The union movement launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign on Sunday, its biggest in a decade, with the simple message that big business has too much power and that working people must “change the rules” to get better pay and more secure jobs.

Do you care how much the person delivering your dinner gets paid? | Tanya Plibersek Read more

The TV ads created for the Australian Council of Trade Unions have the tagline: “It’s time to change the rules.”

But the expensive and well-planned campaign to appeal to Australian workers hit a snag when billboard company APN Outdoor changed its mind and refused to carry the ads on the back of buses across the east coast capital cities. The ACTU says the creative had been approved by the company, only to be turned down later. APN Outdoor is now run by James Warburton, who hit the headlines when his very short stint as CEO of Network Ten came to an end. The reason given by APN for cancelling the booking was that the ads were “too negative”.

Canberra airport meanwhile said they were too political. “We were disappointed but not surprised that some bookings were cancelled, even after creative materials had been approved,” ACTU chief of staff Ben Davison told Weekly Beast.



“The notion that working people should have the power to negotiate on an even footing with big business is one that does not necessarily sit comfortably with the owners and senior management of some big media businesses.

“All materials carried an authorisation. The AEC guidelines state that when in doubt material should be authorised and we erred on the side of caution.”

In a swipe at the ACTU’s campaign, the Australian reported on Friday that the woman who plays the single mum struggling to make ends meet in the TV ads, is actually a successful actor, corporate trainer and facilitator.

Ballard to worse

Tom Ballard’s Tonightly show may have had the last word this week on the segment on Seven’s Sunrise show that had critics crying racism.

The ABC comedy show created its own panel which called for the “white media pundits” on Sunrise – host Samantha Armytage, Prue McSween and Ben Davis – to be removed from television for their own good. “They’re clearly distressed, probably in danger,” Ballard said echoing the Sunrise panel’s call for Indigenous kids to be removed from their families.

As it happens, by Thursday the entire Hot Topics segment had been removed from Seven’s social media accounts after the network had been defending it all week. Seven says the clip was taken down for for copyright reasons.

We think the widespread condemnation and a complaint to broadcasting authorities from David Shoebridge, Greens MLA in New South Wales, may have had something to do with it. “Armytage made no attempt condemn or rebuke it. No Aboriginal voice was referred to or given prominence in this unbalanced and one-sided ‘debate’,” Shoebridge wrote to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The Sunrise segment picked up on front-page reports in the major News Corp tabloids. The federal minister quoted by the News Corp papers, David Gillespie told the Guardian he never used the words “white families”. But reporter Natasha Bita and her editor Sam Weir at the Courier Mail told Weekly Beast on Thursday they had still not received a complaint from the minister about the story.

Cake news

The ABC is under so much pressure to be balanced it appears no story is complete without the opposing view, not even a radio feature on a landmark legal case in the US supreme court. A complaint about the excellent Law Report program on Radio National only presenting one perspective has been upheld by ABC’s independent Audience and Consumer Affairs.



“The program featured an interview with James Esseks, a lawyer who acts for the couple at the centre of the ‘Masterpiece cake’ case, currently before the US supreme court. The case is focussed on the right of a baker to refuse to supply a cake to a homosexual wedding. The segment was timely and newsworthy, as the Australian parliament was then debating the passage of the same-sex marriage bill. However, given the degree of contention, the fact that Mr Esseks was a key protagonist for one side of the Masterpiece cake shop case, and the failure of the program to provide further viewpoints or necessary context, the ABC acknowledged that the interview was not in keeping with the ABC’s editorial standards for impartiality and diversity of perspectives.”

Sunday mourning

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lisa Wilkinson in front of a winning portrait of herself painted by artist Peter Smeeth. Ratings for her new Sunday Project show have been sliding. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

The negative press is growing for Lisa Wilkinson and her new gig at network Ten. Wilkinson was praised late last year for taking a stand and leaving Today after management refused to give her equal pay with her Today co-host Karl Stefanovic. But Nine CEO, Hugh Marks, denied she was a victim of gender-pay disparity. Nine said she didn’t have equal pay with Stefanovic because he had a bigger role. So Wilkinson inked a deal with Ten to co-host The Sunday Project, a strange fit because it’s aiming for a younger demographic.

But the former Nine breakfast star has been dogged by rumours that her exorbitant Ten salary, reportedly $2m, has angered her co-hosts at the Project, including Carrie Bickmore. Now the ratings are coming in and they aren’t good. When she first appeared on the Sunday Project the show attracted 481,000 viewers in the five capital cities but by last Sunday that had dropped to just 227,000 viewers by 6.30pm. By comparison Married at First Sight on her old network had 1.34 million. Wilkinson has been given a second string to her bow in the new role of executive editor of Ten’s yet to launch Ten Daily, a digital news project.

Double bolt

Jacinta Parsons and Sami Shah, host of the ABC radio breakfast show in Melbourne, have been in Andrew Bolt’s firing line. Photograph: ABC

Hardly a week goes by without Andrew Bolt saying something outrageous and we often try to ignore him, but this week we thought it was worth noting his comments about the ABC’s new radio host Sami Shah.

Shah and co-host Jacinta Parsons replaced veteran Red Symonds on Melbourne Radio’s breakfast show this year and as expected the ratings have dropped for their first survey. Bolt blames it all on the ABC’s political correctness and the replacement of a white man with a brown man.



“And at the end of last year Symons was out, replaced by co-hosts Sami Shah and Jacinta Parsons,” Bolt wrote. “The white bloke with an Australian accent was replaced by a brown one with a thick Pakistani accent and by a woman.



“Shah had the leftist views obligatory at the ABC. He hated Donald Trump, abused immigration minister Peter Dutton and tweeted: ‘Make America Go Away.’ Culturally, he fitted in. But professionally he and Parsons fell short.”

Sami Cyclops Was Right Shah (@samishah) By my estimation, we should have had a ratings drop that was much larger. It always happens when you change hosts. Chances are we’ll have a minor drop again before it even looks like it will level off. Then we’ll build up again. That’s how it happens.

Shah responded on Twitter that he wasn’t hired “because I’m brown or I’m Muslim” and that he was an English major from the University of Virginia, had published four books in English, “spent over a decade in print and broadcast (TV & Radio) journalism, and even worked for BBC Radio 4”.