The Great Activewear War 

After a lengthy ceasefire, a rogue round has been discharged in the simmering feud between P.E Nation co-founders Pip Edwards and Claire Greaves.

In case you missed it, the AFR's fashion editor Lauren Sams interviewed Greaves last month about her return to the activewear label she launched with Edwards in 2016, departed in 2022 and quietly returned to in early 2025.

In the piece, Greaves spoke of how she rejoined to help revive the brand's original design identity - bold, streetwear-inspired activewear - amid a more crowded and competitive market.

The label, P.E Nation CEO Hamish Stuart assured Sams, remained profitable, despite undergoing significant internal change since Edwards walked away three years ago.

But the most intriguing part of the piece came when Sams asked Greaves about Edwards' latest chapter as creative director for conceptual womenswear label L'IDÉE.

Greaves replied: 'What's L'IDÉE?'

Her answer left little doubt there was no love lost between the one-time close friends, who famously had a spectacular falling-out in London in 2023 - the details of which, regrettably, we are unable to report for legal reasons.

A fashion industry source tells Inside Mail that Greaves' blunt two-word reply was a body blow for Edwards, leaving her so wounded that she called Stuart, appealing to him to keep things civil.

When we contacted Edwards' reps at IMG Talent, her agent Tom Ryan insisted 'there was no phone call and Pip has no issue'. P.E Nation, perhaps tellingly, did not reply.

The brand may be back on track, but the friendship sure isn't.

Fashion Week wash-out 

Australian Fashion Week kicked off in Sydney on Monday, with the Carla Zampatti show getting things off to a soggy start.

The runway was set on the Park Hyatt boardwalk, perfectly positioned against the Opera House. But the rain wasn't the only thing spoiling the view.

Ten minutes in - just as models Shanina Shaik and Montana Cox took to the runway, and influencers Tammy Hembrow and Rozalia Russian settled into the front row - a Carnival cruise ship sailed in and completely blocked the iconic harbour backdrop.

Insiders tell Inside Mail the Zampatti show started on time - and the cruise ship was right on schedule too. The problem was, no one on the events team thought to check if a ship might dock at the worst possible moment.

'I'm dying over this show; that's an event manager's nightmare,' one fashion industry source told us. 'I'd want to quit.'

To add to the drama, tickets for the consumer show - which followed the media event, with the cruise ship still hogging the view - cost a hefty $300, or $400 for the frow.

Content creator and former fashion lawyer Chloe Ashley Taylor even made a TikTok calling out the prices. 'I'm all about Fashion Week, but this just doesn't seem accessible to many people,' she said.

Of course, high fashion isn't famous for being accessible - but it's even less so with a massive cruise ship blocking that premium view.

Saving Melbourne, one lunch at a time 

What's that old saying? 'Write what you know.'

So Inside Mail was hardly surprised to see Herald Sun scribe Rita Panahi make a passionate plea to support Melbourne's hospitality sector last week amid a spree of baffling arson attacks on high-profile venues.

'We risk causing enduring damage to this city if we do not support the hospitality sector that gives this city its soul,' read the headline.

And it's not just empty words. As far as we can tell, Panahi is single-handedly keeping Melbourne's high-end restaurant business afloat.

We previously reported how Sky News' worker bees were agog at her legendary long lunches, with some saying she dines at France-Soir up to three times a week.

Mother's Day was no exception as she was spotted brunching at Pantry in Brighton last Sunday with her teenage son. Lucky lad.

Questions and answers 

Millennial news website The Daily Aus has been called out for an Instagram post that apparently parroted views of the 'property lobby' on the eve of the Budget.

The purveyors of pastel-toned slideshows ran an explainer on the decision to scrap capital gains tax that was sponsored by the Housing Industry Association - a powerful industry lobbyist that isn't exactly known for being in the corner of the struggling renters who comprise the Daily Aus' 18-35 demo.

The curious move was noted by Lamestream - the independent podcast run by Osman Faruqi, son of Greens senator Mehreen*, and former 7am executive producer Scott Mitchell - which had previously taken a pop at The Daily Aus in February for restricting comments on Gaza stories.

So, why did TDA run a story that would seem to go against its audience's best interests? Housing affordability is, undeniably, the defining generational issue of Australians under the age of 40.

We asked them, and they emphasised their 'strict separation between our commercial and editorial operations' and clear labelling of any paid partnership, as well as the fact that 'no advertiser has any influence over our editorial coverage or decisions, including our coverage of housing affordability, which we have reported on extensively and will continue to do so.'

The Daily Aus' head of operations Mia Stern added: 'We work with a wide range of advertisers and commercial partners across sectors, including those whose policy positions may differ from views held by our audience.

'Accepting a commercial partnership does not constitute an editorial endorsement, and our audience understands the distinction between labelled advertising content and our journalism. We are proud of the trust we've built with our readership on that basis.'

