Pauline Hanson has become the most sought after interview in Australian television. Seven, Nine and Sky News have all been chasing the One Nation leader at the same time, and Seven's Spotlight got there first.
The Australian's media diary reports that Seven's chief Spotlight correspondent, Liam Bartlett, has spent the past month filming a special with Hanson at home and across the United Kingdom, and that the program is being cut to air this Sunday.
Liam Bartlett spent a month with Hanson and beat 60 Minutes to air
Bartlett is Seven's most senior current affairs reporter and a former 60 Minutes man, which makes the assignment its own statement. Networks don't put their top gun on the road for a month, at home and overseas, for a politician the public has switched off.
Exactly what was said in that interview isn't known. The Australian's Diary bills it as explosive and aggressive, but that's a gossip columnist's build up, written before a frame of it has gone to air. Nobody outside the edit suite has seen the tape, and what the program actually delivers, viewers can judge for themselves on Sunday.
Tracy Grimshaw chased Hanson for months and still didn't get the interview
The bigger story is who got beaten. The Australian reports that Tracy Grimshaw, said to be on a $500,000 salary at Nine, spent months trying to woo Hanson and her chief of staff James Ashby for a full hour special of her own, timed to the 30th anniversary of Hanson's maiden speech. She was scooped by the network's arch rival.
It was on 60 Minutes in 1996 that Hanson delivered her best known line, "please explain", after being asked whether she was xenophobic. Thirty years on, the show that gave her that moment couldn't land the anniversary sit down, and a rival did.
There's a fair question buried in that miss. Why would Hanson hand her anniversary sit down to 60 Minutes at all. Nine's flagship has a long habit of cutting a story to suit the left, and a conservative rarely gets the benefit of the edit. On that reading, being scooped by Seven isn't a loss for Hanson so much as a favour.
Paul Murray hands Hanson a full hour on Sky the day after it becomes News24
Hanson isn't done with television either. Sky News has her booked for a full hour with Paul Murray in front of a live studio audience on 28 July, the day after the channel rebrands as News24 on 27 July. Nine's failure to land her now sits between two networks that did.
From Clarkson's Cotswolds pub to a walk through Luton, the cameras followed Hanson
The Australian reports the filming took Hanson across England. Its account has her tour running from a visit to Jeremy Clarkson's Cotswolds pub with former Neighbours star turned conservative campaigner Holly Valance, to a walking tour of Luton. Her deputy Barnaby Joyce and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe also feature in the special, according to the report.
Through the trip Hanson has drawn a straight line from Britain's problems to Australia's, telling former UK prime minister Liz Truss that the UK is worse off than we are, and that we're not far behind.
Video: Tommy Robinson, via X. Pauline Hanson tours Luton with Tommy Robinson.
Steve Jackson writes The Australian's media diary, and the item drips with the usual establishment contempt. Hanson's public appearances become attention seeking stunts, and the reach for the familiar labels does the rest. It's the tone the press gallery has used on her for 30 years, and it's never once dented her vote.
Strip out the sneer and the Diary accidentally makes One Nation's case. Three networks don't fight over someone the country has tuned out. A network doesn't spend a month of its most senior reporter, and a rival doesn't park a reported $500,000 presenter on the chase, unless Pauline Hanson is exactly what Jackson's own column can't quite bring itself to say she is, the most bankable interview in the country.
Bartlett reportedly clashed with Tommy Robinson, and that is no surprise at all
The Australian reports the project only came to light after Bartlett was involved in a fiery public exchange with Tommy Robinson on the streets of Luton, filmed as part of the special. What was actually said is not known, and none of it has gone to air.
If Bartlett did go in swinging, nobody should be surprised, and Robinson's history would have made it easy. Robinson's criminal past is real and well documented, he has served time, and nobody, least of all Robinson, pretends otherwise. But everyone has a past, and what he stands for now matters far more than what he did then. Robinson has spent years documenting the spread of Islamist extremism in Britain, and there is no version of mainstream Australian television that presents that work in a positive light. The safest career move in TV is to front him with the record and maximum hostility, and the Diary applauding it tells you the rules.
Karl Stefanovic is the proof of what happens otherwise. His interview with Robinson was pulled from air, and it ended his run at Nine. Hanson walked the same Luton streets with Robinson last week and called it a warning for Australia. Viewers can decide on Sunday whether Spotlight shows them what she saw, or just the argument.
This is the story the left would rather you never saw, and it's exactly why One News will keep reporting it.
Steve Jackson also mocks Karl Stefanovic, whose own show is pulling millions
The Diary can't resist a swing at Karl Stefanovic either, needling the interview it reckons cost him his job at Nine. What Steve Jackson conveniently leaves out, in a column that rarely finds a kind word for anyone on the right, is every fact that gets in the way of the sneer. Here's the part he skipped.
On his own figures, The Karl Stefanovic Show has just run 5.5 million views across its Piers Morgan episode and clips, and 1.6 million on an exclusive with Restore Britain's Rupert Lowe, recorded before Lowe's turn on Joe Rogan. Lowe also features in Hanson's Spotlight special. Stefanovic points to a 40% lift in Spotify listeners and more than 68,000 new YouTube subscribers, and says he's expecting the coverage to start asking whether the run can last. For a presenter the establishment keeps writing off, the audience is heading the other way.
Jackson forgot to mention he used to produce the Spotlight he's cheering
There's one detail Steve Jackson's Diary skips, and it's about Steve Jackson. Before he was dishing out media verdicts from a column, he was a supervising producer at Seven's Spotlight, the show whose scoop he's now trumpeting, and before that chief of staff at Nine's 60 Minutes, the show he spends this very item needling. Whatever else the Diary is, it isn't a neutral umpire.
His CV has a detour too. When Jackson left Spotlight in 2024 he surfaced as media chief to NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb, an appointment mocked on 2GB as a revolving door, the fourth in two years, with host Ben Fordham betting he wouldn't last. Jackson was soon on the move again, to Mail Online and then back to The Australian, where he now grades everyone else's work for a living.
Jackson can sneer all he likes, the scoreboard doesn't care. Three specials across three networks in a fortnight. Spotlight on Seven this Sunday, and Paul Murray's live hour on Sky on 28 July. Whatever the Canberra press pack thinks of Pauline Hanson, it can't stop putting her to air.
