Crikey

Embracing their vill-AI-n era When marie claire Australia published an explainer of the various characters in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey, it became painfully clear a reporter didn’t just write the piece.

We finally have to hand something to Angus Taylor. After months of warnings that he needed to “stand up” to One Nation, or risk his party “dying in his arms”, the Liberal leader last night took the fight to Pauline Hanson, declaring her party a “column of smoke” with “no credible plan”. Perhaps Angus Taylor finally got through to him.

Opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson had a brilliant idea to humiliate the government over this week’s Telstra outage. What could better reveal Labor’s mishandling of another telco crisis than calling triple zero “a couple of [times]” to “test” whether it was working? Oh, that’s right: so many things would be better. Because, as a moment’s reflection or, failing that, a quick Google would tell you, that’s a pretty terrible idea.

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Peter has been specialising in crisis communications for 24 years. This follows a career in journalism that spanned three decades. Before founding the communication company Wilkinson Group, and later Wilkinson Butler, Peter developed a career as a newsman and investigative journalist, working on programs including earlier versions of the ABC’s 7.30 and Four Corners, and Channel Nine’s ACA and 60 Minutes.

Anthony Albanese has learned the first rule of modern politics: never reveal you possess a human body with sexual organs. The prime minister went on Nikki Osborne’s Bush Deep podcast, played “shag, marry, date” on Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore, and eventually went with Kylie for “all of the above”.

TAYLOR FINALLY HAS SOMETHING TO SAY We again have a morning dominated by three main stories. Today it’s Coalition leader Angus Taylor at last saying something of significance about One Nation, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia and the continuation of strikes between the US and Iran. Last night, Taylor gave a speech to the Sydney Institute and rubbished One Nation’s economic plans for the country.

The last thing you see before entering the Today show soundstage at Channel Nine’s North Sydney headquarters is Karl Stefanovic, captured in silhouette in a towering photograph, striding onto the set of Australia’s longest-running breakfast television program. A photograph of Karl Stefanovic in Channel Nine’s North Sydney headquarters before the Today set (Image: Supplied) For years, this image reflected Stefanovic’s status inside Nine.

How did Karl Stefanovic rise to the pinnacle of TV stardom, and what does his move to even smaller screens say about the current state of Australian media? Tina Quinn joins the podcast to go behind-the-scenes of her expansive article for Crikey, in which she speaks to a long list of insider sourceswho worked alongside Stefanovic — from junior producers all the way up to senior management — about how he really got to the top.

Barnaby Joyce’s unfounded speculation about the Telstra outage being caused by malicious Chinese interference was as irresponsible as it was predictable. Perhaps the one useful aspect of his comments was that they exposed that Telstra isn’t the only network with faulty nodes. Australia’s media and political systems have also malfunctioned in the last day and a half.