Guardian political reporter Amy Remeikis fires up at Sydney Writers Festival
Political reporter Amy Remeikis raised the temperature with her display at an ‘expert’ panel featuring much anti-Dutton and anti-Coalition content.
The Guardian Australia’s political reporter Amy Remeikis was getting extremely worked up at the Sydney Writers Festival on Sunday over various policies, telling the audience members she will come bashing on their front doors if they don’t hold the nation’s politicians to account at the next election.
“If you do not hold your politicians to account at the next election, I swear to God this will not be the only rant you hear from me,” she warned the crowd, who applauded wildly at the idea of a home visit from the journo.
“I will come to everyone single one of your houses and yell out over your kitchen tables, because for God’s sake, this is the only thing the matters.”
Er, what? Remeikis is entitled to her own opinion, of course, and she has plenty of space to air her views on the Guardian’s website each week.
But she is also in the privileged position of being a senior political journalist at a supposedly professional, mainstream media organisation.
How is it OK for her to don her activist hat at a writers festival? Does hysterically lecturing a bunch of (mostly) oldies about political dos and don’ts add anything to the public discourse?
Imagine for a moment if a political journalist from News Corp or Nine pulled a similar stunt.
The public outrage machine would explode.
We put questions to the Guardian Australia’s editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor about Remeikis’s fiery diatribe, but we didn’t hear back.
Remeikis appeared on the festival’s panel on Sunday alongside former Labor hack and ABC presenter Barrie Cassidy, the national broadcaster’s Laura Tingle and Bridget Brennan, and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Niki Savva.
The Guardianista also issued a stern warning that climate disasters are headed our way, and declared the “heating of the planet” is to blame for the recent Singapore Airlines incident that left one person dead and at least 70 people injured after the plane hit severe turbulence.
“I can guarantee you there is going to be another huge natural disaster in the next year or so, everything is pointing towards it, we are going to get them more and more frequently,” Remeikis stated as fact.
“I know people laugh about this but turbulence is going to increase because of climate change, it’s already happening, the Singapore Airlines flight where that poor person died … that is another part of climate change because we are literally heating the planet.”
Remeikis didn’t cite her source, but hey, the internet is full of surprises!
Remeikis labelled Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy as a “dead cat to try and delay energy transition”, and she wants it gone. Now. And she said Anthony Albanese needs to ditch gas ASAP.
“It’s so disappointing that you still have the government going ‘yeah, we’re also going to do gas to 2050’ because we don’t need to,” she told the adoring crowd.
“We are going to be having the most horrendous conversations in five years time about how we live in this country, how we try and save the islands around us that are already going under water, how we actually plan a future for our frickin’ children. I mean do you think about the world they are inheriting?”
The hour-long panel was filled with plenty of anti-Dutton and anti-Coalition content, with Savva also taking a swipe at the Opposition Leader for “vent(ing) about the number of migrants that are coming into Australia”.
“To my mind it’s a tool that he uses to say, ‘if you can’t buy a house it’s because there’s too many migrants’, ‘if you can’t get in to see your GP it’s because there’s too many migrants’.”
‘Independent’ Nine slow to report Wick scandal
Since The Australian last Monday exclusively revealed that Nine news boss Darren Wick left the media organisation after its board became aware of allegations of his inappropriate conduct toward female staff, the company’s major metro newspapers – The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age – have offered scant coverage of the explosive story.
Remember, these mastheads famously carry the lofty slogan, ‘independent. Always’, atop their printed editions and their websites.
Presumably, they want readers to believe that their journalists report without fear or favour.
Strange then, that the biggest media story of the week – that being the alleged misdeeds of Wick, and the subsequent fallout within Nine’s walls – didn’t trouble the scorers (aside from a brief 200 word story in Thursday’s SMH) until Saturday, a full five days after the story broke.
Weekend SMH readers were greeted with a page one “exclusive” story from chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont about Wick’s alleged “lecherous” behaviour, and how it had gone unchecked for more than a decade (a fact reported by The Australian days earlier, but whatever).
Its sister paper, The Age, edited by Patrick Elligett, didn’t mention the Wick story at all until Saturday, when McClymont’s article ran on page six.
However, it wasn’t the story itself that caused our jaws to drop into our Saturday porridge – it was the social media post from McClymont’s fanboy SMH colleague, Peter FitzSimons.
Fitzy took to social media platform X at 8.55am on Saturday to proudly declare: “This is how you know the Herald is still the Herald. A deeply embarrassing story for Nine, published front and centre in the masthead it is the landlord of.”
This is how you know the Herald is still the Herald.
— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) May 24, 2024
A deeply embarrassing story for Nine, published front and centre in the masthead it is the landlord of.
By @kate_mcclymont
Former Nine News boss Darren Wick accused of drunken, lecherous behaviour https://t.co/BPw6liUj9V
You Cannot Be Serious. If arriving five days late to a big story is how the SMH readers know “the Herald is still the Herald”, then Diary respectfully suggests that readers of the Herald, edited by Bevan Shields, don’t hold the masthead in particularly high esteem.
Furthermore, if the “deeply embarrassing” story about Nine’s failure to address rotten behaviour has been an “open secret” within the company “for more than a decade”, isn’t it also “deeply embarrassing” that no journalist from Nine-owned newspapers has sought to report on it previously?
Independent. Always?
Or just with the benefit of hindsight?
Still, the better-late-than-never Nine papers have at least edged their comrades at the Guardian Australia.
As of Sunday, the digital masthead still hadn’t attempted to cover the Nine/Wick story, although its relentless appeal for more cash from its readers to help fund its “independent journalism” remained prominent at the top of the news site.
