Niki Savva’s book presents the ‘attractive’ Peter Dutton

Niki Savva’s new best-seller has a few surprises, not least her revelations about Peter Dutton.

Cartoon: Eric Lobbecke.

The Australian columnist Niki Savva’s best-selling new book, Plots and Prayers, about last year’s coup against Malcolm Turnbull, has surprisingly prompted Labor stalwarts to look at Peter Dutton in a new light.

Author Niki Savva.

One of the first purchasers of Savva’s book was none other than Barry Jones, Labor’s legendary 86-year-old former federal president and Australian quiz champion. Jones has sent Savva a warm congratulatory email in which he singles out her portrayal of the Home Affairs minister. “You almost made Peter Dutton seem attractive,” a surprised Jones wrote to Savva.

Note the “almost”.

For her part, Savva claims Dutton is more popular in the Liberal Party at a personal level than Scott Morrison. “People are surprised when I say how funny or engaging Dutton is at a personal level, and in fact much better liked by his colleagues, whether from the left or right, than Morrison,” she says.

A fortnight after its release, Plots and Prayers is already on its second print run, topping the Dymocks, Booktopia and Readings bestsellers lists.

Angry Ita retreats from talk

Is the chairwoman of your ABC, Ita Buttrose, spruiking commercial retirement villages, of all things?

It has been hard to escape that conclusion in recent weeks if you listen to the radio. Retirement village giant Stockland has been running ads on Sydney’s top-rating station, 2GB, to relentlessly flog Buttrose’s coming paid speaking engagement on August 8 at the company’s huge flagship Cardinal Freeman property in Sydney.

Ita Buttrose. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Stockland has been inviting prospective retirement village residents to “enjoy a delicious morning tea” after Buttrose’s talk about “ageing positively”, and “discover what some of our top Stockland retirement villages around the area have to offer”. In some of its online ads promoting the event, the company even grandly talked up Buttrose as a “media mogul”.

But when Diary phoned her on Friday, Buttrose admitted the ads were not a great look for an ABC chairwoman.

By the end of the call, an embarrassed Ita had resolved to cancel the August 8 engagement altogether. “After this conversation with you, I’m going to pull out,” Buttrose told Diary. “I don’t want to promote any village over ­another village. It (the ad) won’t be there for long. I’m horrified. It’s embarrassed me. This is just unacceptable.”

Buttrose told us the ad made her “cringe” when she heard it, and she was aware that the rules on the ABC not being influenced by commercial interests were “strict”.

Buttrose said that before our phone call, she had already flagged her concerns about the ads with Stockland. “I’m sorry for the people who booked it who wanted to come because of me. But I don’t promote their villages,” she said.

The 2GB ads were run without her permission, she said. “This has never happened before. I am meant to approve all promotional material but that didn’t happen.”

The material was prepared by a “new, young marketing person who got over-enthusiastic”, Buttrose said.

It’s not the first event that Buttrose, a noted seniors role model in Australia, has spoken at for Stockland. Pre-ABC, a year or two back, she was paid to speak at another ceremony at the same Stockland retirement village.

Before we spoke to her on Friday, a Stockland spinner had told us that Ita’s August 8 appearance was part of a program called Winter Warmers, which “gets people out of their homes and into our villages to hear from healthy and ­active seniors, who talk about their experiences of ageing positively”.

“Ita’s been very popular. She speaks brilliantly,” the Stockland flack told us.

But Buttrose didn’t waste any time pulling out of next month’s appearance. Soon after her call with Diary, all material promoting the August 8 talk on Stockland’s website was removed.

“I’ll have to find another group of older people and teach them to age disgracefully,” Buttrose wryly told Diary.

Age-old wisdom

A few days before Buttrose ­decided to dump next month’s Stockland speaking gig, Diary had asked the retirement village giant about attending the Ita ­presentation.

After all, your diarist could conceivably one day be a candidate to reside at one of its properties. Were we too young to turn up and learn from Ita about “ageing positively”, we innocently asked Stockland.

That request was met with some trepidation. “It would be discriminatory if (our seminar) was age-based,” the Stockland spinner started warily. “But I don’t think we open it up that much. It’s not a media event.”

Newspoll returning

It’s been two months since Scott Morrison shocked the country by winning the federal election. But in that period, one noteworthy fixture of the Australian political scene that has shaped the fate of our recent leaders has been mysteriously absent: The Australian’s Newspoll.

After every other federal election in living memory, we would normally have expected some sort of comprehensive post-election poll by now, analysing the surprise ScoMo win and whether voters still liked him.

Since the May 18 election, there has been widespread soul-searching about the accuracy of polls. In the days that followed, Nine’s newspapers even announced they had ditched their regular Ipsos poll.

So will Newspoll be back? Diary has asked around and can report the answer is yes: The Australian’s first Newspoll since the election will be published “very shortly”, we’re told.

The Australian editor-in-chief Chris Dore has taken the position that Newspoll will continue to be a regular fixture in this paper, although going forward greater attention will be paid to ensuring that the opinion poll cycle is not “gamed” by politicians, possibly by changing the timing and frequency of polling.

And what of David Briggs, the man who conducts Newspoll? He tells Diary the May 18 election was perceived as a “polling disaster” but this perception was too harsh. While national polls on voting ­intentions picked a Labor win, Newspoll’s seat-by-seat polling proved to be much more accurate.

