Queenslanders tuning in for their daily Covid update from Annastacia Palaszczuk on her fast-growing news outlet, PNN (otherwise known as the Palaszczuk News Network) were last week left asking one tricky question: why had the star of the show gone missing for nearly two weeks? And did the Premier’s strange absence have anything to do with her state’s vaccination go-slow?
Palaszczuk finally returned to her show (streamed live on PNN on her personal Facebook site) in its regular 10am timeslot on Thursday, after not appearing for 13 days since her October 22 Covid-19 briefing. During Palaszczuk’s absence, a veritable licorice all-sorts of B-list ministers were forced (with mixed success) to fill the considerable void left by their dear leader as acting anchors.
Palaszczuk’s ubiquitous deputy Steven “Giggles” Miles, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath, Police Minister Mark Ryan and Treasurer Cameron Dick have all been scrambled to step up in guest hosting roles during her absence.
Was her 13-day absence anything to do with the fact her regular Covid co-host, Jeannette Young, also disappeared from the PNN airwaves, after her elevation to her new role as Governor of Queensland?
And adding to PNN’s on-air dramas, the man who was announced as Young’s replacement as Queensland’s new CHO – and as the new co-anchor of PNN — Krispin Hajkowicz, decided for “personal reasons” not to take up the post just days before he was due to start.
All this in a state where both Palaszczuk and Young were big players in ensuring vaccine hesitancy became a thing in Queensland. Back in late June, Young made her now-infamous “do not get the AstraZeneca vaccine” warning to under-40s, a call that was fully echoed by Palaszczuk.
Indeed, the Premier’s strange absence came at a time Queensland has been encountering a full-blown health crisis. Apart from the worst vaccination rates in the country, another health crisis has come in the form of damning allegations about botched surgeries at Caboolture Hospital.
During her absence from the scrutiny of tough questions at her daily press conferences, there was still room for some soft PNN publicity shots on her personal social media channels. On Melbourne Cup day, for instance, her Facebook page was adorned with snaps of the premier posing at Eagle Farm racetrack with her new partner Reza Adib.
Once Queensland opens up its state borders on December 17, media types are wondering whether Palaszczuk will go MIA from the PNN airwaves once more, over the traditional Christmas holiday non-ratings period. Diary will be watching.
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‘Bloody nonsense’: Andrew Probyn takes on ScoMo
If the Glasgow COP26 climate change summit and the G20 meeting in Rome that preceded it are any guide, things could get pretty heated in the upcoming federal election campaign between ABC political editor Andrew Probyn and PM Scott Morrison.
Diary is told “Cyclone Probyn” posed no end of challenges for the PM during his brief but eventful overseas trip, which ended with the ABC political editor accusing the government of spouting “bloody nonsense” about him.
First there was the ABC political editor’s surprise interception of an angry French leader Emmanuel Macron in Rome, which set the tone for much of the PM’s visit. Then, by the time the Australian entourage reached Glasgow, Probyn visibly annoyed Morrison in press conferences over the alleged leaking of a private text message from Macron.
Finally, at the end of the trip, Probyn published a scathing “analysis” piece accusing Morrison of being “vindictive” towards Macron.
By the time the PM and his team landed back in Australia on Thursday, they were probably relieved just to have a break from the ABC political editor. Finance Minister Simon Birmingham even took to Sky News to call on Probyn and others present to “question themselves as to whether all they pursue is in the national interest”.
That attracted a fiery riposte on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday from Probyn, who described the government’s commentary as “bloody nonsense”, and added: “To suggest that we were acting against the national interest is absolute hogwash.”
The fun started when Probyn and SBS’s Pablo Vinales spotted Macron in a room at the G20, and gambled on one of multiple exits to lie in wait to ambush the French President.
It turns out Probyn and Vinales picked the right exit, and had already pre-planned for the SBS reporter to discreetly film any encounter with Macron on his superior iPhone 11.
The rest is history. After the Nine papers’ Bevan Shields and David Crowe also joined in, Macron delivered the money quote by accusing Morrison of lying, as the French President’s visibly panicked communications director watched helplessly nearby. So was it a coincidence that Probyn wasn’t provided with a leak of Macron’s text message to Morrison?