Purely out of curiosity, Inside Mail did a business records search on The Daily Aus Holdings Pty Ltd and found two eastern suburbs addresses linked to its directors.

One last sold a decade ago for $4,250,000 and is now estimated to be worth $8.82million. The other, sold for $1,260,000 back in February 2002, is now worth about $7.49million.

While we accept the properties are not owned by TDA's founders - they would appear to be family homes - they don't exactly scream 'struggle street' either.

The same could be said for editor-in-chief Billi FitzSimons, daughter of Peter FitzSimons and Lisa Wilkinson - who sold their Cremorne trophy home, 'Ingleneuk', for an estimated $23million last year, having bought it for under $3million in 1998.

Talk about capital gains. 

* In the interest of fairness, Inside Mail notes that Osman's mum - who represents the 'party of renters' - declared two homes at Beaconsfield, Sydney, one residential and one investment, last September.

D-Day for Sherlock

Former weather presenter Amber Sherlock is getting ready to have her day in court - we doubt she'll be wearing a white jacket - with proceedings in her unlawful dismissal suit against Channel Nine set for September 9.

Sherlock's extraordinary claim that Nine took her off air because of her age will be tested against a backdrop of redundancies across the network. Earlier this month, the network announced 20 jobs are set to be cut. Those cuts were on top of 50 redundancies announced late last year.

Insiders at Nine say there's a snowball's chance in hell she wins the case, especially since one of her replacements (there are at least three people filling her role on a rotating basis) is Belinda Russell, who is only a year younger than Sherlock.

Some believe Sherlock was hoping for a payday on the presumption that Nine would settle. That may have happened a few years ago when it was common for networks to do so for fear of bad publicity - but today, TV networks can't afford to piss money away, so Nine seems determined to go all the way through the courts.

Inside Mail understands that even those who are close to Sherlock are shaking their heads, worrying how this might end for her.

We'll find out how serious she is on June 24. That's when she must serve any affidavit material on which she intends to rely.

We already know that Sherlock claims Nine's Director of News and Current Affairs, Fiona Dear, told her: 'You'll be here forever. We'll wheel you and Pete [Overton, Sydney news anchor] out of here.' 

Dear denies the claim - but even if she did say those words, it's unlikely to have any bearing on the case.

Going to court is costly and most parties prefer to settle, but if Nine is refusing to pay up, Sherlock will have to consider whether the financial risk is worth it.

INSIDE MAIL AT THE BUDGET

Canberra might pretend that Budget night is about spreadsheets and surplus spin, but give it five minutes and the real action drifts somewhere far more predictable: the bar.

This year, the post-Budget migration led straight to Ostani at Hotel Realm, where the capital's ecosystem of politicians, former politicians and professional hangers-on wasted no time congratulating themselves for 'surviving' another fiscal evening.

And survive they did, with champagne.

Let's start with the journos... 

Inside Mail was embedded with the Press Gallery, many freshly released from the seven-hour endurance test that is lockup, looking equal parts relieved and mildly disoriented.

News.com.au political editor Samantha Maiden was spotted outside with fellow News Corp colleagues having a ciggie. But of course...

The ABC contingent was out in force. Insiders regular Clare Armstrong was circling through the room with ease, with Isobel Row also seen chatting up a storm.

Over at Nine, though, the vibe was noticeably more blokey, with a number of attendees dubbing the female-free group the 'Nine boys' club'.

Among those still standing after the recent round of Nine job cuts was Charles Croucher, as well as Chris Kohler, son of the ABC's money man Alan Kohler, who at one point appeared momentarily elsewhere, staring into the middle distance while a senior figure spoke at length beside him. We get it...

Meanwhile, the ever-reliable Australian Associated Press (AAP) reporters made a relatively early exit, presumably to do what they do best: file the clean, authoritative copy that much of the rest of the media ecosystem will quietly lean on by morning.

A few AAP editors, however, lingered back well after their colleagues had departed.

A number of erstwhile Daily Mail reporters were also in the room. Former economics reporter Stephen Johnson, now at the Nightly, was holding court - but thankfully didn't break out into song.

Also spotted was Max Aitchison, also late of this parish, now at The Australian, making a byline for the broadsheet's Margin Call column on Wednesday.

But the journo highlight arguably came from someone who wasn't even there.

Posting feverishly on social media from home, Sky News' Carla Efstratiou - who runs the TikTok account 'Go Woke Go Broke' in her spare time - dropped this very Sydney observation about Jim Chalmers' $250 tax break for working Aussies.

'That's like a meal at Totti's. OMG what a joke.' 

Then came the lobbyists...

...circling the political class like well-tailored sharks, and confirming once again that they're the only true constant in the Canberra bubble.

They're easily identified by Parliament House's trademark orange lanyards by day. By night, they can be found lurking in the dim lights of whatever bar a target minister is likely to visit.

