Channel Nine’s political editor Chris Uhlmann has been accused of an “egregious breach” of press gallery rules by revealing on television and on Twitter the contents of a text conversation on Michaelia Cash’s mobile phone.
A Nine camera operator got a close-up shot of the jobs minister texting on her mobile phone to staffers about how to avoid media scrutiny as she entered an estimates committee.
Uhlmann included the shot with the conversation clearly visible in his report for Nine News and posted the image on Twitter, but it has since been deleted.
The image came after the Liberal Senator had become embroiled in a political storm over comments she made about the women in Bill Shorten’s office.
She was accused of trying to hide from the cameras when her arrival at the committee hearing was obscured by a whiteboard positioned by parliamentary security guards.
A day earlier she had threatened to name young women in Shorten’s office “about which rumours in this place abound” in retaliation for ongoing questions about her staff and the Australian Workers’ Union raids.
Uhlmann, a former ABC journalist, has been asked by the Senate’s usher of the black rod, Brien Hallett, to explain why he should not face a penalty for the breach. The penalties range from a single day ban on entering the chamber galleries right up to the cancellation of his press gallery pass.
Hallett’s job is to maintain order in the Senate chamber and its galleries, and to provide support to committees and senators.
“I wish to advise the committee that I have received a formal complaint from a senator about an image that appeared on Twitter with the Channel 9 watermark that purports to show minister Cash’s mobile phone and in which messages between the minister and her staff during yesterday’s estimates hearing are clearly legible,” Hallett wrote to the committee.
The letter does not say which senator complained about the image.
“As this appears to be a particularly egregious breach of the rules, I have written to Mr Uhlmann asking him to show cause as to what one or more of the penalties listed should not be applied.”
Uhlmann, who has until Monday to reply to Hallett’s letter, declined to comment.
