About

Glen - Breakfast host:

A typical NewsRadio start to the day:

News of the hijacking of the Mexican airliner broke just minutes before we went to air this morning and details were sketchy.

We had wire service stories and cable TV reports explaining that an AeroMexico passenger plane — carrying 104 passengers — had reportedly been hijacked at the airport in the resort of Cancun and was then flown to Mexico City’s international airport.

Several Mexican news websites said three men seized control of the plane and threatened to blow it up unless they were allowed to speak to President Felipe Calderon.

We led with what we knew at 5.30am, updated before Sport with the news that TV pictures showed dozens of passengers leaving the plane, most carrying hand luggage and appearing calm but the crew were still on board the jet. We then had more information on the quarter hour in the headlines that the plane had been surrounded by federal police.

Minutes later we reported the information that the Defence Minister had arrived at the airport and police were closing in on the aircraft. I could then describe what I saw on the screens rebroadcasting Mexican TV coverage of the siege - the image of police running onto the aircraft - before throwing to some translated audio that explained that police were in fact storming the plane and were pulling the alleged terrorists onto the tarmac where they were handcuffed and led away under heavy guard. It all unfolded in real time, live on air and made for a dramatic and urgent start to the day’s news.

In other words, we were ‘all over it’, reporting with speed and accuracy a developing story that resolved itself within minutes.

Not quite business as usual, perhaps - but certainly core business for us at NewsRadio.

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Debbie - Sports presenter:

After a morning that was positively bursting with international sport happening throughout most of the breakfast program (Australia beating England in one day cricket, two US Open tennis quarter finals and 25 soccer World Cup qualifier in Europe) I only have the energy to offer something that really is a crumb. A questioning crumb in fact.

Why does TV not exert the same pressure on tennis that it seems to do on every other sport — and make sure that opponents wear different colours?

Obviously the keen students of the sport can tell Novak Djokovic from Fernando Verdasco given a reasonable close up shot of the pair. But when both players are wearing orange shirts and black shorts and the camera is offering a wide view it’s not easy. And if you want to encourage new fans, why not make it easy?

This morning’s outfits were not an exact match, but it’s not uncommon in tennis to see players turning out on either side of the net wearing perfectly matching gear. Obviously it’s provided by sponsors, so surely the sponsors can be persuaded to come up with an alternative strip for their tennis players as they do for just about every other sport on the planet.?
Then just give the highest ranked player the choice of strip.

Now I need to go lie down and recharge the batteries for Roger Federer v Robin Soderling. I know I won’t have to concentrate hard to tell who’s who in that one!
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Marius - Politics:

Arthur Sinodinos was the key background figure in the most successful days of the Howard Government. Many point to his departure from his post as the then Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff as the moment when things started going wrong for the coalition.

Nobody claims his absence was the biggest factor, but when the arrival of Kevin Rudd marked a sharp change in the government’s fortunes, many say that was the time when the presence of John Howard’s right hand man was needed most.

While pursuing a post-political life in the financial world Arthur Sinodinos has been edging back to politics in recent months - writing a newspaper column and entertaining the idea of running for Brendan Nelson’s seat of Bradfield, before abandoning that idea.

This week he was in the news again when Peter Costello suggested he might like to run for Bennelong, the seat John Howard lost.

When I interviewed him on that proposal this week he almost - but not quite - dismissed it. But he also offered some sound advice for the opposition as it tries to clamber out of the opinion poll basement.

“One of the pieces of advice the former Prime Minister gave me many years ago, when he was reflecting on the Fraser government going into opposition was: ‘For a while there nobody really wants to hear from the opposition, they’re focussed on the new government. They’re in love with the new government - and you just have to accept that it’s a time when it’s difficult to get a message across.’

Mr Sinodinos continued: “We’ve seen that with the new government….. they’ve been interested in how they would handle the global crisis. And don’t forget that those sorts of crises give a big potential boost to incumbents, because when you’re an incumbent you can do things.”

The thoughts on Opposition of one of the key minds of the former government.

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Mark - Breakfast EP:

It’s not often you come across a person with a brand new liver.

To have two liver transplant recipients on the same radio show in the space of two hours is highly unusual, to say the least.

But that was exactly the scenario on NewsRadio Breakfast this morning.

First, the return to the public eye of Apple Founder Steve Jobs…..on stage in California to launch a new Ipod innovation.

He looked gaunt and spoke quietly — obviously still recovering from his transplant earlier this year — but you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from the tech-savvy community as the man that brought you the Mac, the IPod and the IPhone walked gingerly onto stage in his trademark jeans and black skivvy.

During Jobs’ short presentation - during which he extolled the virtues of organ donations - Apple’s shares rallied on the New York Stock exchange.

The other recipient of a new liver on the show this morning was Paul Stewart.

The last time I saw Stewart in the flesh (about 25 years ago), the former hard-drinking, over-weight journo, was on-stage with the legendary Melbourne 80’s band, Painters and Dockers.

On that occasion he’d obviously already had a skinful - his shirt was off, he was gyrating in a really dodgy pair of tracky-daks which kept falling down and he was belting out a version of the P&D’s surreal classic “The Boy Who Lost His Jocks On Flinders Street Station”.

This morning it was a svelte and sober — but just as charismatic — Paul Stewart who came into the Breakfast studio to talk to Glen about the Australian Federal Police’s decision to start a war crimes investigation into the deaths of the Balibo 5.

You see, Stewart’s elder brother, Tony, was one of the 5 Australian-based newsmen killed in Balibo in 1975.

Does he welcome an AFP probe into the deaths of his brother and his four colleagues (Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters) and the subsequent execution of another Australian, Roger East?

Paul Stewart — who now spends a lot of his time raising money for causes in East Timor — told Glen that he welcomes the probe but he also wants a wide-ranging inquiry into the huge numbers of East Timorese who died during Indonesia’s occupation of the former Portuguese colony.

“Six white guys…..but one-hundred-and-eighty-three thousand East Timorese died as well” says Paul Stewart.

You can read and see more about Paul Stewart and his bittersweet relationship with East Timor here: http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2630761.htm