Sky News Australia will launch a new podcast hosted by Peta Credlin and her old boss, former prime minister Tony Abbott, as part of an effort from the duo to help conservative politics “fight back” in Australia.
The podcast forms part of Sky News Australia’s expanded audio effort launched in recent months, and is likely to be the network’s debut program tailor-made for the medium, joining a slate of podcasts that offer audiences repurposed audio tracks from the network’s 24-hour news channel.
In a joint interview with The Australian published late Sunday, Abbott said he aims to use the podcast to “fight back” against claims conservatism is withering away in Australia. Credlin took the same line, referring to Abbott numerous times as “the boss”.
“What I got frustrated with post the Morrison era is all these people writing, ‘Oh, it’s the end of conservative politics, we’ve got to junk Menzies, we’ve got to move to the so-called centre,’ and all that rubbish,” Credlin said. “They don’t know the political history. They don’t understand these aren’t new challenges for conservatism.”
The show’s soft announcement comes just weeks after Sky News Australia signed a deal with Lachlan Murdoch’s Nova Entertainment, which has seen a live audio stream of Sky’s 24-hour news channel, along with a sweep of on-demand audio.
The deal will see Sky News reach a further 6.4 million listeners, according to the two companies. Whether or not there’s an audience for Abbott and Credlin’s new venture, however, remains to be seen.
The latest Australian edition of the annual Digital News Report, published by the University of Canberra in June, placed young millennial and gen Z listeners among the largest consumers of podcasts in the country, many of them men.
Over the past year, 71% of gen Z men reported to have engaged with podcasts, with 45% of gen Z women also tuning in. Some 67% of millennial men said they were listening to podcasts, along with 48% of the generation’s women, the report found.
Meanwhile, 52% of gen X men and 25% of gen X women said they were listening to podcasts over the same period, numbers that fell dramatically among baby boomers. Among them, just 16% of men and 12% of women were buying in.
Sky News Australia will no doubt hold hope for an unlikely bond with gen Z’s men as they come of age, and skew increasingly conservative, reflected neatly by the most popular news podcasts over the past 12 months. Two of the Digital News Report’s top 10 news podcast spots were held by right-wing shock jocks: Spotify’s The Joe Rogan Experience and The Daily Wire’s Jordan B Peterson in second and ninth, respectively.
Whoever Abbott and Credlin do end up reaching aren’t likely to hear much conflict. The pair, prone to pumping up each other’s tires, find themselves aligned on most issues.
“You’re probably a bit more socially conservative. I think some of our social values would be simpatico, but you’re a little more black and white than I am; I see a bit more grey in the social stuff,” Credlin said to Abbott during their interview.
“But certainly in the economic conservatism, and all the other tenets of conservative faith, we’re pretty much on the same page.”
Will you be tuning in to the Credlin and Abbott podcast? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
