Chris Minns meeting with top Democrat 2028 presidential hopeful
Progressive posters have retreated to a rotating cast of new echo chamber-like Twitter dupes, and many serious people will still swear that BlueSky is a serious platform. More corporate types, and a fair few journalists, have migrated to LinkedIn, where the discourse is a little more cringe but a lot less insane than Musk's X.
The latest to make the switch is the High Court of Australia, which announced last week it would be publishing its social media updates on LinkedIn rather than X, where it has been posting since 2018.
It's all part of a much-needed online refresh for the nation's top court, which has a new website that now works on mobile and has shed some of its old bugginess and UX-confusion.
Senior judges and many of the barristers who appear before them aren't known for their technical wizardry. Phillip Street rumours suggest at least one prominent Sydney silk still has all email correspondence printed out by an assistant.
With the High Court now trying to get with the times, they have no more excuses.
Nup to the cup
Now to the Canberra bubble, where even reusable coffee cups are treated with suspicion.
CBD hears there's been a hot beverage crackdown at Parliament House.
Not long ago, staff entering the building handed their Craig Reucassel -approved KeepCup to security staff before retrieving it on the other side of the scanner. Some security staff made people take the lid off and show them the contents and even take a sip to prove it wasn't poisoned.
Now, a reusable cup that has metal in it will set the scanner off, so takeaway hot drinks are placed in a perspex box and scanned for nefarious substances.
CBD asked the Department of Parliamentary Services about the latest crackdown, but couldn't rouse them for a response.
Wearing the Crown
Nothing better sums up Australian TV's night of nights better than the fact it was hosted at a tacky casino whose operator is teetering on the brink of collapse and which has all the ambience of a suburban pokie den.
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But before the leading lights of the small screen had walked the red carpet at the Star Sydney, another embattled casino operator across the harbour was unveiling its latest celebrity-ish ambassador.
Zoe Foster-Blake, wife of entertainment dude-bro Hamish Blake and a beauty industry powerhouse in her own right, announced before the Logies she was a Crown ambassador, while posing for a pre-show snap in one of the suites at the private equity-owned casino group's phallic Barangaroo tower.
'Just on hashtags, here are some real ones: #sponsored @crownsydney #crownpartner #crownsydney because I'm a newly Crowned, er, Crown ambassador; they are now officially my home away from home,' Foster-Blake told her 791,000 Instagram followers.
'I'm chuffed, I bloody love this place.'
James Packer and a revolving door of top executives.
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They also have policies they can claim personal credit for, providing a steady flow of talking points to turn into TikToks and reels. Senators on average have almost double the followers of MPs, with around 105,000 for the upper house, and 58,000 for the lower. The Senate hosts eight of the top 10 most followed politicians, despite being half the size of the House of Representatives. Senators also have much larger constituencies than MPs, and for those representing states, only face re-election every six years. That's less time spent campaigning and more on the apps. Representatives from the ACT and the Northern Territory have the highest average follower counts. However, those numbers are heavily skewed by the influence of David Pocock and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Including Pocock the ACT average is 186,000. Without him, it's 55,000. With Price the Northern Territory average is 110,000. Without her, it's 26,000. 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Trailing a million followers behind the PM is Pauline Hanson, whose 600,000 Facebook followers push her into second place. Hanson said she liked using social media because it gave her a chance to show 'another side' of herself. The side that knits sweaters and has run ins with non-venomous snakes on the back deck of her Queensland home. 'People might meet me and say: 'Gee, I feel as if I've known you all my life, and it's the first time I've ever met you',' Hanson said, 'It's a way of connecting with people.' Loading Her accounts are also a home for the animated series Please Explain which sends up left-wing politics that is highly popular but has been met with accusations of being offensive. Hanson said she's regularly approached by fans of the series, especially children. 'I want to engage people in politics, to empower them into understanding politics because they've got to decide, and vote for the right people that's going to represent them,' she said. On average, federal One Nation representatives are the most followed of any party on average, with 375,000 followers each. However, the party only has four members. New senators Tyron Whitten and Warwick Stacey significantly drag down the party's average with their respective 5000 and 800 followers. At the last election, the party received just 5.7 per cent of the first preference vote in the Senate. Hanson said she used the platforms because they offered her direct communication to constituents without 'the opinions of some of the journalists out there that put a spin on it.' The Greens — with 11 members — have a more uniform success as the second most followed party with 137,000 followers per representative. Liberal senator Alex Antic, who has channelled US-style culture wars online, is the most followed opposition backbencher. More than half of his 280,000 followers are on Facebook, the most successful platform for the conservative wings of parliament. 