Sherlock settles

Who says a redundancy has to ruin your year? 

Sacked weather presenter Amber Sherlock was living it up on the ski fields and flaunting her new podcasting gig before dropping her $400,000 unfair dismissal claim against Nine Network last week.

Sherlock’s lawyers told the Federal Court on Friday that their client had reached an out-of-court settlement with Nine, marking an end to the nine-month legal saga over claims she was retrenched because she was a 49-year-old woman.

According to her statement of claim, her tasks were handed to TV presenters Maggie Rayworth, 33, Kate Creedon, 39, and Sophie Walsh, 39, because they were ‘at least ten years younger’ than her.

She also claimed she had ‘faithfully and diligently served Nine’ for 18 years, was ‘well-liked’ among her peers, and that it was no coincidence that her sacking took place three weeks before her 50th birthday.

Sherlock had the impression her job was secure after an alleged conversation with Nine’s head of news Fiona Dear, who compared her to veteran Sydney news anchor Peter Overton, saying: ‘You’ll be here forever, we’ll wheel you and Pete out of here.’

In its defence, Nine denied that Sherlock was a ‘well-liked and popular’ member of staff (ouch!) and went a step further by claiming she was counselled about her communications and interactions with colleagues.

Throughout the civil saga, Sherlock was active on social media, sharing her numerous trips to Thredbo with friends and her creative director husband, Chris Sherlock, who invented an alcoholic agave-based drink called Chica. 

She also boasted about a lavish lunch with luxury jewellery store Fairfax and Roberts, and spruiked her new job as a podcaster for The Australian Conveyancer.

Sherlock also promoted her professional representation with a fourth talent agency, Jem Talent Collective.

According to her LinkedIn profile, her new career as a freelance writer, editor, MC, communications consultant and podcast host began in November.

Onwards and upwards? 

Not an easy Mix 

Disgraced former AFL star Ben Cousins‘ comfortable perch in the Western Australian media has come under renewed scrutiny.

The Brownlow Medallist’s criminal past became a flashpoint on social media after it appeared to receive only passing mention during his recent podcast interview with 3AW presenter Jacqui Felgate.

For some, Cousins has earned a second chance after overcoming a long battle with drug addiction. For others, his history of domestic violence remains impossible to overlook.

Wherever you land, one fact is undeniable: in WA, Cousins is back in from the cold. He’s firmly embedded in the media landscape, with regular roles across television and radio.

But that doesn’t mean everyone in Perth’s media circles is thrilled by his reputation rehab.

Inside Mail hears that when Cousins’ appointment to Mix94.5’s breakfast show was announced, his female co-host Kymba Cahill was so distressed that she refused to go on air for a fortnight.

Cousins first joined Mix in 2023 before securing a weekly regular slot the following year and stepping up to co-host in 2025. Since then, his role has been scaled back to accommodate his AFL and Triple M commitments.

According to a well-placed source, Cahill believed the move sent the wrong message and sat uneasily with her personal brand as a champion of women’s voices.

Behind the scenes, station bosses were ‘left scrambling’.

Despite the internal turmoil, the broadcaster ploughed ahead. Cousins reportedly had influential backers further up the chain and remains part of the breakfast line-up today, albeit in a reduced ‘friend of the show’ role.

During Cahill’s two-week absence, publicist and on-air personality Alana McLean stepped in.

It may all be water under the bridge now, particularly after years of working alongside Cousins.

But the episode serves as a reminder that while the former Eagle has been welcomed back into the fold in Western Australia, not everyone in the industry has been willing to forgive, forget and move on.

P.S. Cahill didn’t comment when we went to Mix’s PR for a statement. However, she did tell Mediaweek in May last year that the reason for her ‘sudden break’ from the airwaves was the ‘relentless’ online abuse she was facing, mostly from other women.

P.P.S. For all Cousins’ prominence on Mix’s breakfast team, you’ll notice his name isn’t on the masthead. It’s still Pete and Kymba for Breakfast. Inside Mail suspects the station had little appetite for finding itself in the cauldron of certain Mad Witches…

The PR guru helping Scots 

Journalists who had spent days trying in vain to reach a human being via the Scots College switchboard received a surprise email on Tuesday evening. 

Brad Entwistle, the founding partner of PR firm imageseven, contacted many of the reporters covering the gang rape charges against three Scots students with a lengthy statement bearing all the hallmarks of a crisis communications exercise.

