When Wang Xining, the deputy head of mission for China in Australia, appeared on Q+A in February last year — right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — he made quite the impression with his robust defence of his country’s handling of the outbreak.
So much so that Diary is told that Q+A made a big pitch for Wang to make a return on last Thursday night’s edition of the show, but it was unsuccessful.
A glance at who appeared and what was said on last Thursday night’s panel might give a clue as to why.
In an episode that had a big China component, Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson and Chinese-born Australian journalist Vicky Xu gave outspoken takes, lashing out at China’s much-criticised treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang province.
Both Paterson and Xu have attracted attention from Beijing in recent years because they haven’t shied away from criticising China on highly sensitive political issues.
Paterson was denied a visa by the Chinese government shortly before he was due to embark on a study tour to Beijing in December 2019. Meanwhile, Xu — who jousted repeatedly with Wang in his breakthrough appearance on Q+A last year — claimed last week that Chinese agents have detained her friends over her robust reporting on Uighurs.
Definitely not comments that would please China. But despite Wang’s absence on Thursday night, Q+A bounced back in the ratings, jumping 40,000 from its previous week’s low of 228,000 viewers across the five-city metro markets.
When Diary caught Q+A executive producer Erin Vincent briefly on Friday, she was giving little away about any efforts to lure Wang. “I’m not going to go into any detail other than he’s welcome to come on the program any time,” she told us.
Turnbull’s amnesia in Wilkinson rant
The irony of ex-PM Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to go on The Project with Lisa Wilkinson to attack Scott Morrison’s “very poor” treatment of departed Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate was not lost on keen media watchers last week.
That’s because there are spooky parallels between the Morrison government’s pressuring of Holgate in the lead-up to her departure, and the former Turnbull government’s role in the pressuring of an equally prominent female ex-chief of a government corporation: the ABC.
Michelle Guthrie departed as the ABC’s only female managing director in 2018, following a year of sustained pressure applied by the former Turnbull government and its communications minister, Mitch Fifield, over the performance of the ABC under Guthrie’s watch.
The similarities in the situations of Guthrie and Holgate as female trailblazers are striking.
Both were the first female chiefs of flagship government enterprises. Both ran corporations that came under the portfolio of the communications minister of the day. Most significantly, both stood their ground after very public differences of opinion with both the government and the male chairmen of their respective corporations, before ultimately exiting their jobs.
In reference to Holgate, Turnbull claimed in his interview with Wilkinson on The Project last Wednesday that Morrison had “bullied her out of her job” over the Cartier watch affair at Australia Post.
But in the months leading up to her own departure, Guthrie was on the receiving end of a sustained campaign of pressure from the Turnbull government about what it claimed was ABC bias. At one point during 2018, Fifield lodged six written complaints in five months direct to Guthrie.
Guthrie declared in her public submission to the parliamentary inquiry into her departure that the pressure reached a zenith after a meeting on June 15, 2018 between her boss, then-ABC chair Justin Milne with Turnbull and Fifield about the ABC’s political editor, Andrew Probyn.
Guthrie’s submission stated that Milne, who was a long-time friend of Turnbull, told her later that day: “Malcolm hates Probyn and you have to shoot him.” Milne also allegedly told Guthrie: “Andrew is a problem, we need to deal with this and get rid of him. You are putting the future of the ABC at risk as we are asking the government for half a billion dollars for Jetstream [a technology platform to host all ABC digital content]. We won’t get it by annoying the government.”
Fifield had also made separate complaints on the Turnbull government’s behalf about the reporting of Laura Tingle, Barrie Cassidy and Emma Alberici. There were also reports at the time that Turnbull had rung Milne in a “rage” about some of Alberici’s reporting.
But while Turnbull later said he had “obviously” spoken to Milne and others of his concerns about what he alleged were “poor standards of journalism”, he strongly denied asking for sackings. “The bottom line is I have never called for anybody to be fired. My concern has been on the accuracy and impartiality of news reporting.”
Turnbull last week vocally called for Holgate to be reinstated as Australia Post CEO. But by way of sharp contrast, he made no such calls in 2018 for Guthrie to return — even when Milne fell on his sword days after her exit.
Rudd’s brother spills on Kevin’s ‘empires’
Details have emerged about the Sky News documentary on Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd that has already prompted both to take to Twitter in high dudgeon.
The doco, called “Men in the Mirror: Rudd & Turnbull” — about the seemingly parallel lives of the two former PMs — will feature a star turn by Rudd’s older brother, Greg Rudd, a lobbyist based in Canberra who bears an uncanny resemblance to his younger sibling.
Diary is told the older Rudd takes plenty of time to detail his more famous brother’s early years (he intriguingly speaks of the future PM’s childhood infatuation with “empires”) as well as the impact on a young Kevin of the death of their father in 1969.
We’re told it was much harder to drum up interviews with close associates of Turnbull, such as Julie Bishop, who apparently declined to appear unless Malcolm participated.
But the documentary — which screens on Sunday week — is fronted by someone who does know Turnbull well: Sky’s Chris Kenny, who of course was the ex-PM’s one-time chief of staff.
Both Rudd and Turnbull have already taken slaps at the documentary. As soon as they received interview requests by producer Rebecca Le Tourneau in February, the pair couldn’t resist getting straight on to each other’s Twitter threads to lash out at the program for the benefit of their huge social media fan bases. Sky sends its thanks for the free publicity.
Jones meets Gladys for low-key 80th dinner
Sky’s Alan Jones might have seen in his 80th birthday last Tuesday with a mere bowl of soup and a day of hard work. But we’ve learnt he did allow himself a couple of small indulgences away from the media’s prying eyes later in the week.