'When it comes to social media, I have never really considered a particular strategy,' Antic said. 'I just address topics like the net zero scam, the corrosive diversity, equity and inclusion agenda and the war on masculinity. There are clearly many Australians who agree with me.' Antic primarily posts videos of him appearing on Sky News programs or speaking in the Senate, alongside clips from his podcast Based which he says is all about 'cutting-edge conservatism' free of 'woke nonsense.' On Facebook, Instagram and X Antic follows only one person: Donald Trump. The Coalition's top performers all come from their right-wing. Alongside Antic and Price in the Coalition's top five are Liberal backbencher Jason Wood, senator Matthew Canavan, and opposition home affairs spokesperson Andrew Hastie. On the other side of the aisle, dolphin-trainer turned Labor MP, Sam Lim — the most followed government backbencher — has a softer approach to social media. On Facebook, the West Australian has a series of videos called 'Tastes of Tangney' where he tours restaurants in his electorate. On TikTok, he dances in a Christmas hat, celebrates being gifted novelty plates with pictures of dolphins, and poses alongside cartoon character Bluey. 'I think a lot of followers are maybe curious about me,' said Lim. 'So maybe they come and have a look. I want to bring happiness, joy and peace to people. And I think people relate. I'm a normal human being and I might be a politician, but I also do real things.' Welcoming his followers to a second term in parliament, Lim filmed himself cooking sambal salmon and eggs in an electric frying pan at his office kitchenette. The video conjured memories from last term when Labor Senator Helen Polley posted a viral TikTok video of her hard-boiling eggs wrapped in foil in her office's microwave. Coper, the strategist who has also worked with Labor, said: 'the things that make you successful on social media are in some ways anathema to how political parties work, which are tightly controlled, centralised structures.' Coper said that for politicians, social media was a push and pull action dictated by the electoral cycle. 'To be successful, you need to build a movement, you need to persuade people ... but when you're trying to win an election, you need to reach people who either have never heard of you or disagree with you and convince them. And so those are two completely different challenges.' One politician who has made an art of this process is ex-Wallaby, turned ACT senator, David Pocock. Before he announced his intentions to run for the senate at the 2022 election Pocock had around 220,000 followers on Instagram. His following has now grown to 352,000 — second only to Albanese on the platform — adding 50,000 alone during the 2025 election campaign. With 712,000 total followers, he is the fourth most popular politician in parliament, though only 6 per cent of his following live in Canberra. Pocock's team said that around 15 per cent of their followers came from Sydney, and a further 10 per cent from Melbourne. Overseas followers, particularly in the rugby-mad Pacific Islands, made up 38 per cent of his following. 'I still see value if you're actually talking about things that you think matter, and you're really genuinely trying to engage,' Pocock said of his broader following, 'If you're listening to the community and talking about issues, they generally resonate across the country.' Many of the independents swept into power at the 2022 election have made a habit of regularly posting to social media, particularly Instagram, to explain policy or consult their constituents. Allegra Spender cuts up a cake to explain the federal tax system. Monique Ryan sits in her car, asking her followers to tell her their experience with unpaid prac placements. Sophie Scamps goes for a walk by the beach to talk about cost-of-living pressures. Despite Pocock's success on the platforms — bolstered by the occasional 'thirst trap' of the senator exercising shirtless — he said that overfocus on social media would come 'at your peril'. 'We see it as just part of the job. It's fun trying to work out how you engage people. What are other ways that you can make politics interesting and meaningful to people because it is,' he said. …and the losers Despite the over-performance of the Senate, a seat in the red chamber doesn't ensure social media success. Four of the five least followed parliamentarians are senators. At the bottom of the pack are newly elected Tasmanian Labor senators Josh Dolega and Richard Dowling, who have around 500 and 600 followers respectively. For those with titles, newly selected senator Leah Blyth has the smallest following of any shadow minister with just under 1200 followers. South Australian senator Don Farrell — who has 15 more years in parliament than Blyth — has the least of any minister, with 10,000 followers, despite being a major factional powerbroker and leading negotiations with foreign powers as trade minister. Loading Coalition has an average of 41,00 followers per member, the lowest of any party, in part because of the loss of high profile MPs at the election and the lack of ministerial positions. With 104 followers on Instagram, Labor's Tony Zappia isn't even followed by his party's whole caucus. The same goes for Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, who only has 11 followers on X. Other shortcomings are less data-driven. Labor senator Dorinda Cox, for example, falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. Her TikTok is yet to be updated to reflect that she is no longer a member of the Greens.