The letter from the chairman and principal, addressed to the ‘College community’ while acknowledging it would also be shared with the media and the broader public, moved quickly to state that ‘sexual violence is never acceptable’ before appearing to address parents’ anger that the charged boys had not been expelled, with a pointed reference to the school not discussing ‘individual arrangements publicly’.

It also sought to reassure families that ‘your son is safe at school’ while explicitly backing Scots headmaster Dr Ian PM Lambert, saying the council was ‘united and resolute’ in its support for the school’s leadership.

The letter further addressed questions the Mail had sent on Tuesday afternoon, including claims that Scots’ sexual consent education may have been lacking.

All schools that receive public funding must teach consent, but a source told the Mail earlier this week that Scots, a Christian institution that adheres to the principle of no sex before marriage, had a reputation for doing the bare minimum and leaving such discussions largely to parents.

Responding to that claim, a Scots spokesman stressed that the school ‘complies, and will continue to comply, with all curriculum and regulatory requirements applicable to the College’.

Fair enough. But then things became more interesting.

The spokesman went on to say that while ‘schools have an important responsibility to educate young people about consent, respect and appropriate relationships’, at Scots that ‘responsibility is exercised in partnership with parents and families, who have the primary and enduring role in the formation of their children’.

Translation: yes, we teach our boys about consent. But it’s mostly the parents’ job.

That is not an altogether unreasonable position, of course. But it is a noteworthy message to emphasise at a time when a school’s culture is under intense scrutiny.

Concluding its response, the school added: ‘There should be no ambiguity about the College’s position: sexual assault is abhorrent and behaviour of that kind is entirely inconsistent with the Christian values and standards of The Scots College.’

So who is Mr Entwistle? While he has clearly been brought in to help manage a crisis, crisis communications does not appear to be his primary calling.

Instead, he is a private schools specialist, having spent more than three decades in communications and marketing and building Perth-founded consultancy imageseven into one of Australia’s best-known agencies dedicated to the education sector.

A former all-round marketing and PR operator, he carved out a niche advising independent schools on reputation, enrolments and issues management – in particular, we are told, the case for private schools receiving more government funding.

Dr Chris Brown, the KIIS of death?

ARN and Dr Chris Brown are denying reports that the TV vet will replace Kyle Sandilands on KIIS breakfast, despite speculation from Kyle himself. Rumours gained traction when Sandilands announced on his own streaming show that Dr Brown – and Amy Gerard – would soon front KIIS.

Kyle dismissed the idea bluntly, saying: ‘I like Dr Chris Brown, but this whole show is a flop from before you even start.’ He’s likely right.

TV presenters rarely succeed on radio, as they tend to avoid sharing personal stories and rely on scripted lines, reshot until perfect. Radio demands authenticity: listeners connect with presenters who are unscripted, vulnerable, and imperfect.

History shows this clearly. After Kyle and Jackie O left 2DAY FM, the station tried several TV hosts – including Rove McManus, Grant Denyer and Erin Molan. None succeeded.

With ARN now run by former TV executives, including CEO Michael Stephenson and Chief Content Officer Kerri Elstub, there’s a risk they’re applying TV thinking to radio – a fundamentally different medium.

If Dr Chris Brown is hired for KIIS breakfast, he’d likely be a ratings disaster. While he may offer brand safety, radio needs hosts who spark strong reactions and build listener loyalty.

Presenters unwilling to share their personal lives will struggle to connect. Ratings will inevitably fall, and brands that initially value safety will eventually demand results.

Finding a replacement for Kyle and Jackie O won’t be easy, but ARN’s TV-trained leaders need to stop thinking like TV producers and learn what makes radio work.

Did Covid kill Q&A? 

Former Q&A host Tony Jones reflected on the show’s recent axing during an interview on McKnight Tonight.

Jones recalled that during his tenure, Q&A was a ratings winner, sparking lively debate both on screen and on social media.

After he stepped down, ratings declined as new hosts and format changes, including the removal of live audience feedback via X, undermined engagement. The viewer comments at the bottom of the screen had been a signature part of the show.

‘I do feel quite sad about it sometimes,’ Jones said.

‘It was a groundbreaking program. It connected audiences to social media. It became almost like a live sporting event on a Monday night.’

Jones avoided criticising the show’s direction after his exit, instead pointing to Covid restrictions, which limited studio audiences, as a factor in its decline.

However, the biggest issues for Q&A came after both Jones and founding executive producer Peter McEvoy left. The show quickly lost its identity, with immediate changes when Hamish MacDonald took over. MacDonald lasted just over a year, resigning from the ABC citing relentless personal abuse and trolling on social media.

