The increasingly fiery blowtorch being applied by Brisbane’s major media outlets to Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government last week resulted in one of the quickest backflips in recent Queensland political memory.
Treasurer Cameron Dick – who famously in the lead up to the last Queensland election was caught out on national TV by Karl Stefanovic for not knowing the state’s debt levels – was talking tough on Tuesday when he stated in a press conference that there would be “no exemptions” among Queensland GPs in having to fork out for payroll tax.
Not surprisingly, that claim was seized on by both TV and print. But it was Brisbane’s Courier Mail which seemed to cause the most impact, coming out with the front page headline: “Treasurer not budging as doctors declare … YOU’LL PAY THE GP TAX”.
Diary is told that front page caused immediate alarm in the government’s William St offices from early on Wednesday. Dick, in full damage control mode, was on Twitter bright and early at 7.13am that day to lash out at the headline. “Today’s Courier Mail front page doesn’t accurately represent what I said at a press conference yesterday,” he tweeted. “The Queensland Revenue Office is working with peak bodies representing doctors to find a solution to this issue. The journalists who were present clearly understood this.”
But what a difference 48 hours makes. On Friday, on the front page of the newspaper he had so loudly canned just two days earlier, came a very different scoop that seemingly contradicted everything Dick had said in his tweet and press conference: Under the headline, “PATIENT WIN ON GP TAX”, the Courier Mail triumphantly announced that Dick had briefed Palaszczuk late on Thursday, and that they had jointly decided to defer any tax changes on GPs until mid-2025.
How’s that for a triple backflip with pike? Even the Russian judge would surely give it a 9.9!
No coincidence that Dick’s new date is conveniently a few months after the next state election in October 2024.
With an increasingly aggressive media pack smelling blood, and struggling poll numbers, it’s unlikely to be the last Olympic-sized backflip that an increasingly nervous Palaszczuk or Dick will perform before October next year, as they seek a fourth term.
And as all the drama unfolded last week, watching on and quietly soaking up the drama from the sidelines was none other than deputy premier Steven ‘Giggles’ Miles, the Labor left’s preferred candidate to succeed Palaszczuk, and Dick’s only credible rival.
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Ex-Q+A host coy on ‘private’ Albo meeting
Did the ABC’s best known power couple, 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson and former Q+A host Tony Jones, pay a private visit to Anthony Albanese at Kirribilli House during the summer break?
Diary received tip-offs from well-placed sources that suggested this very scenario had taken place in recent weeks. But when we put the question last week directly to Jones – famously one of the toughest interrogators on Australian TV – he was uncharacteristically coy on the subject.
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” he told Diary mysteriously. “We’re in the territory of private conversations remaining private.”
Not surprisingly, that answer – containing no firm denial – only served to pique Diary’s interest, given our mail was strong that the intriguing catch-up had taken place. So we followed up by putting to Jones a more specific version of events that had been suggested: that Jones and Ferguson had actually visited at Albanese’s request to test the PM about his performance on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.
In response to this one, Jones’s reply was more resistant, saying he “wouldn’t assume that as correct”, and that talk like this “can be completely off-kilter”.
So if the ABC power couple did have a meeting with the PM, but the voice wasn’t the focus, what was discussed, we asked? “What I do in my private world is not really public,” Jones told us. “I don’t want to particularly comment on what happens in my private meetings. That’s up to someone else to talk about if there were any truth to it.” A response that even some of Jones’s toughest political adversaries during his days of hosting Q+A would be proud of!
At this point, it was Jones’s turn to grill Diary on who was “feeding” us with this information. On this subject, it was our turn to be coy. But we assured him our interest was purely for an item in this column. Jones replied: “In the private realm of my life, there are some things I choose to keep private. I don’t know where that came from, and I have nothing to add.”
We’ll take that one as a comment, Tony.
Diary also called the Prime Minister’s office both on Friday and Sunday in an attempt to shed some more light on whether Ferguson and Jones popped in on the PM over the Christmas/new year holiday period, and what any meeting was about. We received no reply by the time of going to print.
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Why Fitzy and Lisa cancelled on Australia Day
One of the Australian media’s most famous annual bashes appears to have disappeared from the calendar – at least for 2023. Peter FitzSimons and Lisa Wilkinson’s Australia Day party was not held last month, leaving the pair’s nearest and dearest wondering whether it is now off for good.
Confidantes of the couple confirmed the bash fell victim to what they said – borrowing from the late Queen Elizabeth – an “annus horribilis” for the republican couple.
One friend said the couple were “bruised”.
“They feel they’ve had the worst year of their lives: Fitzy with the controversy over his Jacinta Price interview, and Lisa, who felt she was unfairly targeted by sections of the media during the whole Brittany Higgins affair,” the friend said.
“So, as a result, they’re not having a party.”
Parties at FitzSimons and Wilkinson’s harbourside mansion in Cremorne have been a favourite of this column and its readers, with tales of A-list attendees such as PM Anthony Albanese, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, NSW premier-in-waiting Chris Minns and actors Simon Baker, Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward.
The highlight last year was an Indigenous performer reciting the Uluru Statement by heart.
But one notable omission got tongues wagging last year – the banishment of Stan Grant. The ABC’s Q+A host had ruffled the couple’s feathers in 2021 when he wrote a chapter for The Australian’s summer novel, Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her?
Grant made headlines by describing Fitzy and Lisa’s annual Australia Day bash in the novel as “a woke lefty love-in”, full of “journos, actors, writers, a couple of ex-Wallabies, a few washed-up politicians … and a former managing director of the ABC”.
