there's a lot, you don't know about lee sales sure. You know that she's possibly the most outstanding journalist of her generation, but she's been hosting the abc's flagship news and current affairs program 7 30 for 12 years where she's interviewed five sitting prime ministers, several ex prime ministers and every celebrity and sports person you've ever heard of. You also probably know that she's Australia's most famous redhead
and that she's a podcast icon. Thanks to the show that she co hosts with her friend Annabelle crab called chat 10 Looks Three. You might also know that she's written several best selling books, including any ordinary day. I bought at least a dozen copies of that book to give to people after they've experienced sudden tragedies because it is one of the most brilliant and helpful books that I've ever read. All that stuff. It's well and truly on the public record.
But do you know that she's a single mother, that she nearly died during childbirth, that she knows virtually nothing about sport, but has had amusing text banter with everyone from Shane warne to Justin Langer after she interviewed them or that she nearly lost her mind with excitement when she got to interview paul McCartney because you also probably didn't know that she is a massive music nerd and she loves nothing more than to open her piano at home and bang out a show tune.
You probably didn't know that both john howard and Malcolm Turnbull both called her to express their condolences after her father died very suddenly a few years ago And did you know that she didn't use serums until a couple of weeks ago when I shamed her into taking better care of her skin at age 48 and demanded that she started using both vitamin C and retinol. I know a lot about lee sales because after meeting on twitter around a decade ago, she has become one
of my closest and most beloved friends. This is the fourth time she's been a guest on no filter and not even Glennon Doyle or Liz Gilbert has been on that many times, which says a lot about how interestingly sales is. So why again, What everyone wants to know most about Lee sales right now is why she's leaving the most high profile and prestigious job in Australian journalism. Why is she walking away from hosting 730 when she is in arguably on top of her game. Is it the trolls, is it work
life balance? Was she canceled? Is she in fact having extensive plastic surgery so that she can retreat from the public eye for a life of anonymity, lee sales. The people have questions and I'm here to ask them. When did you find out that you were going to be the host of 7 30? Do you remember the day
I do? It was late 2010, I think it was maybe late November 2010 and I had some talks with Mark's got the head of the abc at the time and kate Tony who was the head of news at the time and I wasn't 100% sure that they wanted me to do it. And then kate rang me to say we'd like you to do it and we'd like to be the political editor.
So it was kind of a new broom coming through and it was thrilling because you know, it's such a big and key job, but it was also scary because I was coming in behind Kerry O'brien who had been doing it for a really, really long time and I have such a different kind of vibe to carry. It
was like, okay, this is going to be hard. And I remember saying to Mark and kate, I need you to agree that you'll back me in for three years because I think the audience will need three years to adapt to having a new person there because even, you know, when someone good is replaced by somebody good change is hard for television audiences and so they were great. So I started out with a three year contract so that I had that assurance and it was really good.
But what if you'd been a bit shit
then, I guess they would have found a way out of
it. Was it something that you had to audition for? Were there a few people in the running for it? What were you doing before you took that role?
So before I was doing it, I was hosting Late Line and this was a show that used to go to air at 10 30 at night and it was shared between myself and Tony jones. He hosted Late Line and Q and A. And I did the other days of Late Line. And it was a program not dissimilar to 7 30 but longer and it had longer interviews. So the interviews would always be about 15 minutes, which for 7 30 15 minutes is usually something really major.
Like I had the head of the reserve bank the other day and that was 15 minutes late line, everyone, 15 minutes. So I was having a lot of practice of doing the kinds of things that you do on 7 30 on late line. So I guess that was just an on air, maybe an off broadway kind of audition. They knew my work, so I didn't have to audition. And usually I think when you get to this level, you're only being looked at if you work very well
known already. And so it was just a case of us talking through what I thought of the show at the time and what I would like to do. And yeah, it kind of went from there. So it was just a conversation really.
It was obviously a big commitment in terms of four days a week. What are the hours of 7:30?
So it's kind of, You know, like a lot of media jobs, it's 24/7 really? So I wake up in the morning and I immediately have to check what's in the news because the mornings when you set up the day. So if you need reporters on stories straight away or if you need to get bids in for people, that's when you're doing. So that's quite a busy time from about 66 30. I'm looking at a lot of newspapers and making calls
and juggling that now with my kids. And then nine am we have an editorial conference call where we're talking about what might be on the show and what our options are. And then between usually about 9 15 and 11 o'clock or so. And that's my kind of quiet time where I can usually go to the GM or do something, depends what I've got going on
and then things start changing. So, for example, I kept you waiting because I was on the phone to the executive producer because we just got word that one interview we were going for is not happening. But another one is. And so Clay, who's acting at the moment, wanted to have a quick chat to me about what he thought we should touch on the interview. And I was talking about what I thought, so now that I know that
that's my interview, it'll be okay. Now I prep for that and then I'm simultaneously prepping for an interview tomorrow with Dylan Alcott? So trying to get that out of the way and then juggling whatever else is on the show and then I'll have to make up about four my interviews at 5 15 today. And then once I've done that interview, then I have a look at the leads for the other stories and any other content and we talk about
any other issues. You might have a quick chat about what's coming up tomorrow and then you do the show live and then off you go. But between now, 11 37 30 tonight, all of that could be completely out the window because it's dictated by news events. So it's a rolling, movable face, basically
when I prepped for our conversation today, my prep involved asking in a group chat with you and two other of our friends who are journalists, what should my first question be? How is that different to your process when you're say interviewing anyone?