Ratings continued to fall under successors Stan Grant and Patricia Karvelas.

Jones still sees value in the Q&A format, saying, ‘One hopes the ABC will come up with some adequate replacement for it.’

He is now back in the public eye, promoting his new film Sentient, which explores the ethics of animal testing. The documentary features scientists discussing vaccine development and others reflecting on their regrets about animal treatment.

Sarah Ferguson, host of 7.30 and Jones’ wife, is credited as executive producer, but Jones clarified her involvement was limited: ‘She didn’t have a lot of input in the actual filming or editing of the film.’ Ferguson was mainly working at the ABC and was credited for her early role in developing the documentary’s concept.

Sentient begins a national tour on August 28, with Jones hosting special Q&A screenings around Australia.

Watch the Tony Jones interview here.

The Wallaby in Jones’ corner 

There was a dramatic update in the trial of Alan Jones this week, with one of his accusers revealing he had confided details of Jones’ alleged groping and unwanted kisses in a conversation with 2GB mornings host Ray Hadley.

‘I just broke down sobbing,’ the former radio staffer testified. ‘I said, ‘He’s a fucking c***’.’

‘It was the first time I’d ever broken down talking about it.’

The complainant said Hadley offered to accompany him to police, but he refused and made the broadcaster promise not to tell anyone because he ‘didn’t want anyone to know’.

While the Hadley factor added a celebrity element to a trial that already has a star attraction, an intriguing detail from the opening days of the trial has largely escaped attention.

Among those spotted in court was former Wallabies captain Nick Farr-Jones, who was seated behind Jones on the first day of proceedings in what observers could reasonably interpret as a show of support.

The pair go back decades. Jones coached the Wallabies during the formative years of Farr-Jones’ international career, with the future World Cup-winning captain playing under him throughout the 1980s.

Jones has long been known for his fiercely loyal network of establishment allies, a circle sometimes dubbed the ‘pick-and-stick club’ and populated by prominent figures from media, business and sport. 

But since Jones was charged with sexually abusing multiple young men, many of those associates have kept a conspicuously low profile.

In that context, Farr-Jones’ presence in court did not go unnoticed by Inside Mail – even though other reporters in attendance thought not to mention it.

Greens’ own goal 

Aren’t the Greens supposed to be the undisputed champions of the environment? You’d never guess it watching them gleefully kneecap the nation’s climate standards in a fit of ideological vanity.

In a display of staggering legislative incompetence, the Greens have bullied the federal government into passing amendments that deliberately ban the country’s leading sustainability experts from the very boards supposed to oversee sustainability rules.

Thanks to Greens Senator Barbara Pocock‘s paranoid crusade against big firms, anyone with actual, hard-earned experience navigating complex climate reporting is now treated like a radioactive threat.

Who gets the gig instead? Small-time operators who are so insignificant they’ve never even been legally required to file a sustainability report in their lives.

It takes a special kind of stupidity to engineer a system where deep environmental expertise is a disqualifying offence, but absolute, untested amateurism gets you a seat at the head of the table. The Greens have ensured that the architects of our new climate rules are the exact people who wouldn’t know how to apply them if their lives depended on it.

Gutting a regulatory body of anyone who actually knows what they’re doing doesn’t deliver integrity; it just guarantees institutionalised ignorance on an official letterhead. A breathtakingly stupid own goal from the so-called party of the planet.

And at this point, we feel obliged to defend the honour of independent ACT Senator David Pocock. He’s no relation whatsoever to Barbara.

Bornstein under the microscope 

Labor Senator wannabe Josh Bornstein spent three decades taking bosses to task. Now a regulator is taking another look at him.

His political career ended before it began back in 2021 after old tweets emerged calling Chris Bowen a ‘muppet’, suggesting Penny Wong would make ‘a very fine Morticia’ and likening a senior female union official to a dog. He apologised for the dog remark and withdrew under pressure to do so.

Neither advancing age nor that humiliation immediately cured the political itch. Bornstein later flirted with a second Senate crack. This year, however, he ruled it out, declaring politics would leave him ‘very bored’. Canberra is trying not to take it personally.

He has since found another pulpit as The Australia Institute’s Director of Corporate Regulation (who knew they had one), purpose-built for lecturing the big end of town about how to behave.

Enter the Victorian Legal Services Board.

The board’s dismissal of a complaint from former Hillsong whistleblower Natalie Moses is now under independent review.

Moses alleges Bornstein acted without instructions while trying to prevent thousands of Hillsong documents being tabled in parliament. Bornstein denies wrongdoing and notes the complaint was dismissed.

