When you report on federal politics, you never really switch off.
As David Speers drove his family from Canberra to Melbourne after New Year, to take up his new job as host of Insiders, being diverted around bushfires, the story beckoned.
Within hours of arriving in the city, a week out from his official start date, before he'd even been issued a staff pass or found his way around the building, Speers was on air, providing analysis on the political fallout from the fires, questioning defence minister Linda Reynolds and landing a headline-making half-hour interview with Prime Minister Scott Morrison about his and the Government's handling of the disaster.
"I’d been watching a lot of the ABC coverage of the
fires over the past week on leave and was just in awe of the work the
journalists were doing," Speers says.
"The interview with the Prime Minister was a big one to start the year and it was an important moment to put some of those questions about the criticism he'd been facing and hear what he's going to say."
After 19 years spearheading Sky News Australia's political coverage, David Speers relished the chance to take over from Cassidy.
"The program under Barrie has become the premier
political program in Australia, it's a must watch for anyone who is
interested in politics and the nation and it therefore attracts that
loyal following.
"It's a program that I have watched over many years and really grown to admire and respect and the opportunity to host that and be a part of that was a wonderful one I couldn’t say no to."
As well as a new host, the program will welcome some new panellists and has a new set (the signature coffee plunger survived the revamp).
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will be the first guest.
The format remains essentially the same although Speers will deliver analysis at the top of each program and is also providing commentary across other ABC News programs and online.
"David Speers is one of the sharpest minds in political journalism," says Insiders executive producer Sam Clark.
"He's also got a terrific sense of humour which is essential on Insiders, we don't take ourselves too seriously."
"I genuinely am there to try to get information and if I'm not getting the information I will get more and more persistent with the questioning, pulling someone back to the facts and pulling them up when they're not telling the truth or avoiding the questions but doing it in a way that's, hopefully at least, not rude or arrogant."
His persistence was on display in an excruciating 2014 interview with then attorney general George Brandis, who struggled to explain what 'metadata' was and exactly what was going to be kept by telecommunications companies under the Government's proposed data retention laws to combat terrorism.
"I knew as it was unfolding that the attorney general really didn't have much idea what he was talking about," recalls Speers.
"It was one of those interviews where you can sense that the person you are interviewing is struggling and you have to make a split second decision on whether you are going to press even harder on that point of vulnerability and expose the fact they really don't know the answer or have buggered something up or whether you are going to move on to the next question.
"Now my instinct is generally to press harder and keep going down that path.
That interview won Speers a prestigious Walkley Award.
A year later he won a second Walkley for a memorable interview with Christopher Pyne, in which the then-education minister declared himself 'the fixer', spawning internet memes and inspiring a series of funny mash-up videos by Insiders' editor Huw Parkinson in which Pyne 'The Fixer' was inserted into Star Wars films.
"When you have a good list of contacts who know you are on air your phone is lit up, its going crazy and you are talking to sources trying to work out what's going on while also broadcasting and also trying to make sure you are not being used by either side.
"During leadership contests one side might try to use you to pump up their numbers and get you to say they have more support than they do.
"I’ve learnt over many of these events you need to be absolutely scrupulous about what you’re broadcasting.
"You are there guiding viewers through these pretty important moments, it's history unfolding."
During the 2013 Labor leadership battle, Speers secured an exclusive live interview with Julia Gillard in which she announced she was calling a leadership ballot which she ultimately lost to Kevin Rudd.
"I will always remember that, it was a high stakes moment but even with enormous pressure and stress that she must have been under, knowing she only had hours left in the job, she was still unfailingly polite, she was still cracking jokes."
Fast-paced, unpredictable live coverage requires quick thinking and a huge bank of political knowledge to draw on.
When it comes to pre-planned interviews, Speers prepares meticulously by scouring original source material such as an audit report or budget papers, speaking to subject matter experts, reading transcripts or watching previous interviews the politician has done.
"You arm yourself with as much information as you possibly can so that when they revert to the talking points you have thought about ways of cutting through that.
"Once you've done all that preparation and mapped out the sort of interview you want to do and the topics you want to get through, once it starts you have to be prepared to throw all that out the window.
"Often the person you are interviewing will stick to the script but occasionally there will be that moment when they say something that isn't in the talking points or isn't in line with what they are supposed to be saying and you need to be really listening to pick that up and go with that because it's that new morsel of information that can be the nugget of gold in an interview."
"I was reading the newspaper from about year 10 and it was 1990 and there was a lot going on — the Berlin Wall had come down, it was the end of the Soviet Union, there were a lot of global changes and big economic reforms here and it all had a big impact on me.
"The world was changing and the idea of having a front row seat was pretty attractive and enticed me into journalism."
