From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …
After him, he’s got a press pass! Press gallery types have been rather unhappy of late as new screening arrangements mean they still get screened while plenty of others do not. Yesterday on Twitter, West Australian federal political reporter Nick Butterly lashed out at the “mind-blowingly stupid policy to drop x-rays for everybody except reporters entering Parliament house”. He then mused someone was “obviously concerned someone from the Fin Review might go nuts with a Glock”. The tweet prompted much hearty support from other press gallery journos. As one told Crikey: “Some journos are pissed and feel everyone else is getting in while we go through screening. Also, security guards are getting paid for doing almost nothing — just screening journos.”
We put the question to Parliament House, and a spokesman told us there’s no way everybody’s getting in unscreened, but there had recently been a policy change from the Department of Parliamentary Service to allow certain pass-holders to enter un-screened. The media still requires daily screening. Sorry, journos — what’s that about the pen being mightier anyway?
A wink to where it came from. “Grudge, grudge, wink, wink: Left guns for Abbott,” The Australian thundered on its front page. As David Crowe reported:
“Debate over the federal budget has been steered into a ditch as Tony Abbott’s critics go berserk over his every move — even a wink to a radio host.”
But hang on, didn’t Sky News actually “break” wink-gate wide open? That would be the news network preferred by Coalition types in Parliament House. ABC types were deflecting blame this morning, convinced it was Sky that started the ball rolling.
Adam Boland’s return to TV … delayed. When Adam Boland came to the Ten Network to launch the ill-fated Wake Up, he hired former Nine promo producer Rob McKnight as showrunner for its infomercial-laden sister Studio 10. An ill Boland quit, Wake Up was boned this week, but McKnight’s show has won a reprieve. Yesterday, McKnight said on Twitter that Boland — now studying and living away from the public gaze in Canberra — would appear on Studio 10 today to talk about “where it all went wrong for @WakeUp“.
This morning he failed to appear. Gossip hound Peter Ford wondered aloud whether there was “editorial interference”. To which McKnight insisted “I made the decision”. The pair got into more of a spat, but questions to McKnight on why he cancelled his mate’s appearance went unanswered. With everything going on at Ten, having a ex-staffer document the woes on their own network was probably never a good idea …
A break in the MH370 case? A seemingly well-informed anonymous tipster writes:
“MH370 could have had a neutral buoyancy if it hit the water intact and drifted a long way midway in the ocean depth column, making the Chinese hydrophone reception feasible.”
No, we don’t know what that means either.
X-Men. Murdochs, pere et fils, were in esteemed company at the premiere of X-Men: Days of Future Past …
Ms Tips admits to a spot of jealousy over Murdoch the younger’s bro-hug with Scottish hunk James McAvoy. But some commenters were less than excited by Rupert’s hobnobbing …
*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form
Well, after 6 years of “Grudge, grudge wank, wank: Murdoch guns for Left!”? But that was all Right?
I have now heard two versions of why Tony Abbott winked. They are mutually exclusive. One was quoted by the man himself and the other was related by Julie Bishop as what she had been told by the man himself. Bother were plausible and relatively innocuous. Both cannot be true. Two possibilities suggest themselves to me:
Either one is true and the man lies when the truth will serve or both are lies and he is really a liar with the sexual attitudes of a 16 year old boy.
MattH – I’ll go for the final evaluation, though 16 seems a bit too mature.
Neutral bouyancy means something neither floats nor sinks, it simply stays put in the water going neither up nor down once it reaches a certain depth. For shipping containers that go over the side for example the depth is just a foot or so under the surface.
What your informant is suggesting is that the aircraft may have entered the water intact, sunk to a certain depth and then stayed there at that depth and drifted along on sub surface currents, not having gone all the way to the bottom. Having drifted all that way it came into range of the Chinese “hydrophones”. Unfortunately I have no idea what depth neutral bouyancy for an intact B777 would be. It also doesn’t explain the detections made by the high tech pinger detector deployed from ANV Ocean Shield. Somehow I like to think that the latter device was more likely to have made a genuine detection than a microphone gaffer taped to the end of a broom handle and dunked into the water, which was the ingenious method used by the Chinese.
Are we going to get some discussion on Tony Shephards’s comment re the budget response? He reckons that sacrifices must be across the board and shared by all. That’s the issue of course, the pain is targeted. I guess he is one of Abbott’s pals who will escape with minimum pain. Makes me want to vomit.