There’s no denying Leigh Sales is one of the greats of Australian political journalism. But when we saw the high-profile broadcaster would be hosting an internal ABC workshop titled Politics and Economics 101, we did a double-take.
Economics? A penny for the thoughts of Sales’ colleagues covering business and economics at the ABC – well, the numerate ones, anyway – who we bet were surprised, like us, to learn of the stalwart’s newfound expertise. We didn’t have to look too far to find evidence of why the decision might be a curious one.
Take, for example, a piece of analysis written by Sales on March 26, the day journalists at the ABC returned from a 24-hour strike, carrying the headline “From the Gulf War of the 1990s to the 2020 pandemic, global crises generally follow a predictable path”.
About a week later, the piece was updated with an editor’s note accounting for two errors. “This piece has been updated to reflect that inflation has been ‘mostly’ low during the past 30 years and to correct the date for the May 12 budget.”
But it looks like there were other quirks in the original that have also been quietly changed.
Like Sales’ initial characterisation of government debt, which was simplified, and a tweak to a sentence which suggested a “focus on returning the economy to surplus” constrained policy choices for governments of the post-GFC era, being changed to a “focus on returning the budget to surplus”.
Then there was a line on tighter GFC-era lending standards imposed on Australian banks that disappeared entirely. But given we aren’t economics specialists either, we cannot say for sure why this line was removed.
“Do you have gaps in your political or economics knowledge and feel embarrassed to ask?” read an invitation to ABC staff to the workshops scheduled to go ahead on Tuesday and Thursday.
“Wish someone could give you a potted history of 40 years of Australian politics in 20 minutes? Or feel your grasp of basic economic concepts like inflation, economic growth and GDP is sketchy?” Colour us amused!
Our efforts to get a better understanding of the changes to Sales’ article from the ABC’s media flack hit a dead end. No word on what, if any, feedback the column received from colleagues, why the editor’s note only selectively accounted for errors and not the other changes that were made.
Instead, the flack said: “Leigh Sales is one of Australia’s most experienced and respected journalists and it’s great to have her presenting this workshop.” We look forward to hearing all about it.
It’s a date
All the news around Kerry Stokes’ former consigliere and commercial director Bruce McWilliam has, of course, related to his growing stake in Southern Cross Media, which merged with Seven West Media this year.
But along with his media interests, McWilliam has also built significant wealth through a smattering of property investments, including a handful in Sydney’s gilded Point Piper, one of which is at the centre of a showdown between the long-time Stokes lieutenant and the valuer general.
McWilliam took the valuer general to court recently over its assessment of one of his Point Piper investment apartments, which he purchased in 2018 for $7.55 million, after the valuer general valued the site at $41.5 million. Why does it matter? Land tax.
Now we have a date for the showdown: June 17.
In court documents previously reported by this masthead, McWilliam argued because the apartments have no view of the Harbour Bridge or Opera House, the block is worth no more than $33.3 million.
Please, not another media startup
Just when we thought we were spoiled for choice when it comes to shrill media personalities, along comes Will Hayward, former CEO of Crikey-publisher Private Media, who on Tuesday announced he’s joining Luxury Escapes chief executive Adam Schwab and Catapult Sports chairman Adir Shiffman as co-founders of their awe-inspiringly lame podcast, The Contrarians.
What a triumvirate – there are too many greatest hits to choose from. But we’ll start with a recent one from Hayward, who went viral last year for a bizarre post on LinkedIn (where else?) containing a mystifying string of sentences that tried to argue the lack of work he was seeing on planes was an indicator of complacency in the management ranks of Australian business. It ended with this pearler: “And one final observation: I’m not a fan of the performative linkedin posts from male execs. But it is noticeable that, more often than not, the one person working on the plane is a woman. Maybe that’s just survivorship bias – that to get on the plane in the first place, she had to work harder than average,” Hayward wrote.
This is the man with the business plan.
Then there’s the two podcast hosts, Schwab and Shiffman. The former, we can only guess, sleeps to the sound of Scott Galloway’s dulcet tones with hopes the high-profile podcaster’s takes colonise his brain. The latter, meanwhile, is probably best known for losing a bitter legal fight with a mattress company he was invested in.
We’re just pleased to see Hayward, who according to the Financial Review has bought a 30 per cent stake in the business, supporting the under-represented Australian media cohort of middle-aged white guys arguing about tax online. We wish them well.
