Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the eleventh of April.
I'm Billy fitz Simon's I'm Zara Seidler.
We have a little bit of a different episode for you today. We are breaking the fourth wall and telling you the story of how we have tried and tried to get Opposition leader Peter Dunnan to sit with The Daily OS for a one on one interview in the lead up to the election, which is now just three weeks away. Now, our initial goal was actually a little bit more ambitious than a sit down interview, but we
will tell you more about that in a moment. The reason we wanted to explain this today is because firstly, we do get asked quite often about how these interviews come about, and we also wanted to have an honest conversation about what the Daily Oz's goal is this election and some of the preconceived ideas that come with working in youth media.
Okay, so Billy, we're going to start by sharing the story and I guess the lead up to where we find ourselves today, which is going on our podcast and talking about our efforts to get Peter Dudden. But this story didn't start today, certainly didn't start this week. It didn't even start this year. So talk to me about what happens last September.
Yes, so last September is when we first sent an email to the Labor Party and the Liberal Party requesting for a leader's debate. You have to remember that. Obviously, now we know when the election is, but then we didn't know if it was going to be called basically any day, so we really had to be very prepared, YEP. And our pitch to the headquarters and that just for context, is who you have to pitch to for something like this.
Our pitch to those parties basically just explained that TDA wants to hold the first ever leader's debate hosted by a youth company. Now, for contexts, leader's debates usually happen every single election cycle in Australia. They're always between the leader of the Liberal Party and the leader of the Labor Party. This time that is, of course Peter Dudden for the Liberal Party and Anthony Albanzi for Labor and
usually there's about three of them. I've heard that Peter Dunden is actually a requesting for there to be four of them this election. We can arrange that, and it's up to the parties to agree on which networks they will do that debate with.
Which in and of itself is quite an interesting process because these are two essentially warring parties who have to come together, put their differences aside, and agree on a time and a network that they're going to debate on exactly.
And we know that it's quite the process that starts months and months, possibly even up to a year before the actual election. And it's because, like you said, you obviously do need to align so many different schedules and competing priorities for it all to fall into place, not just once, but three times now. These debates always happen on a television network, but it could also be in
collaboration with a newspaper. But they are always streamed on TV networks, and they're very big in US presidential campaigns. You possibly remember the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I do recall that famously led to Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential campaign because his performance was considered to be so bad during that debate. So they are
a really big deal. And according to our research, and we have looked far and wide, there has never been a Leader's debate that has been hosted by a youth media company in Australia, and so that is why we wanted to do the very first one. And we wanted the Leader's Debate to be really specifically talking directly to young people, which is obviously our audience, and that was our pitch. That's what we put together in our email last September.
I vividly recall you putting time in my diary for a meeting and sitting in our office one afternoon and you saying, all right, I've got a pitch. You've got to listen to it, and I'm going to make it happen. And as you said, that was, you know, towards the back end of last year, and I remember us talking about the fact that you know, we had only ever seen debates on TV, that there wasn't this movement towards hosting them in any other forums. But you didn't seem deterred by that.
No, I remember saying, I think we could get Netflix on ball. I do recall so my ambitions looking back were extremely high. Love it, and I did have genuine hope, which perhaps was very naive of me, but that is okay.
But I do think it's an interesting point that they have always been held on television networks because obviously we know over the past decade or over the past twenty years, the media landscape has changed so drastically, and so have viewing habits, and so many people today are watching long form videos not on TV, but also on streaming platforms, or there's YouTube, or there's so many other social media platforms.
And we really wanted to do a leader's debate that matched the times, yeah, and wasn't just on a TV network, and there were so many different ways we thought that we could do that, and so that was also in the pitch.
Okay, And so we did have these conversations. We definitely had warm leads with the Labor Party. It was more difficult to get through to the Liberal Party, but we absolutely kept trying. And then, Billy, you interviewed the Prime Minister in February this year.
Yeah, So the Prime Minister came in. He was sitting exactly where you are now, Zara, and keep de set warm for me, and we did our interview and at the end, he said that he would come back during their campaign, and I remember thinking, this is my moment. I have to get the Prime Minister to say on the record that he would agree to do a leader's debate that is moderated by TDA. This is how that went.
You've been very generous with your time. Thank you so much for joining us, Thank you for having me once again. Look forward to coming back during the campaign. I hope we can do a leader's debate. That's all we're billing for.
That would be good. I'm up for that.
If not all turn up anyway, we've got it on record, thank you. And so we had it on camera. I remember, as you can hear in that cliff, I was very excited. We had it on record, and we're one of two yes, and we felt suddenly we felt so close, but we also felt so far because we still needed the opposition leader to agree, and so we kept trying, and we kept trying. Sara, you tried many times, you called, you texted thread.
Yeah. I think that I sent more pieces of communication to the Liberal Party in those intervening couple of weeks than I ever have to anyone before. And I was really trying to make the point that it was so important for young people to hear from both sides, and that we had just interviewed the minister and now was the opportunity for our audience to equally hear from who could be the next prime minister exactly.
And I think eventually, after we were left on red one too many times, our ego was one too many times, we did decide to pivot to requesting for just a one on one interview instead of the leader's debate. Maybe next election we'll try for that again, but for now we were happy with just a one on one interview. We did finally get an answer, but that answer was a no. We actually got a firm no.
It was a no with very little wiggle room and no justification.