“As a consumer of polls, you have to look at all evidence,” he says. “In this year’s election, seat-by-seat polls provided a much better assessment of party perform­ance than the national polls. But in the 2016 election, it was the other way around: national polls were more accurate.”

Briggs says Newspoll’s seat-by-seat polling detected early on the trends that saw voters turn on Labor so viciously in Queensland in May. “We were the most accurate in showing the seats likely to be won or lost in Queensland, and showing that Labor were not picking up seats they needed there.

“We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Newspoll has been remarkably accurate for decades.”

Dumped poll regret

Meanwhile, another pollster, Chris Lonergan, who conducted opinion polls for activist group GetUp in Warringah during the campaign, tells Diary he now ­regrets ditching a Queensland-only poll that he says would have shown up the carnage to come for Bill Shorten in that state.

“It seemed a little wild at the time,” he tells us. While Lonergan does not give specific figures on what the poll showed, what he does say is that “the Labor vote seemed too low to be credible”.

Lonergan says that the decision to ditch the poll was made in conjunction with the client who commissioned it, which he will only say was “not a political party” and “not GetUp”.

“One of the things I do regret is that by choosing not to release it, the diversity of information ­released to the public was reduced,” he says. “People had less information to make an informed decision when they voted.”

The ‘attractive’ Dutton

The Barty effect

Nine insiders tell Diary that Ash Barty’s fourth round elimination from Wimbledon last week has at least one Australian, Nine boss Hugh Marks, cock-a-hoop.

While he was not happy as an Australian about Barty losing, Marks (with his media CEO’s hat on) was relieved that he knocked back a bid by Seven boss Tim Worner to give Nine the 2019 and 2020 Wimbledon telecasts in exchange for next month’s Ashes.

The numbers for Thursday night’s Australia v England World Cup semi-final, screened on Nine, show why.

Ashleigh Barty.

In the five capital cities alone, Australia’s first innings attracted 687,000 viewers on the night on Nine, even though Aaron Finch’s men were ultimately well beaten. Meanwhile, with Barty out of Wimbledon, the women’s semi-­finals — which admittedly started much later at 10pm on the same day as the cricket — rated just 118,000, ­exactly one-fifth of the cricket ratings.

If Barty had still been in, Seven’s ratings would no doubt have been higher. But with the Ashes likely to do similar numbers for Nine to the World Cup, Marks is said to be very comfortable with his decision to knock back Worner’s two-Wimbledons-for-one-Ashes deal.

Nine’s 2GB concerns

It had been thought that the ­signing of Alan Jones to 2GB and 4BC for two more years would be the final piece of the puzzle that would allow John “Singo” Singleton his $100 million payday to sell his remaining stake in Macquarie Media.

But not so fast. Word to Diary out of Nine’s Willoughby HQ in recent days now suggests there is no guarantee Singo will get his cherished payday just yet.

It had been scheduled that Nine bosses and investment bankers would be making a presentation to the Nine board early next month, laying out the benefits to Nine of buying out Singo and fully owning Macquarie.

But that presentation looks like it could now be delayed. Nine sources tell Diary that they see ­“financial and cultural issues” at the network.

The seemingly endless dramas at Macquarie haven’t helped. The latest instalment has been the network’s bid to replace Chris Smith with Steve Price on the 2GB and 4BC afternoon show. The move culminated in Smith’s rapid departure from Macquarie after his contract was paid out.

From a cultural perspective, Nine says it is worried about what it sees as “internal division” at the radio network.

There are also suggestions the long period of uncertainty about whether Jones would continue on 2GB earlier this year has affected ad revenue. Advertisers are said to have held back on renewing contracts with the network when they didn’t know if Jones would be back.

One Nine source says simply: “They’re not bringing in enough revenue.”

Don’t forget, 2GB and 4BC are effectively paying two breakfast-sized salaries, one to Jones and another to morning’s Ray Hadley. Hadley won a reputed $1 million-plus “breakfast bonus” after Macquarie bosses had initially planned not to renew Jones’s contract ­beyond July 1.

Hadley’s lucrative new contract is now being honoured while he continues on mornings. But the near-$8m bill just for Jones and Hadley from now on means Nine wants Macquarie to find money elsewhere before it will consider a full buyout of the radio network.

All of which would no doubt leave poor Singo tearing his hair out.

All class at 60 Minutes

When you work for Nine’s 60 Minutes, what determines if you travel business class or premium economy on international flights?

Apparently it will now come down to whether you’re an on-air reporter — like Liz Hayes and Tara Brown — or merely a 60 Minutes producer or other behind-the-scenes staffer.

Diary is reliably informed that a new directive from Nine’s beancounters is looking to make sure that those jetsetting international stories 60 Minutes is famous for don’t cost so much.

And Nine insiders tell us that network accountants believe they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars simply by making a class change on international flights for some of its staff.

Tara Brown of 60 minutes

That means that from now on, some 60 Minutes personnel will be more equal than others.

Off-camera staff and other crew who produce the stories and travel internationally with Hayes, Brown and co have traditionally travelled in the business class cabin with their high-profile colleagues. That will no longer be the case. The best they can now hope for is premium economy.

But fear not. For the 60 Minutes on-air reporting line-up (which, ­incidentally, apart from Hayes, Brown et al, will soon also include Karl Stefanovic once more), it will continue to be business class all the way.

Diary is told in-flight beauty sleeps continue to be considered important for reporters, just so they can look rested when they’re on camera for the benefit of 60 Minutes viewers.