Sky News Australia will launch a new podcast hosted by Peta Credlin and her old boss, former prime minister Tony Abbott, as part of an effort from the duo to help conservative politics “fight back” in Australia.
The podcast forms part of Sky News Australia’s expanded audio effort launched in recent months, and is likely to be the network’s debut program tailor-made for the medium, joining a slate of podcasts that offer audiences repurposed audio tracks from the network’s 24-hour news channel.
In a joint interview with The Australian published late Sunday, Abbott said he aims to use the podcast to “fight back” against claims conservatism is withering away in Australia. Credlin took the same line, referring to Abbott numerous times as “the boss”.
“What I got frustrated with post the Morrison era is all these people writing, ‘Oh, it’s the end of conservative politics, we’ve got to junk Menzies, we’ve got to move to the so-called centre,’ and all that rubbish,” Credlin said. “They don’t know the political history. They don’t understand these aren’t new challenges for conservatism.”
The show’s soft announcement comes just weeks after Sky News Australia signed a deal with Lachlan Murdoch’s Nova Entertainment, which has seen a live audio stream of Sky’s 24-hour news channel, along with a sweep of on-demand audio.
The deal will see Sky News reach a further 6.4 million listeners, according to the two companies. Whether or not there’s an audience for Abbott and Credlin’s new venture, however, remains to be seen.
The latest Australian edition of the annual Digital News Report, published by the University of Canberra in June, placed young millennial and gen Z listeners among the largest consumers of podcasts in the country, many of them men.
Over the past year, 71% of gen Z men reported to have engaged with podcasts, with 45% of gen Z women also tuning in. Some 67% of millennial men said they were listening to podcasts, along with 48% of the generation’s women, the report found.
Meanwhile, 52% of gen X men and 25% of gen X women said they were listening to podcasts over the same period, numbers that fell dramatically among baby boomers. Among them, just 16% of men and 12% of women were buying in.
Sky News Australia will no doubt hold hope for an unlikely bond with gen Z’s men as they come of age, and skew increasingly conservative, reflected neatly by the most popular news podcasts over the past 12 months. Two of the Digital News Report’s top 10 news podcast spots were held by right-wing shock jocks: Spotify’s The Joe Rogan Experience and The Daily Wire’s Jordan B Peterson in second and ninth, respectively.
Whoever Abbott and Credlin do end up reaching aren’t likely to hear much conflict. The pair, prone to pumping up each other’s tires, find themselves aligned on most issues.
“You’re probably a bit more socially conservative. I think some of our social values would be simpatico, but you’re a little more black and white than I am; I see a bit more grey in the social stuff,” Credlin said to Abbott during their interview.
“But certainly in the economic conservatism, and all the other tenets of conservative faith, we’re pretty much on the same page.”
Will you be tuning in to the Credlin and Abbott podcast? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I find it entirely laudable that Credlin & Abbott have taken on the thankless task of perpetuating right-wing nutbaggery…………..
………..the decision to wholeheartedly embrace complete irrelevance should always be made consciously rather than by accident.
Worse, me thinks this is part of the development of an ‘architecture of influence’ replicating US GOP etc. mid western strategy, having given up on urban voters.
The target? Accessing, taking over and influencing ABC’s regional audiences whether FTA TV, radio or online; or at least crowding out the ABC.
Further, citing ‘The Daily Wire’s Jordan B Peterson’ which not only far right, but suggests Koch influence in support (‘Daily’ Wire, Caller, Signal & Sceptic), Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship ARC of which Abbott et al. advise and also the US/UK others too, linked to Koch:
https://arcforum.site/advisory-board
One does not think they will be satisfied till they can takeover the ABC audience and run it like its equivalent, not BBC, but state MTV influence in Hungary, where all the above visit?
I hope he doesn’t get stage fright as he did with Mark Riley form Channel 7 a few years ago.
Bit rich for Credlin to say that people want them (presumably the LIBs) to ‘ junk Menzies’. Menzies approach to government was junked by John Howard back in the ’90s. Australian politics has shifted so far now that it is arguable that Menzies would be to the left of the Labor Party on social and economic policy, and there would be negligible overlap with current LNP positions.
If Menzies was re-incarnated tomorrow, the LNP would have him nailed to a cross by lunchtime.
Just goes to show that some things are less than the sum of their parts.
Tones the boss? That’s meant in jest surely? Everyone knows Credlin wore the daks in that duo.
You bet you are.
Finally, they’re getting a room.
“Fight back” was the name Abbott gave to Hewson’s election manifesto when he was an adviser to Hewson in 1992. His book was called “Battlelines”. He has also described Credlin as a “fierce political warrior”. And there’s you problem with this duo right there – they see politics as war, and everyone who disagrees as “the enemy”. Straight out of the Newt Gingrich playbook.
I’d rather stick pins in my own ears than listen to those two – and I’m a Baby Boomer who listens to a lot of podcasts.