Kerry O’Brien threatened to upstage the actual winners at the Walkley Awards on Thursday night, with a blistering speech warning of creeping authoritarianism in Australia. The ABC veteran, who is also chair of the Walkley Foundation, used his address at the ceremony in Sydney to eviscerate the government’s record on press freedom.

“Authoritarianism unchecked can lead to fascism,” he said. “Fortunately in this country we’re a long way from that yet, but a study of history amply demonstrates how fascism begins.”

The Morrison government, he said, had resisted the industry’s appeal for “fundamental protections of a free and robust press to be enshrined in legislation at the very least – not placing journalists above the law, but enshrining in a practical and meaningful way their special place as a crucial pillar of democracy”.

This government must be held to account on press freedom. It's not to be taken lightly | Kerry O'Brien Read more

O’Brien denounced the recent raids on journalists at the ABC and News Corp, saying the “spirit of freedom of information laws, if not the letter, is being abused”, and reminded his industry peers that Julian Assange was “mouldering in a British prison”.

Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon from the Herald Sun won the top prize on the night, the Gold Walkley, for revelations about the Lawyer X scandal. Memorable wins also included Mick Barnes, the 82-year-old author of the Good Weekend piece Counting down the days in God’s waiting room, which explored life in a retirement home. Barnes won the short feature category and had much of the crowd on their feet as he accepted his prize.

The most surprised winner of the night was surely the winner of the comment and opinion award, Jan Fran, who won for her SBS video commentary series The Frant. The former SBS presenter had captioned an Instagram post on the way to the ceremony “off to lose a Walkley Award”, and turned to the audience with a huge, surprised (happy) shrug when she won.

ABC Melbourne breakfast duo chopped

Comedian and performer Sammy McMillan, who goes by the stage name Sammy J, will host ABC Radio Melbourne’s breakfast show from 2020, replacing hosts Jacinta Parsons and Sami Shah. Parsons and Shah replaced controversial host Red Symons after he was dumped from the job after 15 years in December 2017. While Symons maintained more than 10% of the Melbourne radio market, Shah and Parsons in the same 5.30am to 7.45am timeslot attracted just 7% of Melbourne’s radio market.

Parsons and Shah will remain at the station in other roles. In a statement published on Twitter, Shah said the past two years had been an absolute thrill, and that the best part was “all the people of colour and immigrants who told me they were proud to hear one of their own in this prominent role. What I thought was just a radio show meant so much to so many, and that means the world to me.”

In a statement, ABC Melbourne manager Dina Rosendorff said the balance between existing and new audiences would be a focus for the time slot in the new year. Sammy J is known for his political satire, including the series he created and hosted, Sammy J’s Playground Politics, and for his stand-up musical comedy.

No climate deniers at News Corp?

There was much puzzlement last week after Rupert Murdoch assured his company’s AGM that at News Corp, there were “no climate change deniers around I can assure you”.

Some wondered if Murdoch actually read his own Australian newspapers, where many columnists consistently question whether the world’s scientific institutions might be wrong about humans causing climate change. Indeed, the very next day the Australian’s editorial pages carried a piece from mining industry figure and geologist Prof Ian Plimer, who claimed there was no evidence that humans caused climate change, the rapid and observed polar ice melt was “unsubstantiated”, and all climate models had failed.

Plimer’s column found an audience at Climate Feedback – a fact-checking service populated by experts from some of the world’s leading research institutions. Ten scientists, from places like the British Antarctic Survey, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, eviscerated Plimer’s column.

Dr Twila Moon, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, summarised: “This article is a laundry list of falsehoods, misleading examples, and facts taken out of context. It is appalling that such a blatantly false article can be published in any credible news outlet today.”

Plimer’s statement that “there are no carbon emissions” was “so absurd as to almost defy comment,” said one scientist. How about Plimer’s claim that it had “never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming”?

“Literally the whole field of climate science for the last 30 years has shown this,” wrote Dr Alexis Berg, of Princeton University.

Climate Feedback gave Plimer’s article its lowest available “scientific credibility” rating of -2, or “very low”.

This was the fourth time Climate Feedback had examined a Plimer polemic in The Australian, and the fourth time they’d rated the article’s credibility as “very low”.

Catalano’s new crew

Media mogulette Antony Catalano has turned to some of the media industry’s familiar faces as he plots his next move with the Australian Community Media empire he and investor Alex Waislitz bought from Nine a few months ago.

The Cat with nine lives has hired Nick Chan, who was chief operating officer at Kerry Stokes’ Seven empire as part of a cost-cutting effort before doing a stint as chief operating officer at Bauer, the publisher of everything from Women’s Day to Farms & Farm Machinery, before his departure in 2017.

Catalano has also taken on former Fairfax Media veteran Robert Whitehead, who was last seen at the media group running marketing for its metropolitan mastheads before leaving in a 2013 purge that also claimed the scalp of former Playboy exec Jack Matthews.

In an email to staff, ACM’s chief executive, Allen Williams, said the pair would be working with him “on planning the next phase of ACM’s strategy and transformation” – words that will no doubt strike fear into the hearts of workers fearing a wave of cost-cutting.

Chan is an old hand at slashing costs, even if his personal spending has sometimes raised eyebrows.

While at Seven, Chan spent $130,000 on his corporate credit card over three years – a tidbit that emerged in early 2017 as the media company was mired in an ugly battle with employee Amber Harrison over her affair with then-CEO Tim Worner.

Uhlmann comes full circle

“Imagine what could be achieved if PM&C focused on issues that matter to most Australians,” Nine’s political editor Chris Uhlmann tweeted this week, linking to a Nine newspapers story about public servants scrambling to react to the brewing outrage about a sign on a toilet door in PM&C that encouraged people to use the bathroom that best fits their gender identity.

Chris Uhlmann (@CUhlmann) Imagine what could be achieved if PM&C focused on issues that matter to most Australians https://t.co/MUwybz8c1E

There was one small irony here: it was an issue Uhlmann himself had kicked off.

In August, Uhlmann tweeted a photo of the sign, which had been put up in PM&C and a number of other departments.

Chris Uhlmann (@CUhlmann) Meanwhile at the Barton offices of Prime Minister and Cabinet... pic.twitter.com/oVL9f0xrXe

The tweet was picked up by 2GB’s Ben Fordham, who asked prime minister Scott Morrison about the signs. The signs were later removed, at the PM’s request.

Documents obtained by Sydney Morning Herald and Age reporter Michael Koziol showed the department working late into the night on the night Uhlmann tweeted the photo, with the chief people officer in the department clearing her diary to deal with the scandal, as the department fielded several media requests seeking comment.

Imagine what the department could have been doing instead if Uhlmann had just ignored the signs?

Graham Readfearn, Ben Butler, Josephine Tovey, Josh Taylor and Melissa Davey contributed to this column.

