Latest news with #Maley
Sky News AU
08-07-2025
- Sky News AU
Leaked emails show ABC Editorial Policy boss censored 'gratuitous' images of triple murderer Erin Patterson because they might cause her 'distress'
Leaked emails have exposed how the ABC censored its journalists from publishing tax-payer funded photos of triple murderer Erin Patterson because they were unflattering and could cause her "distress". The photos showed Patterson being escorted to the Latrobe Valley court in Morwell, and were taken by new agency Agence France-Presse in May. Legal constraints had previously prevented their publication, but they became available immediately after her conviction. However, according to leaked emails revealed by The Australian, ABC News Editorial Policy Manager Mark Maley demanded the images not be published because they could upset the murderer. The ABC did not confirm how much taxpayer funds were spent on the censored photos when asked by Sky News. It is understood that the images were being sold to media organisations for between $7,000 and $10,000, depending on the bundle. In the internal emails, Mr Maley argued that using the unflattering images could upset Patterson, who was found guilty of killing her ex-husband and two relatives. The incident exposes the bureaucratic nightmare of using taxpayer funds to buy expensive photos, then not publishing them because of an editor's personal opinion. An ABC spokesperson told Sky News it was "common and expected practice to have editorial discussions" about "what is appropriate to publish". "At the ABC much care and consideration goes into such decisions to ensure our coverage is responsible, justified and meets community expectations," the spokesperson said. Mr Maley ordered the images not be used in coverage of Patterson's guilty verdict, describing them as a 'gratuitous invasion on her distress/privacy'. Despite the verdict — and the fact the photographs were taken legally in public — Mr Maley instructed senior producers not to publish the images. Rather than capitalise on the visuals, Mr Maley questioned the editorial justification for their use, despite global outlets airing them within hours. 'No one has been able to see (Patterson) for the past 10 weeks,' ABC's 7.30 programme executive producer Joel Tozer said in the internal correspondence published by The Australian. Mr Tozer argued the photos were crucial for compelling television coverage of a high-profile and visually limited court case. In response, Mr Maley insisted that using the images was unjustified because they could emotionally upset Patterson, who had been transported to prison. Ultimately, ABC Digital Chief Grant Sherlock overruled Mr Maley's ban following strong pushback from the ABC's Victorian news editor Sarah Jaensch. Mr Sherlock ruled that four pictures from the series could be used in ABC coverage, but two images remained prohibited. Ms Jaensch argued there was 'clear public interest' in showing the photos, given Patterson's conviction and the seriousness of the crimes. 'While it's far from a flattering picture, she is now a convicted triple murderer who was photographed while being conveyed to court for her murder trial,' she said in an email. 'If we are not using any vision of her distressed, we wouldn't use the vision of her crying on her doorstep, which was used many times before she was a convicted murderer. 'That was also invading her privacy but the public interest argument won over.' The ABC has not yet responded to requests for comment regarding how much it paid for the suppressed images. Patterson, 50, was convicted on Monday of murdering her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson.