Do you know what I actually think what you did. That is a great process because particularly if you talk to people who, like, let's say for you, maybe what's that group, you think, okay, women like that? That's the audience for this podcast. So what they're interested in knowing from lee is what my audience would be interested in knowing. So I'm doing this.
It's a very similar thing for 7 30 which is I'm thinking, what would the average person sitting at home who watches my show like me to ask if they're in my position. So I say for example, I mentioned earlier that I interviewed last week, the Governor of the Reserve Bank feel though it's unprecedented basically for him to
do a Tv interview like that. So I was thinking okay, what are people thinking about and how I inform myself for that is I talk to my friends who are in politics and the media, I have lots of conversations with if I'm at the local cafe, the guy who's
working behind there are asking, how is business going? And is he worried about interest rates or if I'm sitting in a doctor's surgery or if I'm in a cab or what, I just talked to people all the time so that I have a sense of what regular people think about, not people like me who consume media all day every day. So I guess it's the equivalent of like a WhatsApp group chat, but just on a bigger kind of real life scale,
you interview everyone from Prime Ministers to sports people to the Beatles. You know, paul McCartney, there are some of those topics that you know more about and some of those that you know less about the sport. How do you prep like, you know, on the day of the Melbourne Cup, you usually have to interview the winner. How do you prep for that? You know nothing about horse racing.
You know what's really embarrassing? I reckon if you went back and watched all my Melbourne Cup interviews over the years, it's probably about the same four questions. It'll be like, what was going through your mind in that final 100 m and? Well, it's just such an amazing thing to win. I mean, you must be so thrilled, but it's kind of like prepping
for anything in that everyone always has their own individual story. So, with Melbourne Cup, it's always a real relief if you discover that the jockeys just come back from an accident or Michelle Payne was the best ever because it was a female jockey and her brother was this trapper and their dad
and their mom had died was a great story. So you had a lot to work with where it's sport is harder for me, if it's more technical about what was involved in the race rather than the person's human story. And usually I'm trying to pull it onto the human terrain and not everyone at home knows about the intricacies of horse racing, they want to connect with the story as
a human being. And I think, you know, whether it's the governor of the Reserve bank or the person who run the Melbourne Cup, if you can find a way to talk on a level that everyone else who's not an expert in that field can relate to, then you're
on much better terrain. So for example, sometimes I'll send back when I was more in news and occasionally I'm feeling as a news reader, I sometimes send back a lead to people in support because I go, I can't even tell what sport this is about because it would be the boomers smashed the opals in a thrilling touchdown. What sport is this and say there's so much jargon in sport and so much knowledge and same with finance, like the footsie and hung what like I don't know what that means.
So it's always about walking in the shoes of the audience and not bringing assumed knowledge.
I think so or some things you can kind of assume I guess like you can assume that people know who Shane warne is maybe, but maybe you want to try to explain why is Shane warne such a famous cricketer, Like people who I don't know about cricket, they might not quite understand what made him different to a regular cricketer. So I try really hard, particularly with subjects I know really well, like say foreign policy or trashy television, try not assume
that everybody else knows. What do I know about it
when you're interviewing those people, it's only politicians who are the ones that usually push back. Although that's maybe not true. You've had to do some, I won't say antagonistic, but usually when you're interviewing someone they won't try and deliberately mislead, you divert you filibuster you what are the specific approaches that you need to take when you're interviewing a politician.
So a politician usually defers to a regular interviewee in that, you know, that they're not going to engage in an open kind of way, you know, they're not going to let you in on everything that's going on behind the scenes, they're going to have a message that they're going to want to try to get out. And sometimes it's interesting to know what their message is. So safe for exam, Anthony Albanese is due to come on 7 30 next week for his first interview as Prime Minister. And so
I haven't interviewed him before. He hasn't been in the job long, so he doesn't have a record. So it won't be an interview where it's not an accountability interview,
where he's not going to be under pressure. Like a regular political interview, it'll be an interview where I'm trying to actually hear what Anthony Albanese messages and what his ambitions are for his term, because if I were remaining as anchor of 7 30 I'd be using that interview for the next three years as my kind of flag poles in the ground interview to see, Well, right at the start, you said that this is what you wanted to do and what you wanted to achieve.
You are at point A and now we're at point z how did you get so far off what you said you were going to do, kind of thing.