Oh me, oh Marr
The ABC’s quest to woo younger audiences has hit a speed bump in the shape of 76-year-old David Marr.
The veteran journalist, author, and one-time host of Media Watch was last week named as the next host of ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live.
Marr will succeed longtime presenter 84-year-old Phillip Adams, who hangs up his headphones next month.
Marr’s appointment is a safe one, insofar that management can rest assured that he’s not likely to offend the audience.
But some within Aunty have privately expressed the view that tapping Marr for the job was a bit too safe.
Indeed, when clarinetist Kim Williams assumed the role of ABC chair in March, he expressed a desire to “lead audiences in fresh directions”.
Marr is a smart chap with a big brain, no doubt. But he ain’t fresh.
At a time when the ABC Radio is shedding listeners at an alarming rate, would the departure of Adams been the perfect time to offer a golden opportunity to some talented up-and-comer at the public broadcaster? Perhaps a chance to blood a star-in-waiting before throwing them into a prime-time on-air role?
Anyway, Diary is sure Marr will do a good job, as long as he resists the urge to preach from his radio pulpit.
We couldn’t help noticing that he got a bit snippy in a newspaper interview he did with the SMH’s Peter FitzSimons (yes, that guy’s everywhere!) last month.
Asked which Australians might be a suitable heir to his unofficial status as this country’s public intellectual-in-chief, Marr identified Waleed Aly, journalist Peter Hartcher, RachelPerkins and Annabel Crabb, “when she’s not just a tap dancer, but a writer of real skill and insight”.
Just a tap dancer?
Aren’t intellectuals allowed to have a bit of fun, David?
Marr will take hold of the LNL microphone on July 15.
The Front Beer
Seven’s AFL chat show The Front Bar is a terrific show.
Hosts Mick Molloy, Sam Pang and Andy Maher have a comfortable rapport, and deliver an enjoyable blend of interesting footy chat and genuinely good gags that are a world away from the prehistoric humour that used to be the staple of Nine’s The Footy Show until it was mercifully terminated in 2019.
But last week, The Front Bar lowered its colours during its celebration of the AFL’s Indigenous week.
Having secured a fantastic line-up of former Indigenous AFL greats, including Derek Kickett, Michael O’Loughlin, Leon Davis and Michael Long, Wednesday night’s show was derailed by, of all things, a beer tap.
The show is sponsored by Furphy Beer, and the ale’s sales team has certainly squeezed every last drop out of the deal, with the brand’s logo being plastered (sorry) all over the set – on signage behind the hosts, on beer glasses in front of the hosts, on bottles and cans behind the guests, and unfortunately, on a whopping great beer tap badge directly in front of the guests’ faces.
At one point on last week’s show, when Davis’ father, Uncle Trevor Davis, was invited on set to discuss his artwork on Collingwood’s official Indigenous week guernsey, Davis junior had to awkwardly pull his dad closer to him so he wasn’t obscured by the Furphy beer tap.
Later, when Kickett was answering a question from the panel, his face was also hidden behind the alcohol brand’s signage on the beer tap, prompting an embarrassed Pang to sheepishly offer: “DK, move over to the side, I know we’re sponsored by Furphy but I’d rather see your face.”
Kickett dutifully shuffled sideways, but the momentum of the segment was lost.
The overbearing Furphy signage on the set is, frankly, ridiculous. It looks cheap and is an annoying distraction from the program’s generally engaging banter. And when a show forces its guests to literally speak with a sponsor’s logo across their faces, it’s probably time to dial it back a bit.
Stutch goes west
The Australian Financial Review’s editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury is maintaining the rage over the death of his masthead’s printed edition in Western Australia.
Stutch was in Perth last week, where he oversaw the publication on Wednesday of the final hard copy AFR to be printed in the state – a situation that was forced upon the Nine-owned title after some corporate skulduggery by Seven.
The Kerry Stokes-controlled media company, which owns WA’s only newspaper printing press, last month suddenly doubled the price of printing the AFR in WA, making it untenable for Nine to continue to keep funding the business tabloid in the West.
But Stutch wasn’t going to walk away without taking a parting shot at his commercial rival, and used his weekly newsletter to the AFR’s niche readership to decry Seven’s corporate conduct.
“I stepped into a local media storm, as the new editor of the Stokes-owned The West Australian (Chris Dore) attacked the Financial Review and Nine Entertainment’s ‘disingenuous, duplicitous, dishonest, nasty and hysterical’ coverage of the issue,” Stutch said of his flying visit to Perth.
“At the end of the attack, Dore (a personally friendly former colleague) admitted that ‘Seven West doubled the price to print the newspaper’, a move I have confirmed was instigated by Stokes himself.
“Stokes is an old-fashioned 83-year-old media proprietor who does not shy away from spending money on wielding political and business power through his newspapers and TV stations.
“For better or worse, he is prepared to play hard and sometimes dirty.”
But Stutch’s tear-stained missive also included the following observation, which might unsettle a few of his colleagues at Nine’s publishing division.
“These days, Nine is no longer run by the Packers or the Fairfaxes and, for better or worse, is less inclined to subsidise a loss-making newspaper operation in a digital world.”
And with that, the AFR boss injected new life into the persistent rumour that the printed editions of the Nine-owned metro mastheads, The SMH and The Age, are on borrowed time.
The good news is that this newspaper is still going strong in WA, and is now the only printed national newspaper on the shelves of the local newsagents and supermarkets. We’re bigger, better and cheaper than the AFR anyway. What a bargain!
Nick Tabakoff is on leave
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