Sydney Morning Herald
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I was completely singled out': Sussan Ley's past fuels her determination to fix party's future
A former shearer, a pilot and a mother of three children with a dark past as a punk in Canberra. For 10 years, Sussan Ley has been one of the few women in the room in successive Liberal cabinets. Now, she's the federal opposition leader, and one of her first acts has been peeling back the existential scabs of the party itself. But who is Ley, really? Speaking with host Jacqueline Maley and chief political commentator James Massola in a new Inside Politics podcast episode, Ley opens up about the personal experiences fuelling her to fix the Liberal Party's infamous 'woman problem' from the top, to ultimately tackle the gender-based problems her constituents face with legislation. Click the player below to listen to the full episode, or read on for an edited extract of the conversation. Maley: Y ou say that the modern Liberal Party needs to represent all Australians, and it's, you know, that you have a diversity there, but very famously, it hasn't really represented women to the extent that it could have, which is why the Liberals' female vote has been declining so precipitously over the last few decades. Just first of all, before we get into that, would you call yourself a feminist? Ley: Well, yes, I would. And it's interesting, because the word feminist isn't used much. It was used a lot when I was trying to get into the... and I'll tell you what I mean by feminist, because I used it in the era when, you know, the people who own corporate jets didn't want me flying them, who said to me, quietly, 'We don't have a job for you because... it's not us, Sussan, it's just that the travelling public doesn't really want to see a woman up the front,' and, you know, 'Come back next year.' Loading Sure, that was something that, you know, burned in me, how I was completely singled out. Never mind my qualifications, my licence, all of the things I'd done... it was simply because of my gender. So, we didn't do well with women. I just want to confront that. I want to acknowledge that. I want to say that since in 2001 when I came into parliament, more women in Australia voted for us than they did anyone else, and that number has been declining ever since, which is why I am so determined and so insistent that we fix this women's problem. Maley: You gave an address to the National Press Club this week, which was really strong, and we both were really interested in it. You talked in that address about coercive control and domestic violence, and you said that you knew what coercive control felt like. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Have you had personal experience with it? Ley: Look, I have had personal experiences, and I don't choose to share them publicly, but I want the women of Australia to know that I know, and that I'm with them, and that I understand how it feels and what it's like, and how sometimes, only looking back, can you really understand what went on.
The Age
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The Age
‘I was completely singled out': Sussan Ley's past fuels her determination to fix party's future
A former shearer, a pilot and a mother of three children with a dark past as a punk in Canberra. For 10 years, Sussan Ley has been one of the few women in the room in successive Liberal cabinets. Now, she's the federal opposition leader, and one of her first acts has been peeling back the existential scabs of the party itself. But who is Ley, really? Speaking with host Jacqueline Maley and chief political commentator James Massola in a new Inside Politics podcast episode, Ley opens up about the personal experiences fuelling her to fix the Liberal Party's infamous 'woman problem' from the top, to ultimately tackle the gender-based problems her constituents face with legislation. Click the player below to listen to the full episode, or read on for an edited extract of the conversation. Maley: Y ou say that the modern Liberal Party needs to represent all Australians, and it's, you know, that you have a diversity there, but very famously, it hasn't really represented women to the extent that it could have, which is why the Liberals' female vote has been declining so precipitously over the last few decades. Just first of all, before we get into that, would you call yourself a feminist? Ley: Well, yes, I would. And it's interesting, because the word feminist isn't used much. It was used a lot when I was trying to get into the... and I'll tell you what I mean by feminist, because I used it in the era when, you know, the people who own corporate jets didn't want me flying them, who said to me, quietly, 'We don't have a job for you because... it's not us, Sussan, it's just that the travelling public doesn't really want to see a woman up the front,' and, you know, 'Come back next year.' Loading Sure, that was something that, you know, burned in me, how I was completely singled out. Never mind my qualifications, my licence, all of the things I'd done... it was simply because of my gender. So, we didn't do well with women. I just want to confront that. I want to acknowledge that. I want to say that since in 2001 when I came into parliament, more women in Australia voted for us than they did anyone else, and that number has been declining ever since, which is why I am so determined and so insistent that we fix this women's problem. Maley: You gave an address to the National Press Club this week, which was really strong, and we both were really interested in it. You talked in that address about coercive control and domestic violence, and you said that you knew what coercive control felt like. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Have you had personal experience with it? Ley: Look, I have had personal experiences, and I don't choose to share them publicly, but I want the women of Australia to know that I know, and that I'm with them, and that I understand how it feels and what it's like, and how sometimes, only looking back, can you really understand what went on.
