Is Karl Stefanovic now Australia’s most famous small business owner?

In this week’s On Background, Karl Stefanovic’s love fest at the CPAC Australia conference, ABC latest recruit gets taste of what he is up against at the public broadcaster, News24 goes gaga for MAGA, and welcome to AI slop dressed up as political propaganda.

Karl’s great awakening

After agreeing to take majority control of the company behind The Karl Stefanovic Show last week, Karl Stefanovic could now lay claim to being Australia’s most famous small business owner. It is a true Aussie battler story.

The corporate register hasn’t reflected this change in ownership shares yet, nor has the podcast made its grand return. But he has to keep the lights on somehow.

In case anyone was wondering whether he really thought he had gone “too far” to the right, his latest gig as a host of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia conference last weekend put those worries to bed.

Journalists attending the event were handed “Fake News” lanyards to wear in place of press passes. It doesn’t appear the fearless independent journalist Stefanovic was made to wear one.

During a fireside chat he hosted between Pauline Hanson and Nationals leader Matt Canavan (who was bizarrely dressed in full high-vis), the One Nation leader praised him for his much publicised shift to becoming “more conservative”.

“Your eyes have opened, you’ve woken up,” Hanson said to cheers from the adoring crowd. “I appreciate it,” Stefanovic replied. There is no turning back now!

It was almost a crowning moment. After all those softball interviews on his podcast, it’s no surprise the pair have developed a bit of chemistry.

ABC News boss trips up

More than 400 ABC journalists have now put their name to an open letter criticising the broadcaster’s new news boss Simon Robinson’s decision to pull journalist and union leader Michael Slezak into a meeting over a piece he penned for The Australian Financial Review last week.

Included in that very long list pushing back against any potential disciplinary action is all five of Four Corners’ reporting team – Louise Milligan, Steve Cannane, Mark Willacy, Avani Dias and Angus Grigg – alongside a number of the show’s other staff. There were others like Radio National host (and former Chaser) Julian Morrow, chief business correspondent Ian Verrender, Dr Norman Swan and others.

”We see this as an attack on our right to work collectively through our union, a hindrance to our delegates doing the work they are legally entitled to do, and an obstruction to journalists in our industry fulfilling their duty to uphold and champion press freedom,” the staff open letter said.

Cross-industry statements of support for Slezak have since landed from the House Committees at Nine, News Corp, The Guardian, SBS, Seven West Media and others.

This all came about after Slezak, a senior editor at the ABC, wrote a piece in The AFR advocating against potential limits to press freedom in his capacity as federal president of the media section of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

The piece was fairly innocuous, and what you would expect from a union leader advocating for the industry and members they represent. It was also in response to one written by Mark Rigotti, the head of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), also published by the AFR the week prior, in which he said the Bondi shooting had brought the issue of privacy for directors “into sharp focus”.

Just one month into his new job, Robinson has now waded into one of the ABC’s most publicly fraught territories: what journalists can say and do outside the ABC, and come out wounded.

As its head of news, it’s understandable that Robinson wants to be on top of how his journalists can express themselves outside the ABC banner, while maintaining the public broadcaster’s commitment to independence and impartiality.

While the ABC rewrote its public comment rules after illegally sacking Antoinette Lattouf over a social media post in late-2023, it continues to tie itself up over the rules which appear far from clear.

For example, this issue was covered by this column less than a month ago when On Background reported the ABC had no issue with its Global Roaming host Latika Bourke openly advocating for Ukraine.

The same day that piece was published, ABC presenters Annabel Crabb and Lisa Leong were hosting the Women in Mining WA conference, On Background has learned. It was a returning act, with the duo also hosting the 2025 and 2024 editions, while Leigh Sales shared hosting duties with Crabb before then. Talk about ongoing employment!

On Background isn’t suggesting these ABC talents support the mining industry, nor did they break any rules. But the application of the ABC’s own rules is becoming difficult to follow, particularly when Slezak has added protections as a union representative under Australian law.

While Robinson has since backed down on any potential disciplinary action, even the initial threat was enough to mobilise a host of high-profile ABC talent to put their names to letter. Until the public broadcaster figures out a consistent approach in practice to staff’s outside-of-work activities, this is an issue that will inevitably arise again.

The ABC declined to comment and referred On Background to the same statement issued to this masthead earlier in the week.

Welcome to the ‘Sloppification’ of politics

New data revealed in The Economist last month showed that Australia leads the way in parliamentary speeches written with or assisted by AI, tallying more than 20 per cent. The piece also revealed polling that showed Brits were most concerned about politicians, lawyers and journalists using AI in the workplace.

While this suggests some of our political class are likely just lazy, it speaks to a wider trend of AI creeping into our political language. And its increased presence in external political communications, where there are fewer checks and balances, is even more sinister and has the potential for untold damage.

The visual impact of One Nation’s AI-produced campaign video last week shocked many. It is unlikely they would have, or could have, hired an actor with brown skin to be filmed putting on a suicide vest to push the video’s racist framing. But by generating it with AI, it reaffirms what the party is putting out into the world despite the imagery being a complete fabrication. It is quite simply racist scare tactics.

Similarly, the Queensland Hotels Association released a viral campaign video showing how Australia would fall apart if immigrants left all the blue-collar jobs they currently occupy, such as making your takeaway coffee, cleaning dishes in a kitchen, making your hotel bed or wiping your mum’s bottom in her retirement home.

The idea here is that no good Aussie should be forced to do the job designated to someone who moved to Australia for a better life. This thesis that views immigrants as the underclass has been trotted out by prominent “leftist” politicians from South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas to UK Greens leader Zack Polanski.

In the past 12 months, both railed against pushes for cuts to immigration because there would be no one left to “wipe our bums” when we’re old, as both put it.

Political campaigns produced by AI are now the norm. See the “Fix Victoria” campaign ads as another example of AI slop political messaging in the lead-up to the state election.

There is no doubt the tactics are a success. But they are based on a false version of reality. AI is flooding the zone of our political sphere, leaving the voting population worse off, and wondering what is real and what is not.

News24 goes GAGA for MAGA

The network formerly known as Sky News Australia just loves MAGA, and they’re not even hiding it anymore. From MAGA merch to its new US-based presenter Elizabeth Pipko, who News24 announced this week as a “MAGA firebrand”, it makes you wonder how there is anything new to say to its viewers each night.

Pipko is a former Republican National Committee spokesperson and a former Trump campaign staffer. She is also a former model and former ice skater. She has all the credentials to make it on News24, it seems, and even got married at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago with a “Make Marriage Great Again” theme. The jokes really do write themselves. The Don didn’t attend Pipko’s wedding, sadly.

If the first show was anything to go by, News24’s new Dallas production hub doesn’t lay a glove on its new $40 million studio set-up in Surry Hills. This news came just days after Fox News announced Trump’s former press secretary Karoline Leavitt as a contributor. Locally, the News24 nightly lineup has several former Liberal staffers in its ranks.

It’s good to know – if it doesn’t work out in politics, there will always be a spot on Murdoch’s cross-continental TV network.

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