Speers started in radio at K-Rock in Geelong, then moved to Triple M where he had a stint as morning traffic reporter flying high above Melbourne in a small plane, to radio stations in Sydney, then the Canberra press gallery with 2UE/3AW before joining Sky.
"In the early days of Sky it was very much radio with pictures and they often hired people with a radio background because they were good at talking, talking, talking!"
While he happily talks endlessly about politics, Speers laments politicians' growing reluctance to speak frankly, relying on slogans and talking points which has fuelled widespread public cynicism and disillusionment.
"There are many reasons for why that's happened — the way the media landscape has changed, the way things take off and trend on social media can feed that cynicism in politics.
"Politicians today are generally far more careful in their public interactions and media appearances and I think that doesn't serve them well in the current environment.
"When they do rely on talking points, when they won't step outside the party line on a particular issue of the day, voters can see right through that and mark them down, so they are not helping themselves as a result."
"The most valuable currency in politics today is authenticity and whenever you see a politician speaking authentically you notice it and you, well I anyway, tend to applaud it.
"Doesn't mean you always agree with what they are saying but at least they are saying what they think and not what they think they should be saying to avoid getting into trouble.
"That aspect of being a political journalist and interviewing has become increasingly difficult over the years because you cop an absolute barrage of criticism no matter what you do.
"But you have to be prepared to … not switch it off, you look at it, note it, but don't let that influence your job as a journalist which is to hold both sides to account, to show no fear or favour, and that I think is something that comes with experience it's knowing and trusting your judgement."
Despite the bad rap many politicians cop and public distrust of the political system, the idealist in Speers sees some cause for optimism.
"Not all politicians are in it for themselves, there are some I know who are there for the right reasons and trying to do the right thing.
"The task for journalists is to try to bring politicians back to those ideals and encourage them to tell us what they really think and come up with some solutions to make this a better place."
Watch Insiders with David Speers on Sunday February 2 at 9am on ABC TV or iview.
As David Speers drove his family from Canberra to Melbourne after New Year, to take up his new job as host of Insiders, being diverted around bushfires, the story beckoned.
Within hours of arriving in the city, a week out from his official start date, before he'd even been issued a staff pass or found his way around the building, Speers was on air, providing analysis on the political fallout from the fires, questioning defence minister Linda Reynolds and landing a headline-making half-hour interview with Prime Minister Scott Morrison about his and the Government's handling of the disaster.
Play
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Watch
28m 35s
28m 35s
"The interview with the Prime Minister was a big one to start the year and it was an important moment to put some of those questions about the criticism he'd been facing and hear what he's going to say."
One of the sharpest minds in political journalism
Barrie Cassidy created and steered Insiders to remarkable success over 18 years — it's now Australia’s most-watched morning television program.After 19 years spearheading Sky News Australia's political coverage, David Speers relished the chance to take over from Cassidy.
"It's a program that I have watched over many years and really grown to admire and respect and the opportunity to host that and be a part of that was a wonderful one I couldn’t say no to."
As well as a new host, the program will welcome some new panellists and has a new set (the signature coffee plunger survived the revamp).
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will be the first guest.
The format remains essentially the same although Speers will deliver analysis at the top of each program and is also providing commentary across other ABC News programs and online.
"David Speers is one of the sharpest minds in political journalism," says Insiders executive producer Sam Clark.
"He's also got a terrific sense of humour which is essential on Insiders, we don't take ourselves too seriously."
Interviews don’t need to be a boxing match
When it comes to interviewing, Speers doesn't shy away from asking the tough questions, but he's not interested in fireworks for the sake of it."I genuinely am there to try to get information and if I'm not getting the information I will get more and more persistent with the questioning, pulling someone back to the facts and pulling them up when they're not telling the truth or avoiding the questions but doing it in a way that's, hopefully at least, not rude or arrogant."
His persistence was on display in an excruciating 2014 interview with then attorney general George Brandis, who struggled to explain what 'metadata' was and exactly what was going to be kept by telecommunications companies under the Government's proposed data retention laws to combat terrorism.
Brandis: "The web address, um, is part of the metadata."
Speers: "The website?"
Brandis: "The well, the web address, the electronic address of the website. What the security agencies want to know, to be retained is the, is the electronic address of the website that the web user is ... "
Speers: "So it does tell you the website?"
Brandis: "Well, it, it tells you the address of the website."
Play
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Watch
41s
41s
"It was one of those interviews where you can sense that the person you are interviewing is struggling and you have to make a split second decision on whether you are going to press even harder on that point of vulnerability and expose the fact they really don't know the answer or have buggered something up or whether you are going to move on to the next question.
"Now my instinct is generally to press harder and keep going down that path.
That interview won Speers a prestigious Walkley Award.
