Tony Abbott was victorious on Monday night. He finally managed to push that “lefty lynch mob” Q&A off the ABC. Although it did pop up again off-Broadway, on ABC2, as rolling news of the prime minister’s demise took over Aunty’s main channel for the night.
Television schedules and newspaper front pages were furiously remade as Malcolm Turnbull challenged Abbott’s leadership ahead of the evening news.
The usual Monday lineup of Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch and Q&A were either shunted to ABC2 or bumped to next week as Canberra’s broadcasting team took over.
Only 7.30 made it to air as scheduled as Leigh Sales interviewed supporters of Abbott and Turnbull and everyone waited for the party-room vote. Chris Uhlmann, Greg Jennett, Annabel Crabb and Sabra Lane all talked endlessly about possible outcomes and numbers and the history of coups; anything to fill the time while waiting for the Liberal members to cast their votes.
The result came during Q&A, which was going to air on ABC2 while many of its usual audience were busy elsewhere. The host, Tony Jones, announced the news: “I’m going to interrupt you right now because we’ve just got the result and we do in fact have a new prime minister.” The audience erupted in applause, cementing Abbott’s belief they never liked him.
Nine broadcast live news from 5pm to 7pm and then took live crosses during normal programming.
Seven jumped between live crosses and normal programming and used 7TWO for rolling news at some points.
On Tuesday morning we woke to more blanket coverage as Sky news started at 5am and the breakfast shows all covered the reaction to the coup.
But it was left to the NT News to tell the real story in juts a few words: Rich Dude Becomes PM: Malcolm Turnbull seizes power in coup against Tony Abbott.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was pretty harsh, running the headline “Smiling Assassin”, while the Courier-Mail was surprisingly mild, going for “Malcolm’s Moment”.
If the bright tabloid humour of the NT News was the winner, Seven’s Sunrise was the big loser of the leadership coup of September.
Sitting in the dark, with blankets draped over their knees, the show’s hosts could not have looked further away from the main game on Tuesday morning. That’s because David Koch and Samantha Armytage were 17,000km away in London, struggling to cover the sudden ascendancy of Turnbull via satellite links.
Many of the guests booked for the program’s “five countries in five days” stunt had to be dumped for more topical, political guests.
Kochie didn’t hide from the truth: “We fly from Dubai to London and it was seven hours and when we landed we had a new prime minister.” Armytage: “How can Malcolm Turnbull do this when we are out of the country? He is a friend of Sunrise. He’s my local member.”
Meanwhile, the Today show was buoyant, broadcasting live from the national capital after Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic travelled there overnight. “Karl and I do feel sorry for Tony Abbott this morning,” Wilkinson said at one point, congratulating Labor’s Anthony Albanese for his kind words about the outgoing leader, who he said was a good bloke who would be doing it tough.
But then the winds of change blew a little too hard and the canopy Lisa and Karl were sitting under under collapsed on their heads. Cameras crossed back to Sydney while order was restored.
For conservative commentators it has not been a good 24 hours. On Monday night on Sky News, Paul Murray was inconsolable. On Tuesday morning Miranda Devine said it was a victory for the chattering classes and Andrew Bolt was furious.
Turnbull stole the prime ministership he could not have won, Bolt said in his column. Turnbull was favoured by the media and was the “darling of the left” but he had yet to prove himself. “The media and the Twittersphere have been absolutely feral in savaging Abbott, a man awkward in his own defence, but have been kind to Turnbull … That leaves Turnbull boasting of just one thing: his smooth tongue, and (unsaid) a friendlier media. He’d better start talking fast.”
Alan Jones was also furious and said Australia had a “lot of thinking to do”.
“Tony Abbott was doing a magnificent job in very, very difficult circumstances and getting results, but unlike the others, he doesn’t pump up his own tyres,” he told his listeners.
Online the traffic to the ABC News website and mobile platforms was at its highest for the year to date, up 77% from the previous Monday to 1.8 million visitors.
On Twitter, popular hashtags included #libspill, #PutOutYourOnions and even #LeeLinForPM, in reference to the cult SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin.
