‘A waste of six minutes’: Virginia Trioli on political interviews

“The usual approach to political interviewing doesn’t work any more,” says former ABC News Breakfast co-anchor Virginia Trioli, who takes over from retiring ABC Melbourne morning host Jon Faine on Monday. “Politicians will say the same bullshit over and over while the viewers are at home screaming, ‘It’s not true!’ And there’s no value in that. It’s just a waste of six minutes.”

Virginia Trioli will encourage a 'contest of ideas' on her ABC Melbourne morning program.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

This is no accident – in media training seminars, politicians are taught to deflect questions with a three-step response.

First, they’ll acknowledge the query (“That’s a good point you raise, Virginia”), then pivot (“but the most important thing is”) to a party-approved message (“the new jobs we’re creating”). “Without giving away all my secrets, I’ll try different approaches to get that person positively engaged in, say, the interrogation of a policy,” Trioli says. “I’ve deliberately made these interviews more conversational.”

There was some real sneering and snobbery inside the ABC. They couldn’t see how you could do breakfast differently.

Virginia Trioli

We’re in Trioli’s inner-Melbourne home, where she lives with journalist husband Russell Skelton and their seven-year-old son. On the coffee table is a plate of warm Anzac biscuits she made from a recipe sent by News Breakfast viewer Betty Firth. “This is why I’m excited about going back to radio,” Trioli says. “There is no closer community [in media] than a radio community.”

Trioli began her journalism career at The Age in 1989. Following a stint at The Bulletin magazine, she replaced ABC Melbourne drive host Terry Laidler in 2000, then moved to Sydney in 2005 to present ABC’s morning shift. “In the early days, I was reluctant to give too much of myself on air,” she says. “But life leaves its scars – you have successes, failures, missteps, tragedies and joys – and that softens you as a person. You think you know everything when you’re young but as you get older, you realise we’re all just ordinary schmucks muddling along.”

In 2003, shortly before her wedding, a producer suggested a segment in which listeners offered marriage advice. Trioli baulked, fearing it would sound corny. “But it was quite beautiful and emotional,” she says. “I had men telling me to never let the sun set on an argument and 84-year-old Marge saying, ‘Make sure you have lots of sex, Virginia!’ It was a great moment of connection.”

While other capital city ABC stations air Richard Fidler’s Conversation Hour at 11am, Trioli will continue hosting a Melbourne-only version this year. (ABC is yet to confirm if this will continue in 2020.) “We’ll have artists and writers and musicians – but we might also have people you violently disagree with,” Trioli says, “Jon Faine always talks about the ‘contest of ideas’ and I’ve told him I’ll be taking that phrase. As a community, we’re getting very bad at having this contest. We’ve shored ourselves up into ideological silos and we’re just shouting at each other across the parapets.”

This isn’t helped by thin-skinned journalists who get into slanging matches on Twitter.

Credit: Matt Golding

“We can be so precious about this,” Trioli says. “I have the most privileged job in the world; I ring people up and ask impertinent questions and expect them to answer – so if someone criticises the way I’ve phrased a question, it’s incumbent upon me to think about it.”

When News Breakfast launched in 2008, Trioli made a point of phoning viewers who’d rung the switchboard to complain. “That’s what Oprah Winfrey did in the early days,” she says. “Candour is disarming and if you want a proper relationship with someone, you have to be vulnerable and learn how to listen.”

Still, some colleagues opposed the very idea of Aunty competing in a genre known for its Hollywood gossip reports and people in cow costumes handing out cash. “There was some real sneering and snobbery inside the ABC,” Trioli says. “They couldn’t see how you could do breakfast differently.”

They needn’t have worried: early episodes show Trioli and her co-hosts in matching black suits and furrowed brows. “We looked like a bunch of funeral directors. We just had to push on and re-calibrate whenever it got too serious or too silly.”

Initially, the program’s ratings were dismal – it averaged just 8000 city viewers upon its debut – but in April, Trioli and co-host Michael Rowland beat Nine’s Today for the first time. (Nine is the owner of this masthead.) Naturally, she was tempted to stay put and savour their success. “But a few people told me that over the years I said I’d love to take over from Jon Faine if he retired,” she says. “I don’t remember saying that. It’s interesting how these moments of truth come out when you’re not paying attention.”

More than 14 years have passed since Trioli did full-time radio in Melbourne: “The city has changed a lot. It’s more complicated and more crowded and I want to address all these challenges. This isn’t a show for just one part of Melbourne – it’s for every single part.”

Mornings with Virginia Trioli starts 8.30am Monday on ABC Melbourne.

Virginia Trioli on…

Alan Jones: His success will forever bewilder me because I just don't appreciate, like or understand his style of radio.
Town planning: We talk about Melbourne’s leafy green suburbs but they’re only green because someone planted those damn trees! New buildings should be required to have a relationship with the street so we’re not creating wind tunnels and stripping out greenery and forcing people to use air conditioning all summer.
Guilty pleasures: I don’t believe in ‘guilty pleasures’ but I do love Survivor and Say Yes To The Dress on Foxtel. When my husband sees me watching it the look on his face says, “Will I have to divorce you?”
Being labelled “ambitious” and “career-focused”: No one describes men that way but they always talk about high-profile women in those terms. It’s not a compliment, it’s a coded way of saying, “That’s not how a woman should be.” I’ve turned down plenty of jobs that [would have advanced my career].”