So sometimes you do want to hear what their message is and what they're saying and then other times you want to get to the bottom of a change in policy or something that they've done wrong and so I'll try to arm myself with facts to then rebut what I think there's been, you know, might be, whereas with a normal person say preferred politicians is not normal, but like Dylan Alcott for example, I mentioned before that I'm prepping for an interview tomorrow. Now Dylan Alcott is
a really great talker. He's very charismatic and charming. And so I assume if I ask interesting, engaging questions that perk up Dylan's interest and if we have nice rapport that I'm not going to have to work very hard as an interviewer, I'm just going to have to give him a gentle steer in the right direction. Listen to what he's saying and respond so that it feels like a natural kind of conversation. So every interview that I go into, I'm thinking, okay, what's the tone
I need with this? How do I make this person feel at ease or how do I achieve? You know, again, what the average person at home might want to see out of this interview
when you went from being I guess a working journalist to being more of a star journalist when you started hosting 7 30 you were in people's lounge rooms four nights a week plus on all the promo s plus in the media everywhere and ads and all of those things, When did you notice the transition between people? I mean, I imagine you had a little bit of it when you were hosting Late line, but it was really like
prime time a list. How did you notice the transition about how you were perceived, how people interacted with you becoming a famous person?
So the longer I've done it, the more this has become notable to me. So now I would rarely leave the house and not have somebody come up to me and want to chat to me, I want to have
a selfie or whatever. So whereas the first few years I felt kind of like I still could go out and not be noticed, maybe I was kidding myself, because sometimes what happens is I'll sit in a cafe and no one will say something, and then on social media later someone might go, oh I just saw you sitting in a cafe and I didn't want to say anything, but you know, blah blah blah. So maybe I was more noticed than I thought, but I have become very conscious of it and it might
also be because I'm leaving. So now people are just so lovely because they want to come up and they want to go, I just want to say thank you very much and you know that kind of thing, and also just the range of people now who come up to me like it can be quite young people in their late teens or early twenties, it can be older people that you perceive as more traditional abc viewers was walking down George Street the other night on a friday night at about 10 30
and there was this group of young guys, I would have never thought they knew who I was, and one of them yelled out, oh my God, lisa, I love you, it was just like, wow, I so did not receive you guys as my demographic at the low, jeez, it's often really weird because you're mixing with all these other famous people from other networks and so the people who sometimes out themselves as major fans is really surprising to me.
So one leg is a few years ago I was going to the toilet and I bumped into Gary sweet and he stopped him like oh my God, I am, I cannot believe I bumped into you, oh my God, I'm your biggest fan and he was really awkward. And then this loge, do you know the actor James Stewart who is on the way? So georgie parker, like Australian television royalty came up to me and went, I'm really sorry to disturb you but James is your biggest fan and could he please get a photo with you, I'll take it,
that's just like that's completely fine, no problem. And so we got lee, oh my God, it's so great to meet you, it's embarrassing. So he was just like, awkward fan going and then we kind of moved through and ended up colliding again at the other end and I said to him, I'm just always amazed that somebody like you would even know who I am. And so he was like, mom raised us, right? We watched 7 30 so yeah, so that was a classic. So sometimes you kind of surprised by it was a
big fan. I remember interviewing Guy Pearce in 2011 when I was first in the show and because you know, I grew up in that neighbors era, you know, he was such a heartthrob when we were kids. And when I walked in, he clearly was a massive viewer and fan of Late line and to the degree where he was like, he was still married at the time he was saying,
okay. And I noticed that you've changed your hair and you used to have the short bob on late line, They've grown longer and we're wondering why, because I looked too much like Julia Gillard with the short red bob. We sat around yapping for ages after the interview. And then we caught up again in 2018, he's just a religious viewer, 7 30 and then we stayed friends because we just hit it
off and we were buddies. So my mind, I'm like, oh my God, Guy Pearce is sitting on film sets around the world watching, you know, 7 30 every opportunity candle. Ben Mendelson is another person who one time we had a story and this is lovely when this kind of thing happens. Ben Mendelson was in the U. S. Shooting, what was the show? Whether it was in the luxury kind of hotel that the family runs and oh the guy from friday night lights
and it's like swampy,
swampy, it's in florida blood,
something something blood
exactly bloodlines. And Ben Mendelsohn's the kind of way with Brother. Anyway, we had this gorgeous story on the show about this kind of disco that was being held for teenagers who had disabilities, like all different kind of disabilities and it was organized by one of the moms because she said they're still teenagers, they still wanna meet somebody that they might fancy and have a bit of romance in their life but we can't let them go out like normal
teenagers to easily get taken advantage of and it's just not safe. And so we created this disco for them, it's a safe kind of space. And so they've got
a pager and a DJ and stuff. And the kids, we had one of our producers Leslie Robinson follow these kids through and it was just the most gorgeous story and the kids were just so excited, it was just absolutely adorable and the mom, you know she only had money to do one and then Ben Mendelson saw it watching in L. A. And he got in contact with us and said I'll pay for another one like just get it organized and
I'll pay for the whole thing. So they then have a second one that Ben shouted, he did an interview a few years later about something and I actually asked him before the interview can I ask you about that on camera? Because I think it's a great message to send to people of means if you see something on our show and you can make a difference we'll just ring us and you know you can. And so Ben talked about how he watched it and he was really touched by it and he just thought
I can spare 5000 bucks to do that. And he said to other people they should, I won't name them because I don't want to embarrass them. But there's a well known quite well loved Australian businessman who often gets in touch to say you know families who have lost their homes or whatever, he'll pay their rent for six months. And so that's really heartening when that kind of thing happens.
