Tonight the ABC 7.30 camera will spiral in on host Leigh Sales sitting in one of the toughest seats in the country for the last time. Or as podcast co-host and colleague Annabel Crabb might put it, ABC bigwig Leigh Sales stares down the barrel of the 7.30 camera once last time.
The 49-year-old author and journalist announced she was stepping down from the national broadcaster’s flagship current affairs program in February this year, saying live on air that the end of an election cycle is a good time for her to move on.
“I feel a strong sense of it being time to pass the baton to the next runner in the race and to take a break,” Sales said in her on-air announcement.
The next “runner in the race” is Sarah Ferguson, a forensic investigative reporter and a tough interviewer. (Remember that question to Joe Hockey in 2014? “Is it liberating for a politician to decide election promises don’t matter?” Phew!)
Sales took over anchoring the program from Kerry O’Brien in 2010 and has held the baton through five prime ministerships. Frequently accused of being both a spokesperson for Labor and a Liberal stooge (quite an accomplishment for one woman), if one thing’s certain it’s that she’s had one of the toughest jobs in journalism through a turbulent time of Australian politics.
But she hasn’t let that ruin her weird sense of humour. In the past few years, Sales has risen to fame for an entirely different reason: co-hosting the popular podcast Chat 10 Looks 3 with ABC’s Annabel Crabb, where the pair routinely share recipes, book tips, thoughts on musical theatre and strange niche interests that keep a huge cohort of listeners glued to their headphones.
It was in this vein that Sales posted a homage to ’80s and ’90s cop films on her Instagram account this morning. Coming out of a 7-Eleven dressed in her morning exercise gear with a doughnut and a coffee in hand, she nods to her last day of work, saying, “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt … it’s that nothing exciting ever happens on your last day.”
A foreshadowing of something exciting happening on the program tonight, or just a last-day-of-work dream finally fulfilled? Guess we’ll find out at 7.30 tonight. (Could Ash Barty’s mindset coach be running for PM?! You heard it here first.)
The goodbyes to Sales have been streaming in on social media since she announced her departure back in February, but the day before her final show they were coming in thick and fast.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wished her well after joining her for her “final interview with a prime minister” last week.
Sky News media writer Sophie Elsworth is pretty miffed at the length of her goodbye tour, saying she’s “carrying on” a lot, given she isn’t even leaving the ABC (guess they’re used to their hosts getting dumped without much fanfare though, so you’ve got to understand it).
And then there was this fairly respectable joke (look, it’s not easy to make the EOFY funny…).
Farewell Leigh Sales, and thanks for holding prime ministers, business people and cricketing heroes to account.
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