Sydney Morning Herald
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Two journalists, an eclectic restaurant and Taylor Swift: Inside the making of Jac Maley's new book
Lunch begins with an editorial intervention. 'I want to say, for the record,' Jacqueline Maley – ever the journalist – announces. 'That this was on my vision board before Tay Tay came. I was so on the zeitgeist.' We're dining at Pellegrino 2000, tucked inside a historic terrace in Surry Hills, where the vibe is old-school Italian with a wink. Chianti bottles sit like trophies, tomato tins masquerade as rustic decor, and ropes of dried herbs and spices dangle above the bar. An eccentric collection of framed artwork lines the walls – including an image of the Michelin Man, beaming over the room like an ironic deity, blessing the carb-loading faithful below. It's theatrical, yet charming. The perfect setting for a pop star – or, in Maley's case, her second novel, Lonely Mouth. Long before Taylor Swift and her gal pal Sabrina Carpenter turned the restaurant into pop culture real estate when they spent the first night of their Eras and Sydney Zoo tour here, Maley was already a regular. She started visiting for the relaxed refinement and crema caramello alla banana (accompanied, no hyperbole, by an entire plate of cream!), but she kept visiting once she realised Pellegrino 2000 also served up perfect inspiration for a novel. 'It's one of my favourite Sydney restaurants,' Maley says. 'The restaurant I had in mind for the novel was elegant and cool, but it was never going to try too hard or be like a white tablecloth place. I love good food, but I hate any stuffy atmosphere.' Maley would sit at the bar, sketching details in a notepad, absorbing the restaurant's textures and rhythms. In Lonely Mouth, Pellegrino 2000 becomes the inspiration for the fictional Bocca – an Italian restaurant with a Japanese twist and a trattoria-meets–art deco aesthetic, located in Darlinghurst. Her narrator, Matilda, works there as the manager: a sharp and solitary 30-something nursing an unrequited crush on the restaurant's bad-boy owner, Colson, and quietly shouldering the aftershocks of her mother leaving her and her sister, Lara, when they were children (made doubly traumatic by the fact it happened outside the Big Merino rest stop at Goulburn, off the Hume Highway). As a menu reduces a sauce, so too does a plot summary flatten Lonely Mouth. It's a novel, rich with humour and sharp observations, about desire – for food, for love, for life – and what happens when that desire gets swallowed. It's about sisters, and mothers and daughters. And Bocca becomes more than a backdrop: it's a space where chaos meets order, appetite meets discipline, and everyone's slightly hungry for something they can't quite name. 'I knew I wanted to set the novel in a restaurant. I thought it would be a dynamic setting,' Maley says. 'I wanted it to be very realistic. I really wanted the restaurant to be like a character in the book, to be so atmospheric, it would take people there.' How many times did she visit Pellegrino 2000? 'You should ask my accountant when I put through my next tax return,' Maley quips. Mercifully, we avoid the worst part of Lunch Withs – the stilted pas de deux over the menu, the self-consciousness of wondering if one's contributions to the ordering are too much, too little, too indulgent, too virtuous. Maley takes full control, like someone who has asked far tougher questions than 'shared plates or mains'? To start, we opt for a pillowy focaccia and truffle-parmesan, an unexpectedly punchy caponata due to pickled celery, and a lush buffalo mozzarella, adorned with figs and honey. The wine stays on theme – a glass of Italian Pinot Grigio and a sharp Catarratto. Photographer Steven Siewert hovers nearby like a set designer reworking a diorama – moving errant phones out of frames, opening blinds for better light, repositioning cutlery with surgical precision. 'It is weird to be on the receiving end of what we usually do to other people,' Maley says. She has a deadline for her own Lunch With interview, with a senior public figure, looming. After completing an arts law degree, Maley started at The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 2003. She comes from media stock: her mother, Judy, to whom Lonely Mouth is dedicated, worked at the Herald; her great-grandfather and great-uncle were political journalists; and her brother, Paul, was a reporter at The Australian. Maley's a senior writer, columnist, podcast host and newsletter editor and, today, the unfortunate soul sitting on the wrong side of the notepad. Yet, Maley's not entirely unprepared. This isn't our first time at the Lunch With table together. When her debut novel, The Truth About Her, came out in 2021, we met for breakfast in a courtyard of a cafe that was a little more toast crumbs than terrazzo tables. Now look at us: dining in a hot spot frequented by actual celebrities. For everyone's sake, I suggest Maley consider setting her next novel in a five-star resort. 