By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
The ABC’s official announcement of the departure of legendary Triple J musical director Richard Kingsmill was a lengthy herogram, the very least Aunty bosses could do for a bloke who has done more than anybody over the decades to bring some much-needed cool to the broadcaster.
But the party line from Ultimo glossed over what might be seen as very shabby treatment of “The King”.
Richard Kingsmill was made redundant by the ABC this week.
Only a small line in the reams of officially cleared quotes hinted at what went down behind the scenes, with Kingsmill talking about “how much I’ve still got left in the tank in continuing to contribute to the Australian music industry”.
Several ABC insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity because they want to keep their jobs, have told us that Kingsmill did not depart voluntarily and The King was made redundant as part of a restructure of the broadcaster’s youth network.
Looks like the ABC’s newish head of audio, Ben Latimer, wasn’t kidding when he told this masthead, why, just this month that changes were coming to the Js and the group of stations and websites would be “taking a better look at music preferences for younger audiences”.
Latimer, a former Radio Nova executive, still found himself having to explain at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday the unpopular decision to offload Kingsmill.
Latimer told the troops that Kingsmill’s role would be replaced with one more familiar to the commercial radio industry. Sounds ominous.
Kingsmill himself did not respond to requests for comment and when we asked the ABC official spokesters to tell us the full story of their veteran announcer’s departure, we got the following quotelet, which we reckon says plenty: “We’ve put out a release and don’t have further comment.”
BUS BROS
As cozzie livs bite hard in the run-up to the festive season, more and more Australians are leaning into their side hustles and even the nation’s $100 million senator – the Clive Palmer-bankrolled United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet – is having to step it up.
The Babet brothers bus ad.
Readers will recall that Babet claimed to have taken a pay cut when he entered the Senate, having to scrape by on $211,000 plus super – and was upfront about doing a little work on the side with the real estate agency he runs with his brother in Melbourne’s outer south-east.
Now locals are finding the Babet brothers are right up in their grills with an eye-catching advertising campaign featuring huge decals of Ralph and his brother Matt on the side of public buses traversing the highways and byways of the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Now, lots of politicians have a little something going on the side – many of them moonlight as residential landlords – but they generally don’t like to talk about it, much less put it on the side of the bus.
We asked the senator on Wednesday if he wanted to talk things over, and he responded with a 13-point manifesto on the “many” problems faced by our nation. But curiously, not a word about public transport …
UNION BLUES
CBD has been enthralled recently as the leadership of the public servants’ union, the CPSU, battled an internal insurgency from a group of members who believe their union’s bigwigs are just that little bit too cosy with Anthony Albanese’s Labor government.
The Members United group – a fascinating assortment of Greens, Labor types, party-non-specific lefties and at least one dead-set commo – forced the first contested elections for the union’s top jobs in 18 years.
But incumbent national secretary Melissa Donnelly was out of the blocks early, on Tuesday, claiming victory on her campaign Facebook page.
Melissa Donnelly, secretary of the Community Public Sector Union.Credit: Louie Douvis
“CPSU members voted for unity, for experience, expertise and stability. And they will not be let down,” she said.
When the Australian Electoral Commission coughed up the full results on Wednesday arvo, Donnelly’s team had indeed won all the major leadership positions, staying well and truly in control of the union.
But although the wins were decisive, the rebels polled respectable totals against their more established rivals, giving CBD grounds to suspect that we have not heard the last of this.
Members United leadership said it was disappointed with the result, but the fact that it had attracted the support of thousands of union members indicated there was an appetite for reform among the membership.
COUNCIL OF WAR
The Kingston council area occupies some prime political real estate, astride the Frankston train line which links the four “sandbelt” state seats of Carrum, Bentleigh, Mordialloc and Frankston, considered vital to the chances of the major parties every time Victoria votes.
Council elections in those parts are hotly contested and CBD’s informants report that troop build-ups are already under way, even though the good burghers of Kingston don’t go to the polls until next November.
A group of 30 or so players, many of them from the Labor-linked Kingston Action Team, which broke the Liberal hold on the council in 2016 and then won a majority in 2020, were spotted meeting at local watering hole Parkers Pavilion on Sunday.
Among the faces in the crowd was Steve Michelson, the former Bill Shorten staffer-turned businessman considered the mastermind of the 2016 and 2020 council elections triumphs.
We checked in with Steve, and he told us that this time round, the anti-Liberal forces would be called Progressives in the City of Kingston or PICK – geddit? – and they shared a determination to prevent the blue team re-establishing control of town hall.
“The Liberals are the David Copperfield of the Kingston Council – a star of the past that is nowhere to be seen,” Michelson told us.
We think he means the 1980s magic guy, not the Dickens character.
Anyway, we thought we’d better call a prominent local Liberal, to see if they were going to cop that sledge. But we haven’t heard back.
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