Was there anyone at the luggage that you were fan girling
over? Um Often it's the kids people that kids entertained because it thrills my kids if they see me with. So I had with him a legal and I was chatting to Hamish blake, I didn't take a photo with Hamish but they love lego masters. So I've said to Hamish you know you have to come over for dinner sometime didn't want the kids are going to basically monopolizing and hide him in the bedroom the entire period to build, but it probably would be fine with that.
Yeah. So it's usually the kids, people jimmy giggle. I've got one here and I just text the photos for the kids
when obviously people recognizing you in public, you're in a cafe or whatever, it's fine. There's been some times when you've been in very vulnerable situations like when you nearly died giving birth, what's that? Like? Do you have an awareness in situations where you are really powerless or vulnerable or in a really private situation that happens to be public is your celebrity in the room?
Yeah. And because I never assume that people know who I am because I think that would just be up myself. So I don't want to say things like, oh look, I need an extra level of privacy because you know, I'm famous. So I usually am hoping that someone else might intervene on my behalf and say, you know, we might prefer to be, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And people normally are very respectful. Like I was in hospital one time with my son who was in hospital, there was a family in the bed next to us, a little boy who had a tumor and the mother recognized me, but she didn't raise it with me. She raised it with my son's father and she clearly
didn't want to kind of raise it. It kind of made me feel a little bit awkward, but it also made me feel good because she knew who I was, because she was a fan of chat town, looks through the podcast I do with Annabelle and she listened to that.
And so I got on the phone to Gwen, who does our merchandise and said, oh there's this because you know, I've been hearing like a little boy was in a lot of pain, I said to Gwen, can you just quickly like bang together a merchandise pack of chat 10 Kia that I can give to the mom and say my ex husband actually took it in and gave it to her and I don't think I actually spoke to her after she knew who I was, he said, oh she nearly cried,
like she was so happy about it. And so that this stuff is really nice if you feel like, because you just know that someone's having the bloody worst few days of their life and so if you can sling them a stupid apron with my ugly mug on it,
like that makes you feel kind of good. But then other times, I remember once in the street, a woman stopped me and she said, oh it was a nurse and you know when you're in intensive care and I remember, you know, you're asleep and I said to another nurse, oh my God, it's the sales and it was like, I felt like actually kind of, but it was gigantically inappropriate,
you
Know, times out of 100 people are just really awesome to me and they are very respectful and you know, it's fine.
You're not someone who pops up in the Gossip columns. A million people watch 7, 34 nights a week, millions of people watch you on big ticket items like the election coverage. You are one of the most recognizable faces in Australia and yet you're not in the gossip columns. Why not?
I think because I'm pretty boring and also I just try to keep myself under the radar. So I do go to, you know, the occasional opening night of things, but I don't like for example, I don't go out to cool places with dates, you know, like I go to daddy suburban pubs and you know, things like that. So I think that the kind of life I live doesn't really invite, you know, I don't live in Bondi for example. I don't, I'm not eating out at Potts
point all the time. Like I'm not in places very often where you be seen. I mean I do go to pains to not have details about my family and private life out there because I think it's not fair on the people around me. So I do work pretty hard to not be saying with people and you know, to be honest, not that I date an endless parade of people, but I don't want my kids ever googling oh there's one with that guy and there's one with that guy, there's one with that guy, like I just
would rather keep all of my private business private. So yeah, I think I just keep it under the radar.
You got quietly divorced a few years ago, no meal dramas there. How does someone date lee sales like what sort of guy has the confidence to ask you out?
I think you've got to be reasonably confident to actually do that. But I also think that most people, once they meet me and kind of get to know me, I think fairly rapidly, I'm not very intimidating. I think what people find hard sometimes is the way other people
interact with them. So for example, I've been out with men where people have said to them, wow, you must have felt intimidated at asking lee out and so the message that they're getting is you're punching above your weight and I think that's a hard message for men to get and so, you know, that's not the message I give people that I'm in relationships with or dating, but I think that they sometimes feel very heavily scrutinized and I know even my husband things like checking somewhere to be
Mr and mrs sales or whatever, which isn't his name. So just this assumption that the person is kind of just your add on and sometimes they're treated a little bit like that. I think that can be kind of confronting for people and just the level of people looking you up. Like literally looking you up and down, like spotting me and then looking the purse up and down again. There's nothing you can really do
about its natural kind of human curiosity. But I often feel sorry for people that I'm with in that situation. And so for example, say red carpet events, I generally would prefer to take a friend because I don't want to subject some poor bugger to that level of scrutiny.