A year later he won a second Walkley for a memorable interview with Christopher Pyne, in which the then-education minister declared himself 'the fixer', spawning internet memes and inspiring a series of funny mash-up videos by Insiders' editor Huw Parkinson in which Pyne 'The Fixer' was inserted into Star Wars films.
Beware of being used by politicians
As well as conducting thousands of interviews, including prime ministers from Howard to Morrison and world leaders such as former US President George W Bush, Speers has also hosted leaders' debates and public forums, and anchored election broadcasts and rolling television coverage of breaking news, such as leadership spills."When you have a good list of contacts who know you are on air your phone is lit up, its going crazy and you are talking to sources trying to work out what's going on while also broadcasting and also trying to make sure you are not being used by either side.
"During leadership contests one side might try to use you to pump up their numbers and get you to say they have more support than they do.
"I’ve learnt over many of these events you need to be absolutely scrupulous about what you’re broadcasting.
"You are there guiding viewers through these pretty important moments, it's history unfolding."
During the 2013 Labor leadership battle, Speers secured an exclusive live interview with Julia Gillard in which she announced she was calling a leadership ballot which she ultimately lost to Kevin Rudd.
"I will always remember that, it was a high stakes moment but even with enormous pressure and stress that she must have been under, knowing she only had hours left in the job, she was still unfailingly polite, she was still cracking jokes."
Fast-paced, unpredictable live coverage requires quick thinking and a huge bank of political knowledge to draw on.
When it comes to pre-planned interviews, Speers prepares meticulously by scouring original source material such as an audit report or budget papers, speaking to subject matter experts, reading transcripts or watching previous interviews the politician has done.
"You arm yourself with as much information as you possibly can so that when they revert to the talking points you have thought about ways of cutting through that.
"Once you've done all that preparation and mapped out the sort of interview you want to do and the topics you want to get through, once it starts you have to be prepared to throw all that out the window.
"Often the person you are interviewing will stick to the script but occasionally there will be that moment when they say something that isn't in the talking points or isn't in line with what they are supposed to be saying and you need to be really listening to pick that up and go with that because it's that new morsel of information that can be the nugget of gold in an interview."
Politicians should forget the talking points and be more authentic
Speers is fascinated by politics, the contest of ideas, exploring solutions to the country's (and the world's) problems and has been since he was a teenager when momentous events inspired his choice of career."I was reading the newspaper from about year 10 and it was 1990 and there was a lot going on — the Berlin Wall had come down, it was the end of the Soviet Union, there were a lot of global changes and big economic reforms here and it all had a big impact on me.
"The world was changing and the idea of having a front row seat was pretty attractive and enticed me into journalism."
Speers started in radio at K-Rock in Geelong, then moved to Triple M where he had a stint as morning traffic reporter flying high above Melbourne in a small plane, to radio stations in Sydney, then the Canberra press gallery with 2UE/3AW before joining Sky.
"In the early days of Sky it was very much radio with pictures and they often hired people with a radio background because they were good at talking, talking, talking!"
While he happily talks endlessly about politics, Speers laments politicians' growing reluctance to speak frankly, relying on slogans and talking points which has fuelled widespread public cynicism and disillusionment.
"There are many reasons for why that's happened — the way the media landscape has changed, the way things take off and trend on social media can feed that cynicism in politics.
"Politicians today are generally far more careful in their public interactions and media appearances and I think that doesn't serve them well in the current environment.
"When they do rely on talking points, when they won't step outside the party line on a particular issue of the day, voters can see right through that and mark them down, so they are not helping themselves as a result."
"The most valuable currency in politics today is authenticity and whenever you see a politician speaking authentically you notice it and you, well I anyway, tend to applaud it.
"Doesn't mean you always agree with what they are saying but at least they are saying what they think and not what they think they should be saying to avoid getting into trouble.
You cop criticism no matter what you do
Speers is vigilant about walking a neutral path but in the hyper-partisan and shouty social media era, being accused of bias is a frequent downside of the job."That aspect of being a political journalist and interviewing has become increasingly difficult over the years because you cop an absolute barrage of criticism no matter what you do.
"But you have to be prepared to … not switch it off, you look at it, note it, but don't let that influence your job as a journalist which is to hold both sides to account, to show no fear or favour, and that I think is something that comes with experience it's knowing and trusting your judgement."
Despite the bad rap many politicians cop and public distrust of the political system, the idealist in Speers sees some cause for optimism.
"Not all politicians are in it for themselves, there are some I know who are there for the right reasons and trying to do the right thing.
"The task for journalists is to try to bring politicians back to those ideals and encourage them to tell us what they really think and come up with some solutions to make this a better place."
Watch Insiders with David Speers on Sunday February 2 at 9am on ABC TV or iview.
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