So we will take it as a “sure” that Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong, as reported by 9 newspapers final week, met with Lachlan Murdoch and Information Corp executives on Wednesday. Whereas the workplace of Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was pleased to substantiate her non-participation, all we acquired from the prime minister, deputy prime minister and international minister was stony silence — regardless of repeated efforts to attract a solution.

Not getting a solution from the PMO is in fact one thing we at Crikey are used to — we have been persona non grata with Scott Morrison’s workplace as properly, so possibly the outdated e-mail filters and telephone blocks are nonetheless in place. However the normal silence is extra fascinating for what it says about Labor’s embarrassment about coping with an organization dedicated to supporting the Coalition at each flip — and which stays deeply antagonistic to even the unambitious local weather motion agenda Labor is pursuing.

As we famous final week, we do not precisely know the aim of the assembly, so Labor partisans can maintain out hope it was some unprecedented laying down of the legislation from a Labor PM to the Murdochs. The remainder of us, extra cynical and jaded maybe, can suspect that in new boss Albanese, we have now somebody with some traits in widespread with the outdated boss Scott Morrison — specifically, a hostility to transparency about which particular pursuits might search to affect policymakers and what offers could be being accomplished to facilitate that.