By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
Network Seven hasn’t lived down revelations in the Federal Court that its Spotlight program paid for rapist Bruce Lehrmann’s sex workers and cocaine in an attempt to secure a tell-all interview with the former Liberal staffer.
On Monday, director of news and public affairs Craig McPherson announced his widely anticipated departure, the latest victim of the Spotlight scandal that has engulfed the network and enraged its octogenarian billionaire overlord, Kerry Stokes.
Chris Dore has a new gig at Seven.Credit: Jesse Marlow
Well, it was anticipated by everyone except The Australian’s media writers Sophie Elsworth and James Madden, who in Monday’s paper wrote that it was “understood” that McPherson’s job was safe. Not understood by Craig.
The news boss follows Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn, supervising producer Steve “Jacko” Jackson and junior-burger turned whistleblower Taylor Auerbach out the door.
Outgoing chief executive James Warburton made his departure effective immediately following a recent board meeting.
Credit: John Shakespeare
But those fleeing the wreckage of the Lehrmann disaster take comfort that Seven is an outfit that believes in second chances. The reshuffle following McPherson’s exit brought promotion for West Australian editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie, meaning former editor of The Oz Chris Dore is now, in the interim, running the papers.
That’s a steep redemption arc for Dore, who in late 2022, quietly departed the top job at the US-owned broadsheet after allegedly making lewd comments to a woman at a work event in the US.
Later that year, this column revealed Dore as the unnamed News Corp editor who former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull described in his memoir as subjecting guests to “a tirade of drunken abuse” at a 2015 New Year’s Eve party at Kirribilli House.
Dore’s history didn’t stop him landing a gig writing columns at Stokes’ new online newspaper, The Nightly, and if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that The Nightly’s handful of readers must no longer endure Dore’s plodding prose.
BROAD MINDED
Talk of second chances has CBD wondering about the fate of Andrew Broad, the former Nationals assistant minister who quit federal politics after messages he sent to a “Sugar Baby” while at a fruit conference in Hong Kong reached the media.
Broad’s texts to “Sophia” boasting that he knew how to “fly a plane, ride a horse, f--- my woman”, and promises to “pull you close, run my strong hands down your back, softly kiss your neck and whisper G’day mate”, became a kind of icky meme from which there was no coming back.
Broad has swapped central Victoria for Queensland’s Fraser Coast and a director job at the Bendigo Community Bank’s Hervey Bay branch.
He says his wife still loves him. And he’s even had a crack at a return to politics, running for the Fraser Coast Regional Council in last month’s elections.
He didn’t get up. But if it’s any consolation, things seem to be going better for him nearly six years on from the scandal that ended his political career. According to Broad’s LinkedIn bio, he’s “enjoying life”.
Probably more than many of his former political colleagues can say.
SHED RECKONING
A high society dispute over a boat shed in the millionaires’ seaside playground of Portsea has underscored two important life lessons: beware of gentlemen’s agreements, and remember, Eddie McGuire usually comes out on top.
Victorian County Court judge Elizabeth Brimer has awarded legal possession of the shed on Shelley Beach, adjoining McGuire’s rented clifftop weekend home, “Shelley Roc”, to the TV star’s landlord, Ann Hyams.
The land on which the shed is built and part of a walkway leading to the structure were once part of neighbouring property Mileura, where Sir Stirling Moss dined before his 1958 Melbourne Grand Prix triumph – a delightful detail noted in Brimer’s judgment.
But in 1958, Mileura’s owner, Alexander Davison, granted his neighbour Walter Pisterman (Hyams’ father) permission to build the shed on the beach on Davison’s side of the boundary in what was termed a “gentlemen’s agreement”.
Eddie McGuire.Credit: Eddie Jim
Helen Blythe and her late husband, former Spotless boss Brian Blythe – whose daughter is Laura McLachlan, married to former AFL boss Gillon McLachlan – bought Mileura in 1991, gentlemen’s agreement and all, while Hyams had inherited Shelley Roc two years earlier.
Things got ugly in 2020 when Hyams tried to make her possession of the shed land official by applying for “adverse possession” of the property, which prompted Blythe to have the locks to the property changed, in a bit of a headache for the former Collingwood president, who has been renting Shelley Roc since 2008.
Blythe also told McGuire’s landlady that her “licence” to occupy the disputed property was terminated, and the whole thing was soon off to the court.
But the judge decided last week that Hyams was indeed entitled to adverse possession to the shed and land after Shelley Roc’s various owners over the decades had enjoyed the property for much longer than the mandated 15 years, and with no formal lease or licence in place.
We gave McGuire a shout to see if he wanted to talk boat sheds and property law, but he told us the matter was not his fight.
Fair enough, we suppose, but the men we’d really like to talk to – Pisterman and Davison – those gentlemanly neighbours from a bygone era, sadly can’t be reached.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.