Did you take a date to the Oscars?
No, you don't. You don't get to take a partner to the ladies unless you're
I'm Mia Freedman and you're listening to no filter with Leigh sales. So the time that you've been hosting on 7:30, the world's changed in terms of social media and as a journalist and a working journalist, how have you seen that change? How have you experienced that change? Because back in the day it used to be, if someone had a problem, they would, I don't know, ring the abc or they would write a letter which they would have to get a stamp for. And then
of course there was email. Now the whole performative side of things has come in with social media, How have you experienced that shift? Like when do you remember thinking, oh this is different.
I definitely remember this is a long time ago back in 2005 being just blown away by changing technology, I was covering Hurricane Katrina and my producer at the time was an American guy called Jason Rocky. And we were at New Orleans airport and we went outside onto like a kind of grassy area outside the airport and he had you know what we would now think it's just like a wireless total that he shoved into the USB on the side of laptop and we filed voice reports and we sent them from the field.
Now that was the first time ever that I hadn't had to go back to find a phone line to plug into to send audio material back. And I remember thinking this is unbelievable, this is a complete game changer. And so that for me was a real moment of thinking how much things changed I think then technology moved
really fast. But then of course during the pandemic when we all had to adapt to using technology differently, even the way you and I are doing this podcast now, I'm sitting at my house, you're in your office, it's all professionally recorded. Like we've all had to learn to do that. I did 730 out of my bedroom down the hallway. So that was another moment of thinking, wow, this is an incredible update.
And then also of course there's been the rise of social media and I think probably around it's definitely been since my colleague Mark Coleman died, which was in 2017 because I remember when mark was alive, we were never talking about Twitter being a nasty vicious kind of place and that it wasn't hyper partisan and mark was like a very very voracious user of Twitter.
And so it's definitely happened since then. So in my head I think something's changed marc died where that platform in particular has become just a kind of hate fueled hyper partisan sort of place. And so I think that what's happened is that platform which really I don't know anyone on it other than journals like in my world say for example, you know I come from Brisbane, my friends range from teachers to
police officers, secretaries, university workers and so on. None of them are on twitter and none of them were aware for example, of the level of abuse that gets meted out at female journalists on twitter just for doing their job. And so the only people who ever raised with me twitter or abuse on twitter, social media abuse are actually other journals because so many journals are on twitter and so their assumption is oh this represents the world, everyone's
on twitter. Whereas the abc actually we did some research last year and I think we've found something like nine out of 100 people used twitter regularly, hardly anybody is on their, when you think about it as well that people who are particularly active who can sit on a social media platform all day and commentate on what's on abc news breakfast or commentate all day
on somebody's newspaper column. I mean what do you do for a job or what's going on in your life that actually you have that much time that you can devote to that? So by its nature it can't possibly be representative.
A lot of that stuff that I think preoccupies journalists around the importance of twitter and what's trending on twitter and what people are saying on twitter is actually not very important and it's afforded way too much power and influence in the media in my view based on how much real people actually use it.
There's been a lot of erroneous reports around the fact that you're leaving 7 30 because of twitter trolling. It's a pretty easy story, I've actually never heard you complain or be worried or do anything other than eye roll about twitter trolls. How do you think this has sort of become the narrative?
Well, I just think that again, because Jonah is on twitter all the time and they would see, you know the level of abuse that I get, they think that oh it must be because you know, she's getting abused, Hamish blake when I announced I was leaving, sent me this really interesting and lovely text message and he said, people often have a really hard time understanding when somebody's choosing to leave a great job at the top of
their game of their own choosing. And he said, they assume that there must be a secret reason, like you must have a new job or a secret thing lined up or there must be something secretly going on in your life that nobody knows about or you must be getting pushed. And he said, but when I see someone announced what you've just announced, I feel nothing but excitement for them, that they have taken control
of that situation, they've made an empowered decision. And now there's fresh fields ahead and something to do. And when I got it, I thought because my text messages were just full of people going, oh my God, wow, that's huge. And Hamish actually, I thought, yes, he 100%
gets it. He totally gets why I'm going. And so I think a lot of people have been casting around looking for what's the real reason because who could possibly give up this job in the position she's in now, but the reality is that I do enjoy the job and I do really like it. But I said to kate and Mark right at the start, but I thought it was about a 10 year job and I've been doing it now for coming up to
12 11.5. And so I never have wanted to be somebody who waits till they're kind of stale and people want them to go, I wanted to go when I felt like I was at a really good position and you know, I was incredibly grateful when I told the head of the abc David Anderson and Justin Stephens who was at the time that 7:30 p.m. Is now the head of news and Gavin Fang, who was the acting head of news, they all said variations of
is there anything we can say to change your mind? Like, you know, we would love you to keep doing it, but we assume that you've thought it through a lot if you've come to us. And I really, really appreciated that that was the response that I got. And that actually helped me understand I've judged this right because what I didn't want to ever go and then to go, great, thank you so much because you know, they've wanted me
to disappear. And so honestly people keep asking me all the time, you know, what are you going to, what do you want to do? And when I say, I don't know, I want to have a break. I want to have a rest and see what grows up. People have a hard time believing that. So I keep reading this erroneous speculation as well about what I'm going to do that. I'm going to do a talk show. I've never pitched that the abc has
never offered it. There's been no discussion about it. I actually think a show of that nature would not work in Australia. So I'm not doing that the twitter stuff like you know the Daily Telegraph on the weekend and the herald sun ran this story that was with a headline that was an utter fabrication and it was in direct quotes saying trolls forced me out of the job. I love it is the literal exact opposite to what I said in the actual interview to Sarah Lamarche
in Stella, which is that I ignore trolls. They don't have any bearing on my real life. I care about the opinions of people who matter to me and who are important when I say that again, people find a hard time believing that I get the level of abuse I do and not care about. I really don't give a stuff what some anonymous moron thinks about me online. I just don't actually care and I'm not saying that to try to put a nice blush on it. However, I literally don't actually care.
