world leading” columnist Joe Aston quit his post, the Friday edition of the newspaper ran a David Rowe cartoon showing No campaigners Warren Mundine, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Peter Dutton standing near No placards depicting the likeness of Adolf Hitler, accompanied by the headline: “The standards we walk past”.
The offending cartoon reflected the news storm around a video circulated online last week showing extremists wearing balaclavas burning the Aboriginal flag, performing Nazi salutes and threatening Progressive No campaigner Senator Lidia Thorpe.
The video has been referred to the Australian Federal Police and both the government and Opposition Leader have strongly condemned it, calling for respectful debate in the final week before the voice to parliament referendum.
Senator Price told Diary she would not comment as she is considering legal action.
Supporters of Mr Mundine were outraged on his behalf. “Warren Mundine has a long and passionate commitment to Jews and the memory of the Nazi genocide of World War II,” former ALP federal politician Michael Danby told Diary.
“Public figures having different views on the voice shouldn’t be smeared by guilt by association with the despicable announcements of fringe Nazi nuts.
“AFR cartoonist David Rowe has inflamed hatred by smearing public figures by association with history’s worst mass murderer – Hitler. Australia is better than this and we ought to have a respectful debate in the right way to address helping Australia’s Indigenous people.”
Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Disgraceful,” Mr Kroger told Diary. “Warren Mundine is an outstanding Australian. A man of immense courage. Pity Australia doesn’t have 100 of him.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, asked: “What does neo-Nazis voting No because they hate Indigenous people and think voice is a Jewish plot have to do with Dutton, Price and Mundine? Let alone millions of potential No voters. (They’ve been shown) as complicit or accepting of Nazis which is ridiculous.”
Rowe also posted the cartoon to his X social media account, which has the official Yes campaign slogan as his avatar.
“Very subtle here,” one commenter said.
“When you only have a hammer,” Rowe replied with a winky face emoji.
Wilkinson a no show for female business leaders
Lisa Wilkinson has pulled out of a highly anticipated public appearance leaving a regional women’s association to find a replacement.
The former face of The Project has been missing in action since she quit the program last year citing “targeted toxicity” from the media.
She was due to appear as guest of honour and keynote speaker at the Business Women Albury Wodonga 2023 Gala next month.
“Award-winning journalist and media personality Lisa Wilkinson will headline an annual Border businesswomen’s event in Albury,” The Border Mail reported in June.
When Diary discovered Wilkinson was a late scratching and reached out to her manager Nick Fordham for a please explain, he left us hanging just as his client has done to the ladies of the twin cities.
“With any matter relating to Lisa Wilkinson we will not comment,” Business Women Albury Wodonga chairwoman Felicity Cahill curtly told Diary.
The event is slated to take place less than two weeks out from a defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann against the Logie-winning journalist.
Wilkinson has now been replaced on the billing for the $210 per head event by a Melbourne-based understudy in singer, dancer and comedian Em Rusciano.
“Em is an honest person but also encourages her family members to keep trying, to improve their spot in the order. Most importantly, she still finds time to watch every single episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race. Priorities are essential,” is how she is being sold in a bid to drum up sales to the event.
Wilkinson’s progeny has not been as shy.
Billi FitzSimons – new media’s wunderkind – landed an interview with Foreign Minister Penny Wong last week.
Senator Wong sat down with FitzSimons Jr to shoot the breeze over on The Daily Aus, an Instagram account that received about $1.2m in seed funding last year from former Nine chief David Gyngell.
Senator Wong filmed with the youth news organisation that is followed by 495,000 people and discussed the important issues concerning “the kids”, including world peace, Julian Assange, Donald Trump, and the voice referendum.
FitzSimons, appointed editor at 24-years-old, asked some probing questions about AUKUS given the potential of another Trump presidency, citing Wong’s 2016 comments made in opposition about putting less of a focus on the US alliance.
However, Diary’s ears pricked up when the young gun referred to Wong as “being at the forefront of the marriage equality campaign”.
Regrettably, Diary remembers the olden days and has a memory (and the visage) of an elephant.
We recall a time back in 2010 when Wong, despite being the only openly gay female cabinet minister in Julia Gillard’s government, was also openly in the no camp for gay marriage.
Rather than working to move the dial on marriage equality at that time, well before the 2017 plebiscite, she toed the ALP party line. Labor’s official position on same-sex marriage back in the Kevin Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era was a firm “no”. Wong said the matter was a “cultural, religious and historical view of marriage being between a man and a woman”.
Wong, Finance Minister at the time, said that position was something “we have to respect”. Kids today. They can work social media like no other generation but search engines, not so much.