The timing is divinely ordained. A corporate accountability preacher is having his own conduct reconsidered by a regulator over Hillsong. Hallelujah!

Reports say he has ended his legal career. Not entirely. He remains a Maurice Blackburn ‘consultant’.

Perhaps Bornstein hasn’t finished with the law. The law, it seems, hasn’t finished with him either.

Cut the faecal matter 

Opposition frontbencher Dan Tehan has given Australia’s next generation a masterclass in parliamentary oratory. Unfortunately, it ended with him being kicked out.

Tehan had a perfectly reasonable question for Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Monday: how much will taxpayers fork out for Labor’s Capacity Investment Scheme?

Rather than force Bowen to answer it, Tehan told him to ‘cut the crap and come clean’.

Speaker Milton Dick warned that Tehan’s language was beneath the dignity of the House and generously invited him to try again.

The redo? ‘Cut the faecal matter,’ Tehan said.

Dick promptly threw him out, with members of the Youth Parliament watching on from the public gallery. They’d come to see democracy in action and instead got a live demonstration of just how low-brow modern politics really is.

The timing was exquisite.

Just two months ago, Tehan and Dick teamed up to launch the ‘My First Speech’ competition, encouraging Year 10, 11 and 12 students in Tehan’s electorate to showcase their ‘passion, creativity and leadership’.

Winners receive an expenses-paid trip to Canberra (is that really a prize?) to present their speeches to the Speaker and MPs.

Tehan’s faecal tirade taught the students something missing from the competition brochure.

Remeikis evicts her landlord past 

While NAB warns that Labor’s property tax overhaul could send rents skyrocketing by a brutal 30 per cent, The Australia Institute’s Amy Remeikis has at least removed herself from the landlord side of the equation.

Let’s rewind to 2024, when a Queensland title search revealed that Remeikis, who rented her Canberra home, wasn’t merely a tenant. She was also quietly collecting $400 a week from a Maroochydore investment unit she had owned for years.

The revelation came after she appeared on The Project to tearfully lament tenants being forced to ‘pay off somebody else’s asset’ and the power of landlords to hike rents.

Awkward!

Fresh property records show Remeikis sold the apartment last September, ending years in the landlord class.

So, credit where it’s due, she eventually aligned her property portfolio with her politics.

But she certainly hasn’t misplaced her moral megaphone.

In May, Remeikis enthusiastically championed Labor’s property tax overhaul, accusing ‘the haves’ of telling ‘the have-nots’ that rebalancing the system was unfair.

That came after pocketing a tidy profit from the sale of her investment, without having to incur the capital gains tax hike Labor has now put on them.

None of that necessarily makes her policy argument wrong, of course. But after owning precisely the sort of established investment property she condemns as a driver of inequality, the sermonising about ‘the haves’ sounds more than a little rich.

Perhaps Remeikis sold to an owner-occupier to advance Labor’s theory personally?

Either way, she may have left the landlord class, but the sanctimony survived the settlement.

Champagne socialism really does have a sense of humour, doesn’t it?

Ardern flies under the radar

Parliament House may have been buzzing this week with the official visit of Thailand’s Prime Minister, but another former world leader made a far quieter appearance in the nation’s capital.

Inside Mail spies spotted former New Zealand Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern holding a series of meetings at the National Press Club.

Just what was on the agenda remains something of a mystery. But whisperings reaching Inside Mail suggest Ardern may be exploring opportunities in the consulting world as she continues to build her post-politics career.

The former Kiwi leader has remained a high-profile figure on the international stage since leaving office, with speaking engagements, academic appointments and global advocacy work keeping her in demand.

Whether her Canberra meetings were part of a hunt for new clients, strategic partnerships, or something else entirely remains unclear. 

Ardern also made time to meet with Labor MPs, including time for a selfie with Charlotte Walker, Australia’s Youngest Senator. 

Walker shared a selfie of the pair on her Instagram on Wednesday, calling Ardern the ‘Greatest of all time’.  

Jacinda Ardern was contacted for comment.   

Hanson versus Hanson-Young 

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and Pauline Hanson are known to clash during the Senate.

But during a vote on Tuesday, SHY opted for a softer tone, making a political observation of sorts. 

As the Coalition sided with Labor and the crossbench opposed, Hanson-Young turned towards Hanson and appeared to take aim at Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.

‘You’ve made him weak,’ Hanson-Young said.

‘You’ve scared him.’

Hanson didn’t bite. The One Nation leader remained stone-faced and ignored the comment as the vote proceeded.