So I think sometimes people have a hard time kind of processing all of that. But the reality is I am leaving because time's limited in life, right? I'm 49. I have so many ideas all the time about things I'd like to do. 7 30 is a massive job. There's limited time to do those things and I mean personal life things as well as work things and so you know the clocks tick tick tick tick ticking away all the time and I'm going to run out of time to do everything I want to do.
And so it just feels like at the end of an election cycle and after I've been doing it so long and where I'm in this position where people still respect me doing it, it feels like a great moment to go, yes, I've done everything I can do there and it's time to move on to a new challenge and it literally is as simple as that.
The other narrative that people like whenever a powerful and successful woman
decides
to make a change in her career is that you can't have it all, feminism's failed
and
that it's not compatible having a high powered job with a young family, can you speak to that?
Yeah, you're so right, that is the other thing that people immediately reach for. It is hard to have a high powered career and a family, it is difficult and I think, you know, when people say you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once, you can, it just takes an enormous amount of juggling and it takes an enormous amount of assistance and other p
people kind of chipping in to help. So, for example, my boy's father is really good at chipping in and doing what's needed to help care for the boys or suddenly being called on to have to change his plans because a major story is broken and I have to go to work, I've had the same nanny for almost their entire lives who is just the most extraordinary person and you know, I can leave the kids with her and I feel as assured as if they're with me,
my great close friends, Annabelle crab and Gwen and Miranda Murphy and people like that who have been around to help me when something unexpected happens and I can't keep all of the balls in the air and they swoop in to assist with a kid or do whatever. Or my friend Nick who drove around on short notice the other day because my car wouldn't start, the battery was flat and you know, whatever he was doing, he just put aside to replace my car battery two days after the bloody federal election.
So it takes all of that you have to have, you can't just have plan a, you've got to have three or that plan h especially when you're a single mother and so you know, that is difficult, but you can do it. But I think what you have to think about is and I've spent a lot of time in the past 18 months thinking about is what do
you want your life to look like? And what I don't want my life to look like is the level of stress that it's had for the past decade really, while I've had the kids, which is I wake up every morning. I feel like I'm in a hurry constantly. I wonder what I'm forgetting stuff falls out of my brain all the time. I'm not fast at responding to my friends text messages. I don't see enough of my friends. I want to, I get home from work,
I'm tired. The kids are now at an age where they want to talk when I get home from work, they get the dregs of me because I get home late and so I'm knackered and so I don't want to operate like that anymore. I've been able to do it and I could keep doing it, but I actually don't want to do that anymore. So it's that thing of identifying, you know, what's important to you, what do
you want your life to look like? This is of course a luxurious position to be in because some people I need to earn this amount of, because I have to put food on the table for my kids and those are calculations, I have to make two again because I'm a single mother, I can't just go, oh, I'd like to just step away and have a suite of projects. Like I kind of need a salary job. So I know what I'm doing. I can't take huge risks. You know, I can't kind of go out and just
make look three my thing. The other point I make around, they're having it all kind of thing is that most women, I know we have conversations a lot about getting women into more senior roles in workplaces. Most women I know feel like we barely have our heads above water juggling all of our existing responsibilities. And so the last thing we want is to take on more responsibility at work and that's because it's really
hard to juggle that with our home responsibilities. There was an amazing piece last week in the paper that had some research around the way that home responsibilities have altered and when you looked at was broken down into two things, one was caring for the Children and amazingly that had almost equalized between men and women. What was still unbelievably disproportionate on women was mental load
of running the house and organizing children's activities. So, and you know, I think a lot of people would relate to this that your partner or your husband will be awesome at taking the kids to network or whatever as long as you tell them and you have enrolled the kids in netball, so you just have to still run everything.
