If you make a really big clanger in your job, the company you work for might choose to fire you: that's how it works. Not if you're Sarah Murdoch, it doesn't. If you're Sarah Murdoch, you fire the company. Yesterday The Diary heard that Foxtel, which is partially owned by the Murdoch family, had, at her insistence, dumped Granada Media Australia, the production company behind the past six series of Australia's Next Top Model - which Murdoch presents and executive-produces - to elope with a new production company for the show's seventh series. Which new production company will get the gig wasn't known, but the favourite, we were told, was Shine, which is owned by sister-in-law Elisabeth Murdoch. We called Granada, where a spokesperson couldn't confirm that it had lost the show. We put in two calls to Foxtel, explaining what we were calling about, but no one called back. Then we got hold of Murdoch, who confirmed the change in production company and gave us this statement: ''Granada produced Australia's Top Model for six years. I worked with them for two years. They are a very talented and hard working crew. But after what happened this year I thought very hard about it and decided it was probably time for a change.''

What happened, is, of course, ''Gaffegate''. Readers will recall that on the final live episode of the show, Murdoch momentarily panicked after a breakdown in communication with the backstage production team, and announced the wrong model as the series winner. It was a simple, embarrassing but really rather exciting misunderstanding that had everyone blushing to their shoulder blades but also yielded for the show a formidable boost in publicity - such a boost, in fact, that people speculated that the gaffe was planned. But since that night everyone had forgotten about it: everyone, apparently, except Murdoch, who, perhaps fearful of a blemish to her reputation, may have found a novel way to communicate that she thinks the gaffe was not her fault - by ditching Granada. Several people are expected to lose their jobs over the move - though several others will presumably gain employment. Australian TV is a small pond. And in that pond, we are told, there is much concern by what appears to be an ominous show of power by someone with ambitions to join the school of big fish. What with Sarah on the move, husband Lachlan now involved with Network Ten, Elisabeth at Shine and Grandpa Rupert still plumbing the depths, it's as if everywhere you turn there's a Murdoch whose flank you can run into, or whose fin you might tweak, at your peril. But that's the Australian media. 'Twas ever thus.

ANKLE BLIGHTERS



IF you see our state Parliament as getting lamer all the time, then you're right. As has been reported, Clover Moore fell off her bike a while back, hurt her ankle, and now sits on the crossbench at the front of the chamber, with her cast off, but still unable to make it up to her usual spot up the back. Yesterday she was joined in the House of the Hobbled by George Souris, the opposition spokesman on tourism, who sat on the leather bench to the right with his right hoof raised on chair. What with Kristina Keneally escaping injury in a cycling injury on Friday when the handlebars, in a desperate bid for a life under their own control, departed her bike, we were concerned that Souris might have come a cropper on a bike, too. ''No, I've had a total ankle replacement because of an old rugby injury'' he told The Diary, adding ''it's funny, as it turns out Clover and I have the same surgeon at St Vincent's.'' Though their injuries are similar, their attitude to bikes could not be more different. Souris, who has four more weeks with his leg up in a moulded boot, told us, ''I said to Clover, 'I won't be risking it on any of her bloody cycleways!''

LEARNING A HARD WAY



IT'S good to see people taking things on board. Literally. P&O has bought 50 copies of Abandoned: The Sad Death of Dianne Brimble by the Herald's crime editor, Geesche Jacobsen, with plans to distribute them among new staff. A P&O spokeswoman, Sandy Olsen, said the death of 42-year-old Brimble less than 24 hours after she boarded the Pacific Sky for a cruise in 2002 transformed the way the industry operated. ''Since that time we've also grown as a business quite dramatically and we've got many new people here and we've got to make sure that the death of Mrs Brimble and the issues associated with it were well understood and the lessons learned by our people,'' Ms Olsen said.



STAY IN TOUCH . . .



WITH THE IRON LADY OF THE LOOS