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ABC cuts comments, the election billboards begin, and we follow the Australia Day money
Plus: what a prosthetic wang reveals about Italy's history of fascism. Really.
Click Here to read in detail
Got a tip to share? Anonymously contact Charlie Lewis at clewis@crikey.com.au
What is it with poor Hamish Macdonald and taking jobs that make everyone mad? First it was his stint on Q+A, a show that has pure fury running through its veins instead of blood. Now, Macdonald, in a move first reported by Crikey, has taken over from his namesake Sarah on ABC Radio Sydney Mornings after she was axed last year in a deeply unpopular decision. As one insider told us at the time, Sarahâs listeners were âfucking furiousâ.
This backlash seems to have continued in the aftermath of Hamishâs unveiling. A tipster pointed out that the announcement on the ABC Sydney Facebook page attracted â350+ negative comments (and maybeâŠ. 15 positive ones?)â and that the ABC soon âshut off the commentsâ. On the plus side, Metaâs AI summaries are getting better:
There are a few go-to assumptions in Australiaâs apparently mandatory annual conniptions over whether Australia/Invasion Day ought to be celebrated on January 26: people are too ashamed to celebrate this great country of ours, and Prime Minister Anthony Albaneseâs insufficient enthusiasm for the day is to blame.
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According to Peter Dutton, Albanese allowing local councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on days other than January 26 âsent a signal ⊠that Australia Day didnât matter and that it was something to be ashamed ofâ.
There are several ways to judge whether Albanese undervalues our national day, but the one we favour is looking at how much money he spends on it.
Crikey reported, way back in 2021, that the Morrison government more than tripled the funding it allocated to the National Australia Day Council (NADC). The council received $14.6 million from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 2019-20, an increase of more than $10 million from the previous year. So, naturally, that plummeted back to pre-ScoMo levels when the ALP took office, right?
Consulting the annual reports reveals a different story. The NADC 2022â23 report tells us the government provided, through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, âa total of $20,655,772â in that time. In the year ending June 2024, it got a further $15,842,222.
Adding to the sense that the election campaign has started in all but the official sense, the billboards are coming out. A tipster sent us this, from Barkley Street, the main drag in Footscray in Melbourneâs west:
The tree cuts it off, and youâd be forgiven for not recognising one of Laborâs, shall we say, quieter federal MPs, but thatâs Daniel Mulino, member for Fraser. Fraser was created in the redistribution of 2018, and Mulino has held it since 2019.
Mulino is an economist and public servant turned adviser to politicians turned councillor turned state Labor MP turned federal MP who last made the news discussing Australia Day in such mild and noncommittal terms that not even News Corp could generate any heat from it.
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This year he faces his main challenge from former state Greens MP Huong Truong. Is the Mulino-spruiking this early â enjoying as he does the buffer of one of the countryâs safest seats â a sign of just how much trouble the ALP is expecting in 2025?
Sometimes you come across information that qualifies for Tips and Murmurs simply because itâs too bizarre a combination of words not to include. This is a prime example.
Since 2010 Italian football club SS Lazio has had an Alaskan golden eagle named Olympia as a club mascot. That is, until last week. Lazio fired falconer Juan Bernabe after he shared photos on social media of a prosthetic implant in his penis designed to enhance sexual performance. Operated on by the clubâs doctor (who was also fired), Bernabe appears unapologetic about his actions, telling the media that ânudity is normal, I grew up in an open-minded, naturist familyâ.
But itâs 2025 and nothing can stay funny for more than two paragraphs, so we have to add that the episode demonstrates where the line stands for Lazio, which previously briefly suspended Bernabe in 2021 for making a fascist salute in full Lazio kit and chanting âDuce, Duceâ, in tribute to former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
âI did it and I donât regret it because I admire Mussolini, he did great things for Italy as Franco did for Spain,â he said at the time.
Headlines featuring the words âLazioâ and âfascismâ are pretty much an annual occurrence. This goes way back â the club was the only one of a group of four Roman clubs to reject a fascist-proposed merger in 1927 under Mussoliniâs new regime. The remaining three clubs exist today as European powerhouse AS Roma.
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