Overflowing with complaints
Who knew so many people watched the midday news, let alone on Channel 10.
Well-placed spies tell Diary the network has been “bombarded” and “flooded” with complaints regarding the seemingly pro voice editorial bent of the daytime news bulletin hosted by Narelda Jacobs.
The majority of mail complained that Jacobs, a proud Whadjuk Noongar woman from WA, was exclusively interviewing guests and platforming voices aligned with the Yes campaign.
Last week she had the scoop with former ALP national president Warren Mundine’s daughter Garigarra Riley-Mundine who is disappointed in her father’s stance on the referendum.
“For me, that’s not the man I grew up with. The man I grew up with was very passionate about First Nations rights and First Nations voices and I feel that the people he’s now sided with, he’s now working with, are not people a younger Warren would have worked with,” Ms Riley-Mundine said.
Garigarra Riley-Mundine can’t stay silent about her father, Warren, any longer. @10NewsFirstpic.twitter.com/2ZDwgrLvx8
— Narelda Jacobs (@NareldaJacobs10) October 2, 2023
Jacobs also co-hosts NITV’s flagship current affairs program The Point, an assignment which has seen her fronting a number of “Referendum Road Trip” specials where she has been travelling around the country for the taxpayer-funded outlet visiting communities to give viewers an idea of the grassroots issues.
Jacobs told The West Australian last month, while plugging the series, that as an SBS employee she is careful not to publicly state her position on the voice.
“But a quick glance at Jacob’s social media feed gives an indication of just how passionate she is about making sure her followers stay informed,” the profile read.
Earlier this year Jacobs, whose father was a member of the Stolen Generations, was awarded an OAM which she accepted despite her opposition to the monarchy.
A position she made public just days after Queen Elizabeth II’s death last year when she called on Britain to formally apologise for its colonisation of Indigenous people. Diary has approached Network 10 for comment.
Back in time for breakfast?
It’s been a busy year for AFL journalist Tom Morris.
The former Fox Sports star was swiftly sacked in 2022 for a number of lewd and crude messaged leaked from a WhatsApp group chat which involved a former female colleague.
This year has been a rollercoaster for the AFL news breaker.
The 31-year-old copped a broken nose and cheekbone while playing suburban footy, lost his mum after a long battle with brain cancer and then won footy media’s top prize – the Alf Brown Award. It’s the AFL media’s version of the Gold Logie and he won it for his part time work for SEN – the Craig Hutchinson owned sports radio outlet.
Morris won the award for the news of Damien Hardwick’s shock resignation as Richmond coach.
On the night he used the opportunity to thank his peers for giving him “a second chance”, many in the room – and the wider peanut gallery – didn’t know that Morris has been essentially working for free for the majority of the season.
Yet there was still outcry that he had won given his inappropriate conduct which saw him sacked and resoundingly cancelled more than 12-months ago.
“I absolute own my mistakes, my behaviour was appalling I deserved to be sacked and publicly shamed. It’s actually been a great learning opportunity for me,” Morris told Diary.
He’s now been working closely with Our Watch and has taken it upon himself to educate and call out “locker room behaviour”. Something that has also cost him friendships, not that he minds.
“My north star now is ‘How I could make a difference on my friends, my cricket club’ and just try to be the best version of myself every day, if you can’t be a genuinely decent person, then you’ve got nothing.”
During the off season and AFL trade period last week he has been filling in hosting the coveted breakfast show slot for SEN.
Sydney is going to be incredibly active in this year's trade period. Can they get everything done?@SENBreakfast | #AFLTradepic.twitter.com/BUisGoidi7
— SEN 1116 (@1116sen) October 9, 2023
He said that, on top of regular segments with the network, has been his saving grace.
“Hutchy took a bullet for me,” Morris said while also thanking Nine’s AFL expert Caroline Wilson for her support and guidance.
Whispers are now circulating he may land a more permanent gig in 2024.
If Wayne Carey can make a comeback, surely a bloke who’s working hard to right his wrongs is due one too ‘eh?
Burning question
It’s always good to get a fresh set of eyes on things or, in the case of the Canberra press gallery, get someone else to do your job for you.
Mark Levy did that last week while filling in as host on The Ben Fordham Show on Sydney’s 2GB.
Diary has liked the cut of the broadcaster’s jib on the occasions he’s warmed the breakfast hot seat for Ben Fordham this year.
Last week he tackled Senator Bridget McKenzie, the Nationals Senate leader who is, these days, more accustomed to turning up the heat on organisations like Qantas and its chairman Richard Goyder, than being grilled as a public figure herself.
Levy asked why, given her strong performance during recent hearings of the Senate committee looking into the Flying Kangaroo’s alleged misconduct, she had not torn up her membership to the airline’s invite-only Chairman’s Lounge.