'We're cosmopolitan ladies of the world now,' Maley retorts. 'I think we need to really level up. I'm thinking ... Denmark. What's that place? Noma.' The three-Michelin-star restaurant serves 20-course meals and regularly tops lists of the best restaurants in the world. For Lonely Mouth, Maley became something of a restaurant obsessive – fascinated by the ecosystems they contain and the quiet dramas unfolding between courses. She interviewed chefs and hospitality managers, read a stack of chef memoirs, watched YouTube videos of kitchens in action – and, for balance, quite a bit of The Great British Bake Off (the latter more for pleasure). In full Daniel Day-Lewis mode, she even picked up a few waitressing shifts. 'They were sort of a bit bemused, but they were nice about it. I just did what I was told. I think the other waiters were like: Who is this lady? But everyone tolerated me,' Maley says. 'People open up when you take a real interest in them, their lives, what they want to do, what they have done, the thing they are passionate about, and ask them to explain it to you. People were really giving that way, even though it was a weird ask, and no one really knew what I was doing.' It wasn't quite Down and Out in Paris, but the experience gave Maley what she needed: a feel for the choreography, the repetition, the small tensions and quiet triumphs of restaurant life. What surprised her was how much it resembled a newsroom – fast-paced, hierarchical, and always one dropped order away from chaos. 'It's a structured environment, but it attracts people who are unstructured in other ways. It's a little like journalism and a newsroom in that way,' she says. 'Journalists are not people who want to work a 9 to 5 job, they're in for the experience and the adventure. We're solo operators, but we have to work within an organism, which is the newsroom. Newspapers are very hierarchical, even though we're all recalcitrant personalities who don't like being told what to do.' With classic recalcitrance, I break the fourth wall to ask our off-duty journalist if she's enjoying her turn in the Lunch With hot seat. 'Are you checking in?,' Maley jokes. 'It's going great for me, but am I giving you what you need?' A master of the form, I ask Maley for her Lunch With advice – she's got the recipe down, but I'm probably still chopping onions. 'Just get them really drunk,' she deadpans. 'It's quite high pressure, I think. It's like a social interaction on the surface, but your journalist brain is constantly working. ' A pause in proceedings: the main. Pappardelle with stracciatella and truss tomatoes so ripe they look ready to explode on impact. Maley unfolds a paper napkin and tucks it, bib-style, into the relaxed collar of her blue silk shirt. She catches my eye – the journalist's brain, even now, still quietly whirring. 'Can you not put this in the piece?' A pause, a sigh, a smile. 'No, you can, if you want.' The same brain – always scanning for angles and incoming alerts– makes it hard for Maley to write fiction while working her day job. Journalism brings a constant overload of information, paired with the nagging sense you're always missing something important. And while her reporting and novels both circle themes of gender and power, she doesn't see them as flexing the same muscle. Her ideal writing conditions are long, uninterrupted stretches away from work, not trying to wedge sentences between school drop-offs, play dates, early dog walks and breaking news alerts. Annual leave became writing leave – less a break than a change of deadlines. There was also the pressure of following up the success of her first novel and being contracted to a deadline as part of a two-book deal – a deadline she fell so far behind on that she can't even precisely remember when it was. 'I didn't take a holiday in years,' Maley says. 'So I ended up, at the end of it, realising it's quite hard to juggle all of this. It took a toll on me in terms of stress levels, and so that was something that I wouldn't want to do again. ' She's got ideas bubbling away – another novel, maybe a non-fiction project – but for now, she's letting them simmer. And at least restaurants are just restaurants again, no longer research sites in disguise. Loading 'I love cooking, I love gardening. I want to take my dog for a walk, I want to watch TV,' Maley says. 'When you're writing a book, every time you're home, it's always there. And now I'm like, I want to do non-intellectual pursuits for a while.' But first, we have a joint byline to get. As a friendly waitress delivers an unplanned – but not unwanted – tiramisu, we seize the opportunity to try to get a scoop. Did Taylor Swift enjoy a tiramisu when she dined here? The response, cool and non-committal: 'Taylor Swift, who's that? I couldn't possibly say.'