Yeah, but if we've learned anything working in media, it's that you can't take note for an answer, and so we did hope that when the election was called, things would hopefully change. In the meantime, though, we decided to shift our focus again and we decided if we couldn't get done and we still needed to interview a senior politician in the coalition, and that was really important for us because aim is to provide balanced, non partisan information for young people, and we really try to not lean
either way in our reporting. But to do that, we do need both sides to play ball with us and to engage with us. And we can't do that if it is only one side of politics that is willing to engage with us.
Yeah, I mean, if we're to put all the cards on the table here, youth media does have a reputation of being progressive leaning if we look at the market more broadly. You know, we know young people tend to vote progressive, and we have seen youth media try to really cater to that. When we entered the market, we said we're not going to do that. We're going to try be different and we're going to try this really
non partisan approach. But it's made very difficult if we can only consistently engage with one side of politics, because then it creates this perception that we are only open to talking to them or only open to platforming one side of politics, which is absolutely not the case and is why you shut down with Angus Taylor.
Yes, so we did get the shadow treasurer as Taylor, So just for context, he is the person who would be responsible for managing the economy if the coalition does get into power, and we thought he was the perfect person to interview because we know that cost of living will be the top issue that many young people are basing their votes on this election, and that's based on
the research and the surveys that TDA has done. And so I did that interview last Friday, and at the end I decided to ask why he thought that his leader, Peter Dutton wouldn't speak to us. Here's how that went. Your leader Peter Dutton has rejected our request for an interview. Why do you think that is? Oh, you'd have to ask, I've tried, you won't answer.
I'll see if I can.
Help with that. And so that seemed slightly promising that one of Dudden's most senior colleagues would speak to him about potentially coming on with us. We did also follow up with Peter Dudden's team again, but yet haven't heard back since.
No, And so it was at that point, you know, we're now three weeks out from the election. We hadn't had any response. We've been trying these private communication channels for like seven eight months at this point, and we decided, you know what, why not put out a public request. We have a platform with TDA, and we figured perhaps if we had this conversation with our audience, there would potentially be a different outcome.
Yeah, and this was something that really felt like our last resort and it's something that you have to think about because we really needed to toe the line carefully because we didn't want to annoy his team, but we also wanted to try as hard as we can to use as many resources as we can to get this interview because as I think we've made very clear, we really do want our audience to hear directly from the opposition leader, and we really want to make sure that
our news platform is balanced. But again, we can't do that if it's only one side of politics that is willing to engage with us. So yes, we put out our post and we asked our audience to tag Dudden in the comments. At last count I think it's had nearly one five hundred comments, so there were a lot of tags there. But yeah, haven't heard from his team since, and again we have sent more messages since. We also published that on the night of the first leader's debate
to kind of bring this full circle. So it was the first time that Anthony Albanezi and Peter Dunnen were meeting for a leader's debate, that was on Sky News, which is of course a television network. It's also a paid channel, so you know, not a lot of young people, let alone people at all, could access watching that debate. And so again it just proved why something like the Daily OS is so important because it's free for everyone.
It's meeting people where they are. Again, we know that a lot of people aren't watching television, they're on social media, which just happens to be where we are too.
It does, indeed, and I do think it's important to point out that there'll be other interviews hosted on different channels. We know, of course the public broadcast of the ABC they will be hosting a debate between the two leaders that will be free to air, free for everyone to watch. But yet we do think that speaking directly to a youth audience, bringing the information directly to them, is so pivotal.
During the election, where gen Z and millennials are out numbering baby boomers for the very first time, it is actually more important than ever that leaders engage directly with this voting cohort and just Finally, Billy, we've just wrapped up another week of the election campaign. We are nearing that May third date so soon.
So so I don't know how in how three weeks I.
Know, I know we've consistently been saying, Oh, it's coming, it's coming, It's here. I do want to end by asking how TDA more generally is approaching this election campaign.
Yeah. So, like we've talked about, we always try to be as balanced as possible, and what that looks like on an everyday basis is every time we talk about an energy policy, for example, or a cost of living policy, we'll explain what the policy is, and then we'll explain what the opposition or what the government if it's an opposition's policy, thinks about that policy. And then of course we'll also include the opinions of minor parties and independents
if they're relevant to that specific policy. So kind of wanting to provide the facts and then provide what all of the different sides are saying about that or about how they would change that specific issue that we are talking about. And then beyond those kind of explainers, we are also sending Harry, who is our political journalist and Aula, who is our video editor who's also producing this podcast
right now, Hi Ala. They will be going on the campaign trail, so they are going on the government's campaign trail with Anthony Albanzi and then they are also going on Peter Dunnan's campaign trails, so that will be super exciting for both of them and for TDA to be there. I know that both sides of Parliament are trying to embrace new media more and so yeah, that will be exciting for us to be there.
So during that time we'll be bringing all of you explainers on preferential voting, on the key seats that might determine this election, on what we expect based on the polling, and a whole range of other explainers. There's so much to break down, and I know a lot of our listeners might be voting in their very first election and that that's a really daunting task. So we are absolutely here to walk by your side throughout the next three
weeks and hopefully it makes sense of it all. And just a final note that if anyone in Peter Dubban's team is listening today, we do hope that you hear this invitation to please come and join us for an interview. We believe that democracy is about engaging directly and that young people deserve to hear from you, so we look forward to hopefully chatting down the road.
Thank you so much to everyone who has listened to this episode of The Daily os. It felt a little bit self indulgent, but I hope that you did learn something about how all of this works. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines. Well, then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkudin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all
Aboriginal and torrest Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.