“It’s your job to hold them to account. So shouldn’t you all be taking a stand here and saying, ‘Well, that’s it, we’re going to hand back our membership to the Chairman’s club,” Levy asked.
“I don’t think that it would change their behaviour,” McKenzie protested. “And I don’t think it will change. It goes far beyond a Chairman’s club membership, the behaviour of Qantas and the behaviour of this government.
“If they want to take my Chairman’s club membership away from me because I’m giving them a hard time, they’re very, very welcome to it.
“I know it doesn’t influence my behaviour. I would hope it doesn’t influence other people’s behaviour. I think what influenced the Prime Minister’s behaviour was that Qantas was actually going to support his yes campaign.”
"Hand it back!"
— 2GB Sydney (@2GB873) October 5, 2023
The Senator at the centre of the Qantas inquiry copped a GRILLING after calls to give up the Chairman’s Lounge membership. 😳
MORE: https://t.co/vAmCtlie1jpic.twitter.com/NAXB2LyW5u
Nine lives for McDonald
Meanwhile up north, things at Nine Radio’s Brisbane studios are less tantalising than a soggy Vegemite sanga.
Radio 4BC boss Max Dudley is living up to the first syllable of his surname according to Diary’s banana-bending informants.
“Max doesn’t know news at all, which is why he’s installed Bill (McDonald). He likes him, and he’s a good bloke, but he’s the four-day-old meal on the lazy Susan of Brisbane media talent,” a 4BC insider told Diary.
The former Network 10 and 7 News Brisbane anchor took over the airwaves in Queensland from Ray Hadley last month in a bid, Nine said, to make the station “live and local”. Diary was curious so tuned in, but regretted it. Gone was the Hadley cut through and in its place we got McDonald reciting The Australian.
The talent is now local, but the topics are being imported.
He also editorialised on a recent poll conducted on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula about how some Millennials on Facebook are demanding dithering old people should only shop during certain hours.
Before McDonald was installed, Hadley’s final Brisbane survey results – released last week – were a success. He gained 0.4 points to increase to 7.6 per cent of the market share.
Diary waded through the official ratings archives, to when he took over the timeslot from a local presenter when 4BC Mornings was, at that time eight years ago, sitting at 3.2 per cent.
For McDonald the proof will be in the pudding – the final two rating periods of the year.
Sky’s the limit
Despite what our learned friends at the Nine papers say, Sky suits have assured Diary that news of an “American first” digital strategy are greatly exaggerated.
Forget the Bill of Rights, it’s actually resembling another famous Bill – the enterprising and ambitious character of Bill “You can’t stop progress” Heslop from Muriel’s Wedding.
However instead of covering up dodgy deals with international business consortiums like old mate Heslop, they’d blow their cover just like Sharri Markson did with her world exclusive coverage of the origins of Covid.
Sky’s savvy digital squad has grown its Australian audience on YouTube by 48 per cent this year and its content is now reaching 11m Australians every month.
The internet is a marvellous space, something Sky News star reporter Gabriella Power has noticed, which is why she’s accepted a promotion to be the network’s first “digital originals” anchor where she’ll host digital news bulletins and front long-form online documentaries.
Power is the stepdaughter of Nine’s Richard Wilkins and it was a big week for the extended family.
As well as Power’s promotion, Dickie’s son Christian Wilkins’ first children’s book, aimed at inclusivity and titled Princess Mitchell, was published.
And the winner is ... Sydney
In the State of Origin of reality television, Sydney trumped Melbourne to secure the latest season of The Real Housewives.
The new iteration of the local series premieres on Binge this week amid drama in the US.
Former Housewives stars, including Bethenny Frankel and NeNe Leakes, are crusading for fairer treatment of the cast by the franchise’s executive producer Andy Cohen.
The vetting process for the new Australian season, the first since 2017, “was a very thorough process,” local talent Victoria Montano told Diary.
“I think it was about a year or two until I was officially on board.
“They told me there will be no more table flipping, no nastiness like previous years. It’s great TV without throwing a drink.”
The owner of fitness clothing label SportLuxe is joining Sydney social queen Terry Biviano and returning cast members Krissy Marsh and Nicole Gazal O’Neil.
From what Diary has seen of the new series, it’s nothing like the last iteration which starred Lisa Oldfield – the ex-wife of One Nation co-founder David Oldfield. Back in 2017 the drama wasn’t just confected for the cameras, it reportedly got so “out of control” between the cast and crew the idea of a second season was shut down.
Got a tip? Email clarkej@theaustralian.com.au
Nick Tabakoff is currently on leave.
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