Joe Hildebrand: Why we’ll miss our daily scolding from Gladys Berejiklian

The cancellation of Gladys Berejiklian’s daily press conference has wreaked havoc in an already weird year, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Apparently the biggest event on Australian television this week was something that wasn’t on Australian television, namely the NSW Premier.

Yes, the mild-mannered Gladys Berejiklian caused the mother of all social media meltdowns when she announced that she would no longer be doing her regular Covid updates at 11am each day.

You know that lockdown’s gone on too long when the biggest crisis you face is that you’ll miss a daily scolding from a matronly politician.

But then the first thing Gladys did after saying she was no longer going to be holding a daily press conference was to hold a daily press conference. It’s fair to say 2021 has been a pretty weird year.

Joe Hildebrand says it’s an exciting time to be an Australian.

This has wreaked havoc for locked-down Sydneysiders who had built their late morning drinking routine around having to skol every time Gladys said “please know”.

It has also infuriated Victorians who have been struggling to come up with an equivalent of “Dan lied, people died” to apply to the NSW Premier. The problem is she just seems too darn nice, and “Gladys is a bad-ass” doesn’t pack the same emotional punch.

More importantly, the passing parade of all the state premiers over the past year and a half has been a great support and comfort to the most overlooked section of society of all: television producers.

Desperately trying to fill local content quotas with news stories and segments is a tough and thankless task when there is nothing to talk about except Covid-19. And so what better way to solve that problem than to just throw to live rolling coverage of a politician talking about nothing but Covid-19?

Now Gladys has pulled the rug out from under their feet, their only hope is for Dan Andrews to extend his pressers from 16 to 17 hours or the Queensland government to send another political booty call to the wrong number.

As a former PM once observed, there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.

Joe Hildebrand is on 2GB Nights with John Stanley on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8pm

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Why we’ll miss our daily scolding from Gladys Berejiklian