The message, sent two days before the AUKUS deal was announced in September, showed Macron asking ScoMo: “Should I expect good or bad news from our joint submarines ambitions?”
By the time Morrison held his next press conference in Glasgow last Monday, it was Probyn who was first to grill the PM on the leaking of the text messages, asking him: “Why was this decision (taken) to release the text message from him to you? Why did you decide to leak that text message?”
An annoyed Morrison refused to acknowledge that his office had leaked the message, saying: “I’m not going to indulge your editorial on it.” One source close to the PM’s camp told us last week: “Those who complained loudest were the ones who didn’t get the leak.”
But by Wednesday, the ABC political editor wasn’t backing down in his escalating war of words with the government, stating that Australia/France relations had been “worsened by the Morrison camp’s crude response — leaking a text message from Macron to the PM from September”.
Probyn’s analysis piece also claimed Morrison had shown “a vindictive and short-term shallowness” by allegedly leaking the text, a claim he made a point of repeating on the ABC on Sunday.
If Glasgow was just the warm-up act, Morrison v Probyn II during the main event of the federal election campaign should be a doozy.
‘Please Explain’: Pauline’s bold cartoon series
Pauline Hanson has been looking for ways to stand out from a growing array of conservative rivals in the federal election. Diary understands the One Nation leader is poised to launch a bold attempt to lure a new breed of voters in the 18-35 age group.
Hanson is about to release a 20-episode South Park-style cartoon series called Please Explain, which will take the mickey out of pollies of every persuasion.
The two-minute episodes will appear on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, depicting Hanson — in her own voice — as the teacher of an unruly class featuring all the big names in federal politics and some of their quirks.
The most intriguing inclusion, we’re told, will be former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd as “miserable ghosts”.
But the series will also feature everyone from Scott Morrison to Anthony Albanese, Barnaby Joyce, Adam Bandt, Sarah Hanson-Young, Peter Dutton, Bob Katter and Craig Kelly.
Diary hears that Morrison will be portrayed wearing Hawaiian shirt — a reference to his trip to Hawaii during the 2019-20 “Black Summer” bushfires. The series will also feature a “blustering” Albanese, an excessively “politically correct” Bandt, and some Katter’s trademark eccentric outbursts.
In keeping with the classroom theme, it will also take an educational approach to “please explain” — everything from political donations to cigarette taxes and the preferential voting system.
It is understood the series will cost a six-figure sum. But despite One Nation’s big spend with Melbourne-based Stepmates Animation in a bid to lure younger voters, it will also run a more traditional TV campaign, particularly in regional areas, focusing on one of Hanson’s pet subjects, the Family Court.
Diary understands the Hanson camp could launch the first three episodes of Please Explain as early as this week.
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Alan Jones’s morning radio ban
With the former 2GB breakfast king departing Sky News last week, the obvious place for him to go may seem to be back to radio.
But it’s not as simple as that. Diary understands that when he departed 2GB last year, Nine included a clause in his contract that stopped him from hosting a breakfast or morning radio show for the rest of his career.
That means if he went to, say, Bill Caralis’s SuperNetwork (where Jones has had plenty of talks before) to join his old 2UE stablemate John Laws, the terms of his Nine departure means he could only host a post-midday radio show, most likely on afternoons or drive.
But another option Jones is actively considering going it alone. He currently has 162,000 followers on Facebook, and Diary hears he is “intrigued” by the prospect of leveraging that following to start a comprehensive streaming site on his own page.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Jones’ departure, there’ll be a reshuffle of the Sky News line-up to accommodate Piers Morgan, who is said at this point to be most likely to appear in a later timeslot than Jones. Watch this space.
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Neil Mitchell rejects Wilkinson interview
After weeks of talking about little but Karl Stefanovic to plug her book, budding author Lisa Wilkinson appears to have had a pronounced change of heart. All of a sudden, she doesn’t want to talk about her ex-Today co-host at all.
Melbourne’s morning radio king Neil Mitchell is the latest media type to say he has rejected an interview with The Project host, after being told by her minders she would conduct it “only if we promised not to focus too much on the Karl Stefanovic issue”.
