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(Image: AFR/Private Media)

High and mighty On Friday, as an alternative to The Australian Financial Review’s annual power list, we asked Crikey readers to tell us who you thought were really the most powerful people in Australia, and why.

Here’s what you thought: Rupert Murdoch, either alone or in combination with son Lachlan, won our reader poll by quite some distance. The overriding theme was his access to the most powerful people, and his ability to shape the narrative in this country:

He controls the Australian media. He has the power to make or break politicians, parties, policies or corporations through News Corp’s publishing decisions.

Controls a large proportion of the mainstream media in Australia. Virtually every significant politician in both major parties ‘kowtow’ to Murdoch.

Using their broad media platform around the country and overseas to divide and offer in some cases extremely biased talking points that are reiterated and/or picked up by those serving to further their own ideological views and self interests at the expense of the public/people. Also providing same people with a platform to further such regressive agendas. Fuelling division e.g. Melbourne protests at the height of pandemic/encouraging people to attend then using coverage against same people.

Other recurring names, though none got close to Murdoch, include mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest, both on account of their vast wealth and high-profile political access, and Clive Palmer for the election-swinging resources he can sink into his political project.

Dewey defeats Truman Still with the poor old AFR, the push to centre stage premiers in its power list couldn’t, as it turned out, have been timed worse. Not only did it include New South Wales outgoing premier Gladys Berejiklian in the quartet of premiers taking out the number one spot, the Fin went all out to do so, making the cover a giant QR code so that readers in NSW were greeted with Berejiklian’s stoic portrait as the magazine’s cover.

Of course, by early afternoon, it had aged like fine milk:

It became the subject of a million memes (our favourite) and joins the similarly maligned “The Woman Who Saved Australia” cover. Incidentally, reporter Phil Coorey elicited the sympathy of journalists everywhere, telling The Australian today about how much shit he’s had to take for a headline he didn’t come up with on a piece he knows has gone unread by half the people slating it.

Barilaro gets Shanked Retiring NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro did not look either happy or comfortable fielding questions after his shock move this morning. He sheeted much of the blame for his decision on media scrutiny and the defamation action he is pursuing against political commentator and YouTuber Jordan Shanks aka Friendlyjordies.

Barilaro offered a curt “no” to a question about whether there were any other revelations coming. Yet Crikey hears a mainstream media masthead has a piece on his private life ready to go.

Taking your Bishop The “Frocktober” campaign might be the perfect summation of Julie Bishop’s relationship with the media; her love of sequins and bright colours appears to disorient journalists. Just as we read all manner of feminist symbolism into her shoe choices at significant moments, so too when she donned a billowing pink frock and diamante-studded goggles at a lithium mine in WA to raise funds and awareness of ovarian cancer.

The campaign encourages women on the site to “get loud” on the subject, which certainly isn’t a bizarre jamming of girlboss-style rhetoric into the ill-fitting container of serious illness. So dazzled by the display were the various places to write up the campaign that if there was anything jarring in the symbolism — Bishop got her start as a lawyer for CSR in the 1980s, fighting claims by workers at the Wittenoom asbestos mine — it didn’t seem to register.