And so that was, I think it was something like 80% of the shitloads still fell predominantly on two and any women listening to this will know how full on and draining and exhausting that is like I was sitting at the logistics and I actually mentioned it to Justin my boss was sitting next to me, I was sitting at my table at the logistics, texting my nanny to the grocery list of what could I get to pick up the next day and giving her the plan for the morning for school drop
as I'm sitting at the login because that was the first window I had to actually do that. I think that's you know the kind of thing that women relate to that that's your brain is ticking the entire time about okay what have I got to do to do that? And it's really exhausting.
My favorite stories from women are the ones where worlds collide. I know there's a story about when you were pregnant and interviewing Penny wong.
Oh so actually I had two funny things with Penny both times when I've been pregnant. So the first time I was pregnant I was at the midwinter ball in camera. Parliament House hadn't announced it publicly yet. And I was sitting next to Penny and her partner was sitting on her other side. And when I announced a few weeks later that I was pregnant, Penny rang me and she said I knew that you were pregnant because you and Sophie were pushing away identical food on your plate and she was expecting
her first child as well. And she said I looked at what Sophie and it was also a secret. So I looked at Sophie was doing what you were doing and I thought she's pregnant and she said I didn't say anything because I didn't want to breach your privacy but I knew it. Anyway then when I was pregnant
with James. So a couple of years later, I interviewed Penny and I forget who her counterpart was at the time, she was in government at the time, and the start of the interview slightly delayed because I felt sick and then I had to do the interview with a bucket in the studio next to me, I felt like I was going to be sick, and Penny rang me afterwards and she said, you know, and I know that you're pregnant again.
I was catching myself, I was going, Penny literally both times that I've been pregnant mother because
didn't you have to say to Penny, look if the vision cuts out, keep talking, I'm just having to have a little vomit.
I was like you guys have to just keep it going and you'll see me disappear, they'll kill my mic and then I'll come back in that you're going to have to just keep it kind of going, you know, the perils of live television,
Did you ever have to do that?
No, I haven't ever thrown up on air. It's a constant terror actually with the kids because you know, young kids always have gastro and stuff. I remember one time, you know how many kids are young and they have gastro, I hope I'm not the only evil person that thinks this, but I'll often think when they're being sick, I'll be like feeling the pits of despair thinking God I'm going to have this in 12 hours and it's just
like you know you're
Getting it definitely. So I remember one the kids both had gastro and so I was like well this is going to be striking any moment, right? So you're always worried live television if you know there's about a gastro looming. Anyway, I got home at about 9 15, I started feeling really sick and then I was really crook. I remembered I texted Justin and said yeah I've got it but it's 9 15
I'm out the other
side, so to speak. It's going to be such a pleasure to kind of be able to live my life and not be worried that I'm going to throw up on live tv it's going to be good in
terms of the demands of the way things have changed, not just with twitter but with people not tolerating other points of view because that's a new thing it used to be, I disagree with you now I disagree with you, you must apologize and take it down or delete it from the public record. Have you noticed a big shift in that we're just not able to tolerate opinions, we don't agree with any more.
Yeah and I find it fundamentally disturbing and because I believe in free speech, I think it's really, really concerning that you can't just go well I disagree with that but whatever or even hateful opinions that you wouldn't just go well I disagree with that and your head, but you're right to believe whatever nonsense you want to believe. The other thing I find really disturbing is so we have a very, when I say we really what we're talking about again is the kind of
cancel culture mob on twitter. There's a very low bar for mistakes. So you misspeak you word something awkwardly, you can find yourself at the end of a gigantic pile on and that can happen like that. There can be real world consequences for that. We've seen it over and over again. Universities accept people or magazines have sacked people. It doesn't matter what their record is, they could have an immaculate record,
but one misstep you're out the door. So even when people apologize now we don't, forgiveness is very hard one. So it's a low bar for being canceled. It's a high bar to be forgiven. And for people to give like I sometimes wonder whatever happened that's saying the benefit of the doubt. Like, oh yes, you know me, you said something a bit clumsy or lee said something
a bit clumsy. Generally speaking, we know her to be a person of good character who's done a lot of good in the world and so therefore we give her the benefit of the doubt, whereas now it's like, no, sorry you are a sexist or you are a racist or you are a bigot or whatever it is that gets directed at you. So I feel like if we're going to have these very stringent standards that we hold people to, surely we have to have a willingness to forgive people
and give people space to be human. Because what it's going to do is it's going to discourage people from doing jobs like mine because when you're on live television or even doing an interview like this, you and I have been talking off the top of our head for the best part of 45 minutes as a human being, you can't be certain in that period of time that you're not going to say something that offends somebody or that you're not actually going
to say something offensive, you might actually make a mistake and say something wrong. So if we get to the point where society is so censorious of people that were we're all scared to even say a word for fear of offending somebody, we're going to be in a very
bad place. And so I'm hoping somehow that we're going to have some kind of correction to some of the stuff we've seen happen of course some of the stuff we've seen happen is valuable because you want to call out sexism and racism and all kinds of stuff, what we don't want to do is have these just gigantic bullying episodes of people that do incredible harm. I recommend everyone read Jon ronson's book. So you've been publicly shamed, which talks about the consequences on
people who even when they've done stupid things. Find themselves with lynch mobs after online. It's really disturbing and it's a sad trend
just finally because I know you have to go and do your day job, I know you're working on a speech about the things you've learned about human nature, off the top of your head. What have been some of the more unexpected things that you've learned?