“I don’t know if they were operating under her instructions, but it’s a strange way to promote a book,” Mitchell tells Diary. “You can’t conduct an interview under those constraints.”
Mitchell told his 3AW audience last week “no decent journalist, no serious journalist, no committed journalist is going to willingly go into an interview saying 1I won’t ask about that or I won’t do this’ … for that reason, there will be no interview with Lisa Wilkinson on this program.” As Mitchell notes to Diary, it begs the question: when the shoe is on the other foot and Wilkinson is the interviewer on The Project, would she agree to such conditions?
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‘Utterly wrong’: Gladys splits 2GB stars
The ICAC inquiry into former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian last week caused open division between 2GB’s two big shock jocks, Ben Fordham and Ray Hadley.
It ended with Hadley variously describing Fordham on his own radio station as wearing “blinkers”, a “blindfold” and “rose-coloured glasses” in his support of Berejiklian.
Earlier, Fordham had backed Berejiklian on his 2GB show last Tuesday, claiming the content of the tapped phone calls between the former Premier and disgraced ex-Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire were simply about ‘politics’, and did not represent a corruption issue worthy of ICAC’s attention.
“This outfit is a corruption-fighting body, and there’s been no corruption discovered on the part of Gladys Berejiklian … anyone who thinks she’s corrupt, doesn’t understand the meaning of corruption,” he said.
The 2GB breakfast host claimed that ICAC only became involved because of the long-term secret relationship between Berejiklian and Maguire. “Why was the former Premier dragged into all of this? Because she was secretly dating Daryl,” he said.
“She’d never had a boyfriend in her life. Daryl was her first. And there was probably a bit of shame involved in her secret, not to mention the fact that the man she’d fallen in love with was a bully.”
Fordham concluded that Berejiklian was “the third Liberal Premier to be brought down by ICAC – not one of them corrupt.”
That did not go down with Hadley, who put a rocket up both Fordham and Graham Richardson, who had been a guest on the breakfast host’s show, for vocally supporting Berejiklian.
“Richo, I’m sorry, but you’re completely and utterly wrong about this, and I’m sorry, so is Ben Fordham about this. He’s completely and utterly wrong. Ben and I are in agreement with a lot of things, but in relation to Gladys, he’s wearing rose-coloured glasses, and has for quite some time. Gladys Berejiklian doesn’t deserve anyone’s support, she has lied and lied and lied in my opinion.”
Hadley claimed a premier couldn’t be together with a “crook” in a secret relationship.
“You can’t have her telling a chief of staff back in July of 2018 that it’s a historical relationship when she’s still living with the bloke for all intents and purposes and having an intimate relationship with him up until two weeks before she gave evidence last year,” he said.
“And anyone that can’t see that needs to take the blinkers off and the blindfold off.”
Hadley concluded: “That’ll be the last time I talk about Gladys Berejiklian. She’s old news. Finished, kaput. Goodbye Gladys, and good riddance.”
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Nine Radio plays ‘happy families’ for ad
Last Thursday, two days after Ray Hadley’s on-air dig at Ben Fordham, some of 2GB’s major on-air talent made a rare joint appearance in the same place — to play happy families for a new TV ad campaign.
Diary hears all of 2GB’s big names came into 2GB’s Pyrmont studios on Thursday — including Hadley, who normally works from his home studio in Sydney’s Hills District, but made a special trip for the shoot.
Over the last 17 months since he replaced Alan Jones on 2GB breakfast, it’s Fordham who has been the beneficiary of a big Nine Radio marketing push, with his beaming face appearing everywhere in Sydney, from high-rotation TV ads on Nine, to billboards on the backs of buses and taxis, and on bus shelters.
That campaign was driven by helping Fordham to fill the void left by Alan Jones when he departed breakfast radio in May last year. But Nine radio bosses have now decided it’s time to share the marketing love with Hadley, 2GB afternoon host Deb Knight and drive host Jim Wilson, who all fronted up for filming on Thursday.
Everyone, we’re assured, was on their best behaviour.
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