First on Thursday night, after his final Sky show for the week, he was spotted enjoying a late dinner to mark the occasion with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, along with his close friend and Sky producer Jake Thrupp.
The dinner was at Matt Moran’s Aria restaurant — which has become something of a canteen for Jones over the years, located as it is just downstairs from his glamorous apartment in Sydney’s harbourfront Toaster building at Circular Quay. Diary hears a delivery of flowers from the Premier also turned up to mark Jones’s milestone the next day.
We’ve also heard a small celebration was put on for Jones by his beloved niece Tonia Taylor at his Elizabeth Farm property in Fitzroy Falls in the NSW southern highlands over the weekend. But the guest list for this celebration was a far cry from last year’s “Farewell to 2GB” star-studded cruise for Jones on Anthony Bell’s superyacht Ghost II on Sydney Harbour, which attracted front page treatment and was attended by ex-PM Tony Abbott, Mark Latham and a bevy of sports stars.
For his Elizabeth Farm gathering for his 80th on Saturday, only close family, as well as a handful of neighbours and close local friends attended an afternoon barbecue. We’re told Taylor invited virtually no big names other than Jones — helping to keep the celebrations low-key.
John Laws: ‘I’m here to stay’
As one radio giant celebrates becoming an octogenarian, another well into his 80s is making his keenly anticipated return to the airwaves after being off with illness for more than a month.
Diary can reveal that the Golden Tonsils himself, John Laws, 85, has been given the green light by doctors to resume his morning show with Bill Caralis’s Super Radio Network around the country from Monday.
And when we caught Lawsie on the mend late last week, he gave his own version of John Howard’s famous “I’ll stay as long as my party wants me” line.
“As long as the people want me to do it, I’ll do it,” Laws confided to Diary. “And I’ll be very happy. I love what I do.”
Brittany Higgins tops Meg, Harry and Dan
As this column predicted last week, Brittany Higgins on Tuesday announced the signing of a lucrative book deal with Penguin to write, as she dubbed it on Twitter, about “surviving a media storm that turned into a movement”.
And Diary can reveal the “storm” surrounding Higgins has indeed catapulted her into elite company in terms of her media profile. New research conducted for us shows that Higgins has this year surpassed everyone from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to Dan Andrews, Christian Porter and Annastacia Palaszczuk in terms of media prominence.
The detailed analysis by media intelligence agency Streem of major news websites shows that only three world leaders have rated above Higgins so far in 2021 when it comes to media prominence: PM Scott Morrison, US President Joe Biden and Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. What makes the meteoric rise in Higgins’ media profile more remarkable is that she gave all of her fellow members of the list a six-week head start.
Higgins’ name was virtually unknown in Australia until the story of her alleged rape in Parliament House was broken by Sam Maiden on news.com.au in mid-February.
Streem’s measure of prominence is based on name mentions in the top 100 words of stories that are featured in the top 10 positions on news sites.
On that basis, Higgins has been prominently name-checked more than 1000 times at the top of the country’s best-known sites — putting her above Porter (902), Prince Harry (895) and Andrews (776).
Given those remarkable numbers, it’s little wonder Penguin is stumping up a $250,000 advance for Higgins’ jottings.
Miles hung out to dry after Byron snaps
The hordes of paparazzi who congregate in Byron Bay are best known for shots of Hollywood celebrities, not topless male politicians.
But Steven Miles changed the snappers’ priorities after Brisbane’s Sunday Mail published front-page photos of Queensland’s Deputy Premier in various stages of undress while frolicking in the Byron surf.
The hypocrisy of Queensland’s chief anti-NSW campaigner abandoning the Sunshine State — after months of loudly pushing for more federal government support for Queensland tourism businesses — was lost on no one, including Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
All the Queensland TV networks and radio stations focused on the Miles row.
But for five long days after the photos appeared, Miles was nowhere to be found. And Palaszczuk was in no rush to defend him. As soon as the Sunday Mail front page was published, the Premier uncharacteristically hid from the media.
Palaszczuk — who built a landslide election victory last year on daily 9am press conferences — was suddenly unavailable on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Nor was there any statement of support from the Premier throughout the week for her beleaguered deputy — not so much as a “Steven deserves a holiday” statement.
Miles finally emerged from his rabbit hole on Friday, but it was to talk about a “new Brisbane precinct”. The Brisbane press gallery wasn’t having a bar of it. His escapades in Byron dominated the questions.
The defiant Deputy Premier claimed the story was a beat-up borne of the LNP’s “obsession” with him. “You won’t find anyone more committed to Queensland than me,” he declared. Except, of course, when he’s living it up in NSW.
Seven-foot Nigella on MasterChef menu
The ongoing international border closure has challenged Ten’s MasterChef as it tries to line up its usual array of cooking superstars to mentor its latest crop of contestants, Diary hears.
With none able to appear in the flesh in this year’s instalment of the show, from next Sunday viewers will start to see hologram-like appearances by global names such as Nigella Lawson, Yotam Ottolenghi and Heston Blumenthal from kitchens in COVID-ridden Europe.
MasterChef has got around the quandary by beaming the cooking stars in from their home kitchens via giant seven foot screens, to make it look — as much as possible — like they are in the same room as the contestants. And who wouldn’t want to watch a seven-foot Nigella?
Meanwhile, there were full-blown cat-and-mouse games between Nine and Ten after our item last week suggesting that the finale of Married at First Sight could clash with the launch of MasterChef on Tuesday night. But after the item appeared, Nine suddenly announced that it was launching its MAFS successor, Lego Masters, on Monday night — seemingly to get a one-day jump on the MasterChef debut. That prompted Ten to take swift action by bringing forward MasterChef’s launch to go head to head with Lego.
Let the games begin.
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