The Age
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Two journalists, an eclectic restaurant and Taylor Swift: Inside the making of Jac Maley's new book
Lunch begins with an editorial intervention. 'I want to say, for the record,' Jacqueline Maley – ever the journalist – announces. 'That this was on my vision board before Tay Tay came. I was so on the zeitgeist.' We're dining at Pellegrino 2000, tucked inside a historic terrace in Surry Hills, where the vibe is old-school Italian with a wink. Chianti bottles sit like trophies, tomato tins masquerade as rustic decor, and ropes of dried herbs and spices dangle above the bar. An eccentric collection of framed artwork lines the walls – including an image of the Michelin Man, beaming over the room like an ironic deity, blessing the carb-loading faithful below. It's theatrical, yet charming. The perfect setting for a pop star – or, in Maley's case, her second novel, Lonely Mouth. Long before Taylor Swift and her gal pal Sabrina Carpenter turned the restaurant into pop culture real estate when they spent the first night of their Eras and Sydney Zoo tour here, Maley was already a regular. She started visiting for the relaxed refinement and crema caramello alla banana (accompanied, no hyperbole, by an entire plate of cream!), but she kept visiting once she realised Pellegrino 2000 also served up perfect inspiration for a novel. 'It's one of my favourite Sydney restaurants,' Maley says. 'The restaurant I had in mind for the novel was elegant and cool, but it was never going to try too hard or be like a white tablecloth place. I love good food, but I hate any stuffy atmosphere.' Maley would sit at the bar, sketching details in a notepad, absorbing the restaurant's textures and rhythms. In Lonely Mouth, Pellegrino 2000 becomes the inspiration for the fictional Bocca – an Italian restaurant with a Japanese twist and a trattoria-meets–art deco aesthetic, located in Darlinghurst. Her narrator, Matilda, works there as the manager: a sharp and solitary 30-something nursing an unrequited crush on the restaurant's bad-boy owner, Colson, and quietly shouldering the aftershocks of her mother leaving her and her sister, Lara, when they were children (made doubly traumatic by the fact it happened outside the Big Merino rest stop at Goulburn, off the Hume Highway). As a menu reduces a sauce, so too does a plot summary flatten Lonely Mouth. It's a novel, rich with humour and sharp observations, about desire – for food, for love, for life – and what happens when that desire gets swallowed. It's about sisters, and mothers and daughters. And Bocca becomes more than a backdrop: it's a space where chaos meets order, appetite meets discipline, and everyone's slightly hungry for something they can't quite name. 'I knew I wanted to set the novel in a restaurant. I thought it would be a dynamic setting,' Maley says. 'I wanted it to be very realistic. I really wanted the restaurant to be like a character in the book, to be so atmospheric, it would take people there.' How many times did she visit Pellegrino 2000? 'You should ask my accountant when I put through my next tax return,' Maley quips. Mercifully, we avoid the worst part of Lunch Withs – the stilted pas de deux over the menu, the self-consciousness of wondering if one's contributions to the ordering are too much, too little, too indulgent, too virtuous. Maley takes full control, like someone who has asked far tougher questions than 'shared plates or mains'? To start, we opt for a pillowy focaccia and truffle-parmesan, an unexpectedly punchy caponata due to pickled celery, and a lush buffalo mozzarella, adorned with figs and honey. The wine stays on theme – a glass of Italian Pinot Grigio and a sharp Catarratto. Photographer Steven Siewert hovers nearby like a set designer reworking a diorama – moving errant phones out of frames, opening blinds for better light, repositioning cutlery with surgical precision. 'It is weird to be on the receiving end of what we usually do to other people,' Maley says. She has a deadline for her own Lunch With interview, with a senior public figure, looming. After completing an arts law degree, Maley started at The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 2003. She comes from media stock: her mother, Judy, to whom Lonely Mouth is dedicated, worked at the Herald; her great-grandfather and great-uncle were political journalists; and her brother, Paul, was a reporter at The Australian. Maley's a senior writer, columnist, podcast host and newsletter editor and, today, the unfortunate soul sitting on the wrong side of the notepad. Yet, Maley's not entirely unprepared. This isn't our first time at the Lunch With table together. When her debut novel, The Truth About Her, came out in 2021, we met for breakfast in a courtyard of a cafe that was a little more toast crumbs than terrazzo tables. Now look at us: dining in a hot spot frequented by actual celebrities. For everyone's sake, I suggest Maley consider setting her next novel in a five-star resort. 