Antoinette Lattouf scores an own-goal after leaking journo’s email… and leader’s backhanded compliment for Albo at the G7 summit: INSIDE MAIL

Lattouf’s idle hands

Sometimes it seems like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t…

Inside Mail approached journalist-turned-influencer Antoinette Lattouf for comment last week over her possible appearance at a Sydney Uni conference in August.

The speaking event made headlines after news.com.au’s political editor Samantha Maiden was disinvited for ‘unspecified thought crimes involving Palestine’.

The ABC’s David Marr pulled out in solidarity with Sam. Three-time Walkley nominee Richard Glover also withdrew, telling us the event ‘no longer aligns with my values’.

But, for Lattouf, only one value seems to matter anymore: social media clout.

Inside Mail emailed Lattouf to ask her if Maiden’s treatment was something she might discuss with conference organisers, ‘given most fair-minded observers would agree that hearing from only those who share your opinion is a recipe for echo chambers and potentially dangerous groupthink’.

Within an hour, Lattouf had responded to say it was yet another media engagement she had been dropped from since getting canned from the ABC in December 2023 over social media posts accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

‘Unemployable’ journalist Antoinette Lattouf photoshopped her email reply to Inside Mail and posted it on Instagram to add a little kick to her hilarious zinger. Too much time of your hands?

‘Off the record: I actually spoke last year and am not involved/invited this year,’ she told us, adding: ‘Also lol: most fair-minded observers coming from the Daily Mail.’

Now, we’d never ever break a source’s confidence by sharing something they’d said ‘off the record’. But that no longer applies when the source in question shares screenshots of your email exchange with her 100,000 Instagram followers.

So proud was Lattouf of her zinger that she’d taken the time to photoshop it by capping up the ‘lol’, adding a colon and quotation marks – none of which appeared in her original email.

But, then again, time is something she has in abundance.

The former reporter told the Federal Court this year she was ‘pretty much unemployable’ since her sacking from the ABC.

The judgment in her unfair dismissal case against Aunty is due next Wednesday. Inside Mail hopes it’s favourable for her, if only so she has something else to do with her time besides photoshopping emails for her followers.

Antoinette Lattouf’s original response original response …

…and her photoshopped version posted on Instagram hours later

Ben huh?

Here is a story Inside Mail completely missed when it unfolded earlier this year.

Now-former WA parliamentarian Ben Dawkins legally changed his name ahead of the WA state election earlier this year. He did so in late January, announcing his new moniker, Austin ‘Aussie’ Trump, on February 5, just one month before the state election.

(Apparently it’s legally complicated changing your name to ‘Aussie’ in Australia, so he settled for Austin.) 

WA politician Ben Dawkins changed his name to Aussie Trump for the state election. He lost but is sticking with the rebrand apparently

Mr Trump’s Wikipedia page is one of the sadder entries Inside Mail has stumbled across

Dawkins said at the time it was a political protest against Labor, if you can work that out. He also expressed his admiration for Donald Trump, which probably didn’t need to be announced.

Presumably the real reason for the gimmick change was a hope that doing so might help get Aussie Trump re-elected – which it did not, by the way. He, lost thankfully, although we would have enjoyed the media releases had he won.

So, fast forward to today and the question now is: has Aussie Trump stuck with the name change or reverted to his more boring birth name of Dawkins?

Judging by his continuing presence online, he is still Aussie Trump, perhaps in the vain hope that he will one day return to the political fold to help make WA great again. 

Sad! 

Chewing the fat

Albo is happy to take a compliment even when it’s a bit of a backhander.

At the G7 summit this week South Korean President Lee Jae-myung remarked that our PM looked ‘much younger’ and more ‘good-looking’ than he had expected.

The light-hearted comment set a friendly tone for their first in-person meeting, in sharp contrast to Albo’s inability to get a one-on-one with Donald Trump.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung was wowed by Anthony Albanese’s slimmed-down frame, presumably after he’d been handed a briefing pack with out-of-date photos of our PM

Perhaps the South Korean leader had only seen older pics of our PM in briefing packs prepared for him before the summit. Albo famously lost a heap of weight some years back while still in opposition, as part of his effort to get in shape.

The keto diet helped him trim down – a lifestyle change he has maintained despite all the wining and dining that comes with being Australia’s Prime Minister.

It also means Albo won’t need to crash diet to squeeze into his best suit for his wedding to fiancée Jodie Haydon, expected later this year.

Thorpedo strike 

King Charles might want to invest in a pair of earplugs because we hear Lidia Thorpe is on a sojourn to the UK this week.

The independent senator made global headlines last year when she heckled the King and Queen during their state visit Down Under.

‘Give us what you stole from us! Our bones, our skulls our babies, our people!’ she screamed at the bemused monarchs.

‘You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty! We want a treaty in this country! You are a genocidialist [sic]!’

Thorpe’s hatred for the King hasn’t mellowed.

Firebrand independent senator Lidia Thorpe launched a foul-mouthed tirade at the King during his visit to Parliament House last October. We hear she is now in the UK…

Last week, on the King’s Birthday long weekend, she posted this cheerful message: ‘I would normally give presents to someone on their birthday but I think you owe us enough.

‘It’s time for you to start giving land back and everything else you stole from us.’

Inside Mail asked Thorpe’s office about her plans in Blighty but did not hear back. Here’s hoping she avoids a run-in with the Old Bill.

Liberals’ arse-covering election post-mortem 

A Liberal Party post-mortem into precisely why Peter Dutton failed so badly looks set to be an arse-covering exercise

The NSW Liberal Party’s federal intervention has been extended, with former Premier Nick Greiner now chairing a new committee. Victorian stalwarts Alan Stockdale and Richard Alston were ousted, making way for a more NSW-centric leadership.

Notably, former PM Tony Abbott was snubbed.

This move is seen as a win for new Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who is aiming to reform the party after recent electoral setbacks.

It comes at the same time the Liberals set up their post-election review, to be conducted by former NSW state minister Pru Goward and erstwhile Howard minister and conservative factional heavy Nick Minchin.

While Goward and Minchin hail from opposite sides of the Liberal Party’s factional divide, don’t expect such diversity to result in a frank and fearless review of what went so badly wrong on May 3.

More likely, the appointment of this duo is designed to ensure neither faction cops the lion’s share of the blame for the poor result. If the Liberals were really serious about getting to the bottom of how Peter Dutton and co. delivered the worst election wipeout in federal political history, they would have appointed truly independent experts to pick over the carcass of what’s left of the party.

But doing that would require a degree of honest self-reflection… not something the modern Liberal Party is especially good at doing.

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