I think that humans are unbelievably adaptable and the things that you think if that happened to me, I'd never survive that I wouldn't be I'd rather be dead than that happened to me. Almost everyone that you talked to who's experienced something that you yourself in your head would think that that's not how people feel when it actually happens to them. Humans are unbelievably adaptable and resilient. There's a lot of truisms that actually aren't true, like
for example, hard work pays off. There's many examples in life where people have worked incredibly hard and just because of luck or happenstance or wrong timing, the hard work hasn't paid off. So the thing that's coming to my mind is Hillary Clinton, she runs in o a it's Barack Obama once in a lifetime amazing candidates. So she's
an amazing candidate. She's worked really hard, it just didn't pay off happens all the time in politics as well, where you might have, you know, everyone on both sides, the winning and the losing side is working incredibly hard, but one side is still going to be the losing side and then Hillary clinton again of course with donald trump. So there's that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? I
don't actually necessarily believe that to be true. I think sometimes people are permanently weakened by things that happen to them and just profoundly changed by the burdens that life kind of puts on them. I think it makes you different I think rather than stronger. So I think they would be the probably most unexpected things. There's probably some, I mean I don't know that this is unexpected, but just things like if you want to achieve highly and reach goals, we all know that that's going to
involve probably failure. Like you have to be prepared to embrace failure.
But I also think working at your capacity means you have to be prepared that most of the time you're going to be operating in a space that makes you uncomfortable because you're always at the limits of what you're capable of doing and that's not a very comfortable place to operate so many times in my job, I feel uncomfortable, like anxious, scared, fearful because I'm operating right at the limits of what I'm capable of doing and so I think you have to
be prepared to embrace that and understand that this is going to come with feeling uncomfortable, but the feeling at the other side of having done it is great because partly relief because you get away from the feeling of discomfort, but it's also that sense of accomplishment that I pushed through those kind of hard feelings.
Did you have a catheter in on election night?
I did not have a catheter in but I wasn't drinking water from about 1:00. The only way to get through it, I'm afraid because you're on for so long, you know, it was about six hours this time. It's been six hours every time I've hosted it and it just seems we can't have a quick election these days. And so Annabelle and I often talk about limiting, literally limiting our fluid intake
like bodybuilders,
Bodybuilders. Exactly, We look really buff by the end of election night, me and Annabelle
really good muscle definition, that's why you do it. I love you, I thank you. And if twitter's done one thing in its life, it's introduced me to you, that's how we became friends. So
Exactly, yeah. And you know, it did in the early days, twitter, it was wonderful for all the kind of eclectic people that you met that you wouldn't have come across, you know, and so yeah, I'll always be grateful for that too. I made some beautiful friends out of twitter. You chief among
them. I love you, I
love you.
Did you love that? That's lee sales. Ladies and gentlemen, one of my favorite lee stories is that after she interviewed Shane warne, I don't know if you saw that interview. It was replayed just after he died recently and she knows nothing about sports. But still she really found him to be so engaging. They got on really, really well. And you can see that through the interview. Like he's a bit reticent at first, like he's kind of like, what does
she want to talk to me about? But part of her skill as an interviewer is immediately putting people at ease whether they're Shane warne or a prime Minister during an election campaign or a treasurer on budget night or someone who's just experienced an enormous tragedy. So this report, she develops with her subjects often carries on and she tells the funniest story about how she and Shane, I think they were both promoting books at
the same time. She was promoting any ordinary day and Shane was promoting, I don't know, he'd probably written an autobiography and so they would have these text banters about who could sign the most amount of books in the shortest amount of time and they have to do these book signings and they'd just be like trying to beat each other because lee is also very, very competitive. I hope you enjoyed that. You know where to find lee she's on the television, she's on a podcast. Please buy that
book if you haven't already. Please buy that book for someone who might have suddenly experienced a tragedy or a sudden change in their life. I was sort of dreading reading it because it sounded really grim interviewing people like walter macaque after he lost his wife and his Children at Port Arthur or people who had suddenly lost loved ones in awful circumstances. But it was actually I had to read it obviously because she was my friend.
But then I just loved it. It was so engaging, it was so conversational and you saw a side of lee that most people don't see. But also she just brought such humanity and nuance and context to these stories. It was just a beautiful, beautiful book. Anyway, no filter is produced by lots of people at the moment because Liz Ratliff, who is the executive producer is away. So it's been a cast of thousands involved in this one and I'm grateful to every single one of them.
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