'We're cosmopolitan ladies of the world now,' Maley retorts. 'I think we need to really level up. I'm thinking ... Denmark. What's that place? Noma.' The three-Michelin-star restaurant serves 20-course meals and regularly tops lists of the best restaurants in the world. For Lonely Mouth, Maley became something of a restaurant obsessive – fascinated by the ecosystems they contain and the quiet dramas unfolding between courses. She interviewed chefs and hospitality managers, read a stack of chef memoirs, watched YouTube videos of kitchens in action – and, for balance, quite a bit of The Great British Bake Off (the latter more for pleasure). In full Daniel Day-Lewis mode, she even picked up a few waitressing shifts. 'They were sort of a bit bemused, but they were nice about it. I just did what I was told. I think the other waiters were like: Who is this lady? But everyone tolerated me,' Maley says. 'People open up when you take a real interest in them, their lives, what they want to do, what they have done, the thing they are passionate about, and ask them to explain it to you. People were really giving that way, even though it was a weird ask, and no one really knew what I was doing.' It wasn't quite Down and Out in Paris, but the experience gave Maley what she needed: a feel for the choreography, the repetition, the small tensions and quiet triumphs of restaurant life. What surprised her was how much it resembled a newsroom – fast-paced, hierarchical, and always one dropped order away from chaos. 'It's a structured environment, but it attracts people who are unstructured in other ways. It's a little like journalism and a newsroom in that way,' she says. 'Journalists are not people who want to work a 9 to 5 job, they're in for the experience and the adventure. We're solo operators, but we have to work within an organism, which is the newsroom. Newspapers are very hierarchical, even though we're all recalcitrant personalities who don't like being told what to do.' With classic recalcitrance, I break the fourth wall to ask our off-duty journalist if she's enjoying her turn in the Lunch With hot seat. 'Are you checking in?,' Maley jokes. 'It's going great for me, but am I giving you what you need?' A master of the form, I ask Maley for her Lunch With advice – she's got the recipe down, but I'm probably still chopping onions. 'Just get them really drunk,' she deadpans. 'It's quite high pressure, I think. It's like a social interaction on the surface, but your journalist brain is constantly working. ' A pause in proceedings: the main. Pappardelle with stracciatella and truss tomatoes so ripe they look ready to explode on impact. Maley unfolds a paper napkin and tucks it, bib-style, into the relaxed collar of her blue silk shirt. She catches my eye – the journalist's brain, even now, still quietly whirring. 'Can you not put this in the piece?' A pause, a sigh, a smile. 'No, you can, if you want.' The same brain – always scanning for angles and incoming alerts– makes it hard for Maley to write fiction while working her day job. Journalism brings a constant overload of information, paired with the nagging sense you're always missing something important. And while her reporting and novels both circle themes of gender and power, she doesn't see them as flexing the same muscle. Her ideal writing conditions are long, uninterrupted stretches away from work, not trying to wedge sentences between school drop-offs, play dates, early dog walks and breaking news alerts. Annual leave became writing leave – less a break than a change of deadlines. There was also the pressure of following up the success of her first novel and being contracted to a deadline as part of a two-book deal – a deadline she fell so far behind on that she can't even precisely remember when it was. 'I didn't take a holiday in years,' Maley says. 'So I ended up, at the end of it, realising it's quite hard to juggle all of this. It took a toll on me in terms of stress levels, and so that was something that I wouldn't want to do again. ' She's got ideas bubbling away – another novel, maybe a non-fiction project – but for now, she's letting them simmer. And at least restaurants are just restaurants again, no longer research sites in disguise. Loading 'I love cooking, I love gardening. I want to take my dog for a walk, I want to watch TV,' Maley says. 'When you're writing a book, every time you're home, it's always there. And now I'm like, I want to do non-intellectual pursuits for a while.' But first, we have a joint byline to get. As a friendly waitress delivers an unplanned – but not unwanted – tiramisu, we seize the opportunity to try to get a scoop. Did Taylor Swift enjoy a tiramisu when she dined here? The response, cool and non-committal: 'Taylor Swift, who's that? I couldn't possibly say.'
