Shorten camp’s plan to blacklist reporter

Diary can reveal another instance of the Shorten camp’s arrogance in the lead-up to the election.

Former Leader Bill Shorten speaking in the Labor caucus meeting at Parliament House House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Last week, Diary revealed the hubris of Bill Shorten’s team in the lead-up to the May election, with Shorten and his spinners acting like they were already in power. As we noted, this hubris extended to Shorten’s attitude to Ten’s ex-Canberra political reporter Jonathan Lea. Niki Savva’s book Plots and Prayers reveals that Shorten had asked a Ten executive, in relation to Lea, “when he was going to get rid of that dickhead”.

Ten Network reporter Jonathan Lea. Picture: Supplied

But now Diary can reveal another instance of the Shorten camp’s supreme arrogance about both Lea and the election result. We now hear Shorten’s travelling spin doctors were openly voicing plans to other Canberra journalists to blackban Lea when the election was won and done.

The tenor of Shorten camp’s dialogue with some gallery journalists was along the lines of: “We’re probably going to win the election, and if we do, we won’t be speaking to Jon Lea.”

Lea, of course, blew a huge hole in the credibility of the costings of the Shorten camp’s climate change policies during a viral press briefing early in the campaign. The whinge of Shorten’s spin doctors was that Lea’s coverage had been favourable to the Coalition for a long period.

But was the Shorten camp demonstrating a glass jaw? Diary now hears Lea was as tough on Scott Morrison as Shorten during the campaign, when he turned the blowtorch on the PM several times.

For example, on May 8, one of the tougher days of the campaign for the Coalition after The Daily Telegraph’s “Mother of Invention” front page about Shorten’s mum, we’re told Lea led the charge with other reporters in insisting Scott Morrison had to hold a press briefing that day.

The ScoMo camp had originally planned to avoid answering journalists’ questions that day. But Lea and other press gallery journalists rightly stood up to him on this, and ScoMo eventually had no choice but to relent.