Truss’d us

Liz Truss appears to have been in Australia almost a week, or as she would call it, roughly 16% of a prime ministerial term. She’s been extremely busy with media engagements — appearing on Sky News Australia and in the pages of the Australian Financial Review, and getting cheers from CPAC Australia for calling for the defunding of “state media”. Proof, if any were needed, that there are simply no depths Australia’s media won’t sink to to rehabilitate an international laughing stock… so long as said laughing stock is willing to parrot reactionary talking points so rote and predictable they wouldn’t make it into the second draft of a Hallmark script.

Of particular note is tonight’s event (also organised by CPAC Australia) launching Truss’ book — 10 Years to Save the West — with former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. We presume Abbott will open the event with a moist-eyed declaration of gratitude that Truss has made his tenure look competent and enduring by comparison.

But we noted a weird little detail too: Our friends at CBD have reported that Abbott wouldn’t make the Menzies Centre event Truss is attending tonight “as he is overseas”. Where is he? Will he be attending via a video link up or some other means? We asked the folks at CPAC Australia what the go was, but they never got back to us.

Strange bedfellows

Another former PM who hasn’t been camera or microphone shy since his eviction from the lodge is Malcolm Turnbull — but this is a new one, even for him.

Turnbull sharing a stage with adult film star Stormy Daniels, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Succession star Brian Cox and B-list royalty Caitlyn Jenner might sound like the world’s worst improv troupe has really lost control of a topical sketch, but its actually the panel the UK network Channel 4 has put together for its US election night coverage. We don’t have much to add to this, except to say well played, Channel 4. We 100% want to watch your coverage more than anyone else’s.

Night of nights to morning recess

There’s few bigger nights in the diary for a News Corp reporter than the annual News Awards. It might be an internal awards night, but for the biggest media company in the country, winning awards among its thousands of staff is still no mean feat.

A shame then, that this year’s event will be a mostly online soirée compared to the in-person affairs of years gone past, according to an internal email seen by Crikey. The awards will be announced on a live stream on October 22, with winners of select awards announced via email in the lead-up. Staff were encouraged to “gather with [their] colleagues to share the excitement”. Just when we thought we were rid of the dreaded Zoom all-in.

One disgruntled News Corp reporter described the change to Crikey as “a night of nights to morning recess”.

A News Corp Australia spokesman told Crikey that staff from across departments had said they would “love to see this annual celebration of their colleagues’ achievements — and they can with this format. We are responding to their feedback”.

Among the finalists is Samantha Maiden for “Scoop of the Year” over her reporting on Seven’s Spotlight program through the course of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation action. Nominated for “Campaign of the Year” is The Daily Telegraph’s “Coward Attack” campaign, despite the paper’s inconsistency in actually executing it.

The winners will receive an invitation, plus a partner, to an “exclusive gala dinner … hosted by Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch”.

Crikey asked one of this year’s finalists whether they would consider taking us along to Lachlan’s shindig in the event they won an award. For some reason, they’re yet to confirm.

FOI of the week

Our complaints earlier in the week, about some of the more absurd redactions we’d seen in documents released under Australia’s freedom of information laws, elicited a flurry of responses from our similarly infuriated readers. We’re grateful to everyone who’s sent in their suggestions for their worst FOI experience — keep them coming! We’ll do our best to feature all of them in our semi-regular segment noting some of the best of the worst.

First up, a tipster (and veteran of the FOI game) got in contact with a pet peeve — the absolutely baffling (and remarkable common) redaction of then prime minister Scott Morrison’s extremely publicly available signature:

Just to add to the effect — the above example concerns that paragon of pointless secrecy, Scott Morrison’s secret ministries.