From Canberra, and from Foxtel's North Ryde headquarters, a deafening silence surrounds the $30 million for women's sports coverage given to Foxtel in the last federal budget.

It's been the source of growing anger from a public and commentariat who cannot understand why the government would gift $30 million to a pay TV operator seen in (at best) a third of households part-owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Attempts to unearth more details about the payment have yielded little, with an ABC FOI returning no documentation on the payment. And in a sign of how hastily the whole thing appears to have been put together, almost three months after the announcement, Rear Window understands the federal communications department has yet to finalise the terms and conditions on which the funding will be provided to the subscription TV operator. Though we're told the agreement, to include performance targets, is coming along. Which is news we don't doubt will be treated with eager anticipation from the many parties who want to get their hands on the detail.

Mitch Fifield has showered money on commercial media operators this year – and he had to make sure he spread it around. Alex Ellinghausen

One party seeing red is the ABC, which has in recent years been forced to dramatically curtail its women's sport coverage since large funding cuts passed down by then-comms minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2014. Giving the ABC more funding for women's sport was a Labor policy at the last election, but alas, the money's gone to Foxtel, and more specifically to Fox Sports, which is wholly owned by News Corp.

Some of those party to media reform talks say the $30 million sweetener wasn't a part of most of the formal discussions, and believe Turnbull himself may have played a role in negotiating the last-minute Foxtel package – perhaps directly at that dinner in New York where Uncle Rupert introduced Malcolm Turnbull in May.