One of Grant’s lines particularly irritated the couple by describing alleged contents of their house: “There were dot paintings on the wall, a photo with their arms around Cathy Freeman at Sydney Olympic Stadium and a framed copy of Paul Keating’s Redfern Statement signed by the last great Australian Prime Minister himself.”
Wilkinson is in the midst of her longest break at Ten since she joined the network five years ago, after announcing her shock departure from The Project in November. Diary understands that while she is still on leave, she is weighing up her next ‘project’ with the network.
With Wilkinson unlikely to put her hand up for Ten’s reality tentpoles like The Bachelor or jungle duty on I’m A Celebrity, her most likely next move is said to involve some form of interview special for Ten.
While she weighs up her future, she continues to collect a rumoured seven-figure salary under the watertight contract renewal she signed with Ten back in 2021.
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‘Tougher’ Fordham lands first NSW leaders’ debate
The NSW election campaign is not yet formally underway, but 2GB’s top rating breakfast host Ben Fordham has managed to cleverly goad NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Labor leader Chris Minns into committing to the first debate between the pair ahead of the March 25 poll.
Diary has learnt the debate will take place on Thursday at 7am.
Insiders at 2GB say that off-air, in response to offers from the Fordham camp to host a debate, Perrottet had said he didn’t want to debate Minns and had given a firm no.
The Liberal camp subsequently came back with an offer of deputy leader and Treasurer Matt Kean for a debate, which Minns refused.
Amid this stalemate, Fordham had one more crack, asking Perrottet in an interview on Tuesday about whether he’d conduct a debate with Minns. Fordham was audibly surprised when Perrottet replied, with some bravado, that he would debate Minns “any day of the week”.
The debate coup is part of an apparent commitment by Fordham in 2023 to double down on hard news, amid perceptions internally at 2GB that the ABC has ceded some of the hard news territory in the breakfast slot with the more whimsical James Valentine occupying the slot. There is a belief at 2GB that it can win more talk radio listeners from the ABC in a year when news is front and centre once more.
One 2GB insider has told Diary that Fordham had put in more work than normal in the off-season, in recognition of the opportunity presented by big set piece news events in 2023. “It’s such an important year for our listeners,” the insider said. “There’s a NSW election next month and a referendum later this year.”
It has already been a fast start to the talk radio ratings year, which kicked off in mid-January with an apparent end to PM Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon period, amid his struggles with unrest in Alice Springs and the voice debate.
Some insiders at 2GB have also noted that Fordham has been notably tougher on interview subjects from both sides of politics than in 2022. An interview with Albanese in his first week back in January lashed out at perceived failures in the PM’s performance on the voice, while Fordham was also tough on Perrottet in last week’s interview and also included several scathing editorials about the NSW government’s performance.
The radio station appears to be betting that a new, tougher Fordham is the formula to lock down Sydney’s number one breakfast slot in 2023 from his main challenger, KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O.
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Carr and Richo’s private summit
The confidence of Labor heavyweights ahead of next month’s NSW state election is proving hard to suppress, despite the fact the campaign is not yet underway.
On Friday night, Diary’s spies overheard two still clearly engaged Labor figureheads: Bob Carr, the last party leader to win government from opposition in NSW, and Sky News host and former powerbroker Graham ‘Richo’ Richardson, in deep conversation at trendy inner-eastern Sydney diner Baccomatto Osteria in Randwick.
According to our sources from the night, the two legendary Labor figures – who attended the private dinner with their respective spouses Helena Carr and Amanda Richardson – were supremely confident of a Chris Minns victory, as they also talked of “nine seats” that Labor can win to ensure majority government at next month’s election.
While the pair both sang the praises of the performance of Minns, they apparently also agreed that the Libs would still be odds-on favourites to win next month, were it Gladys Berejiklian, and not Dominic Perrottet, contesting the election for the government. But with Berejiklian safely out of the picture, they appeared to see few obstacles to Minns doing a Carr and kicking the Liberals out of power.
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From Canberra to courtside: JA’s tennis return
Many long-term politicians struggle to find a job after leaving the firestorm of politics. But not if you’re the multi-talented ex-Liberal Member for Bennelong, John ‘JA’ Alexander.
Unlike fellow departed MPs, Alexander has a unique skill to fall back on in his post-political career, as the world’s former No.8-ranked tennis player and three-time Australian Open semi-finalist.
And months after retiring from ex-PM John Howard’s one-time seat of Bennelong after 12 years representing the area, Alexander, 71, put his tennis expertise to good use at the recently completed Australian Open.
Your columnist picked up on the mellifluous tones of Alexander on TV coverage throughout the grand slam tournament in commentary on some of its biggest matches, including two of the stirring victories of the eventual shock Australian winners of the men’s doubles, Rinky Hijikata and Jason Kubler.
For 25 years from the mid-1980s to 2010, Alexander was famously the voice of Seven’s ‘Summer of Tennis’, as it was then called, culminating in the Australian Open, at a time when Kerry Stokes’s Seven Network had a lock on the rights.
But he had no choice but to give his prized commentary gig up when he won Bennelong from Labor’s ex-ABC presenter Maxine McKew at the famous 2010 ‘hung parliament’ election.
But at the 2023 Australian Open, it was just like old times, months after JA’s departure from politics. When Diary reached Alexander last week, he confirmed that he was back in the commentary box after 12 years of watching the sport purely as an ordinary spectator.
He says he signed up as a commentator with Craig Tiley’s Tennis Australia, and he now sees the gig as a permanent fixture. “I was ready to dive back in,” he told us. “The game is essentially the same – only the stars change, and fashion goes in and out.”
Was he given a performance review by Tiley on his return to commentary? “I haven’t had any complaints, so I trust they’re happy and I’m certainly very happy working with them.”
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