It’s a fascinating thing that The Newsreader is back on ABC iview. This is the soap about a couple of starry TV hosts, played by Anna Torv and Sam Reid, which looked as if it might not continue because veteran Robert Taylor did the outback western Territory and Sam Reid did Interview with a Vampire overseas but it was uncompelling. So Reid is back and so is the world of Australian TV in 1989.

The Newsreader is set thirty or more years ago but incorporates features from the present. This means more diversity: more black and Asian characters but also with the central figures being integrated with the historical past so that Anna Torv will be seen interviewing Bob Hawke, the prime minister at the time and we’ll hear his actual words.

The Newsreader depicts Sam Reid in a state of dreadful self-destroying breakdown. Earlier he simply spoke in an absurdly pompous professional voice – like a boy in a bathtub imitating Winston Churchill. There is a comedian who sends him up – homophobically – for his bisexuality but he’s been doing lines of coke and then there’s the ghastly public self-mutilation.

Meanwhile his comrade-in-arms Torv has been subject to revelations about her long-ago mental illness. Her great ally, the Korean born Michelle Davidson is utterly loyal to her while also being devoted to her sportswriter husband Stephen Peacocke who is a marvellous character because he’s utterly decent while sometimes reflecting the values of the past. That’s also substantially true of the wonderful Marg Downey, Taylor’s widow, who’s appalled at her daughter getting involved with a ‘pansy’.

The Newsreader is a soap with a difference. This is 1989, the year of Tiananmen and the year the Berlin Wall came down. The Newsreader mutates the past while preserving its qualities including its horrors. It’s a reminder of how things do and don’t change.

It’s a fascinating commingling of the present and the past, dramatically scintillating and surprising. And this second series has a superb surprise ending.

How strange it was to hear that Text was being sold to Penguin Random House. It brought back the memory so many moons ago of Hilary McPhee, the woman who is sometimes credited with inventing contemporary Australian publishing, coming to my office at Scripsi late at night to tell me the story of how she had been stabbed in the back by Penguin. She had got on so well with the great Brian Johns, but now she and Di Gribble her publishing partner were being left high and dry by the money men. She had fallen among thieves. There was to be no job for Di and Hilary was to be retained simply as an employee. It was a situation that had the literary world tingling with horror and it had destruction written all over it. I knew then that a woman of Hilary’s panache and self-possession would not leave it at that. How long did it take for her to very deliberately go to Pan Macmillan as the head of Picador with all the finest writers in the country following her with absolute devotion. Was the news announced at the Adelaide Festival? When it was, someone said to me, ‘What’s caused this?’ and I replied, ‘Revenge.’ Hilary liked that. It wasn’t literary criticism but it was manifestly true.

And this led Di Gribble to start Text and ultimately put her trust in Michael Heyward. Now we have a new chapter in Australian publishing and you can only hope and pray that all goes well. Great international conglomerates do not necessarily make good bedfellows with independent publishers but these things are difficult to gauge. World-shattering multinationals are not all bad and it’s to Text’s credit that it can attract the mightiest one in the world.

Has anyone noticed the level of support that is occurring for the Australian National Academy of Music who desperately need a secure residence? Anyone who has seen them play knows what a miraculous thing they are in Australia. It’s a training school of utterly superb accomplishment. Seeing them do the Mass in B minor some years ago was staggering. It’s being supported by David Hallberg the formidable head of the Ballet, it’s being supported by Paul Kelly a great songwriter, it’s being supported by Richard Tognetti the dazzling violinist and head of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and it’s being supported by that all round wizard Tim Minchin. Given this level of support the Minister, Tony Burke, should have no doubt. All of these people have an absolute commitment to excellence. Here we have the head of all the symphony orchestras pushing to defend the Academy because it is manifestly a music school of the first rank by the most rigorous international standards. Last year it was impressive when Burke said his Christmas reading was Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Iliad. Well, he doesn’t need battle with the wrath of Achilles over this one. He just needs to take the word of the commanders in the field or use his own ears.

It’s interesting to see that Opera Australia has lost another head. I must say I’ve never encountered such a cultured all-round head of an arts organisation as Lyndon Terracini and I find it difficult to believe he was at fault in the dispute that made him leave two years ago. I remember the Melbourne Ring Cycles of Neil Armfield, I remember the great concerts and the My Fair Lady directed by Julie Andrews which had Alex Jennings as Henry Higgins who Ian McKellen told me played the role better than he could. I remember Lyndon’s love of every variety of music and his humanity and approachability.

Were these qualities exhibited by Maria Callas? It will be interesting to see the take on her in the Angelina Jolie film. Many years ago Bob Ellis said of her Medea for Pasolini, ‘It’s a masterpiece. Pasolini only makes masterpieces God damn him.’ I remember too Richard Bonynge saying to me, ‘She was a big girl and she needed to be for the roles she played. Then she met Onassis.’

There’s also the story of her contacting Richard Burton when he and Elizabeth Taylor wanted to make a film of Macbeth. Of course, the American-born Callas wanted to play Lady Macbeth. ‘I suppose,’ he confided to his diary, ‘she thought Elizabeth was going to play Macduff or Donalbain.’