Michael Photios, the veteran powerbroker and perennial Liberal moderate whisperer, was in full flight, champagne in hand, rotating between conversations.

In a chat with Inside Mail, he expressed frustration at the Budget's treatment of trusts and changes to capital gains tax.

Inside Mail is glad that someone is still speaking for the true-blue Liberal Howard battlers: the people of the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

Mary Delahunty, CEO of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, was also making the rounds in notably buoyant form.

She declared to Inside Mail that the real winners of the budget were the country's 19 million superannuation holders, a line delivered with the confidence of someone who knows her sector all but controls the government.

Also spotted was Labor spin doctor and Gruen regular Dee Madigan, no doubt thinking several moves ahead and pitching for the inevitable negative campaign around the government's tax changes, none of which were taken to an election.

Are they snakes? Probably. But Inside Mail salutes these men and women for their tireless efforts of keeping the Canberra nighttime economy thriving.

Labor's long night out

Unsurprisingly, the crowd leaned heavily Labor, not least because the party had just wrapped its Labor Business Forum fundraiser upstairs.

Tickets ran into the thousands, all for the privilege of hearing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese try to sell a Budget that was all but leaked to the public by Sunday.

Quite the value proposition.

Frontbencher Tim Ayres made a very Canberra entrance, on the phone and mid-stride, while a visibly stretched staffer followed behind, juggling two mobile phones. In this town, nothing signals importance quite like outsourced urgency.

Ghosts of Budgets past 

It wasn't just today's pollies out in force.

The former brigade was just as visible - a reminder that Canberra is a little like the Hotel California: 'You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.'

Former Labor minister Joel Fitzgibbon, now a Sky News regular, was spotted working the room.

Nearby, Simon Birmingham, freshly swapped from Liberal Senate leader to head of the Australian Banking Association, looked remarkably at ease in a role that, conveniently, involves speaking to all the same people, just from the other side of the table. Fancy that!

Jackie Trad, the former Queensland deputy premier turned Energy Council of Australia CEO, was locked in an animated conversation with Griffith MP Renee Coffey. Inside Mail can only assume the pair found some common ground in their shared political history with the Greens - namely Max Chandler-Mather, whom Coffey unseated at the last election.

Trad, of course, knows that terrain well. She was one of the Greens' earliest Queensland scalps, unseated in South Brisbane in 2020 - a seat that neatly overlaps with Coffey's current patch.

A Hastie decision? 

Budget week in Canberra is always a hothouse. The corridors are packed, the bars are full, the political class is overcaffeinated, and everyone is whispering about something.

But this week’s most audacious whisper is in a category all of its own: the prospect - still firmly in the realm of rumour, mind you - that Ben Roberts-Smith could run for One Nation against Andrew Hastie in the West Australian seat of Canning.

Yes, you read that correctly.

BRS v Hastie. One Nation v the Liberal Party. Pauline Hanson's populist insurgency aimed directly at one of the Coalition's most prominent conservatives via a decorated war hero soon to be put on trial for murder.

A political grudge match with military, legal, personal and ideological layers all sitting on top of one another. Oh, and did we mention that there is no love lost between Hastie and BRS?

At this stage, nobody should get too ahead of themselves. These are rumours emanating from a very amped-up Canberra circle during Budget Week. There is no public confirmation that BRS intends to run, no announcement from One Nation, and certainly no formal nomination. But as far as political hypotheticals go, this one has enough connective tissue to make it red hot.

Let's start with Hanson. She has been one of BRS's most vocal defenders since he was charged with war crimes offences last month. He denies the allegations, and the matter remains before the courts. The charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, with the case next listed for committal mention on June 2. BRS is currently free on bail.

Then add Gina Rinehart, Australia's wealthiest billionaire, into this speculative equation. She, too, has been publicly supportive of BRS, and Rinehart is close to Hanson. It's hardly a secret in political circles that Andrew Hastie isn't exactly top of the Christmas card list in that orbit.

The personal dimension is just as combustible. Hastie, a former SAS captain, gave evidence in BRS's defamation case. More recently, BRS's partner, Sarah Matulin, posted a comment on Hastie's Anzac Day Instagram post calling him a 'traitor', before later describing it through a lawyer as a mistake, and saying it wasn't posted with Roberts-Smith's knowledge.

So the animosity is not imagined. Then there is the electoral logic.

The electorate of Canning is precisely the kind of outer-metropolitan seat One Nation would love to target. It takes in Perth's southern fringe and Mandurah, the sort of territory where cost-of-living anger, distrust of institutions, and resentment towards the major parties can find a home. Hastie again won the seat in 2025, but One Nation polled a sizeable 11.4 per cent primary vote, up 6.8 points. And we know the One Nation vote has surged everywhere since then. If Hanson wanted to throw a political grenade into Liberal ranks, it's hard to imagine a bigger one than BRS.

Of course, the Victoria Cross recipient is facing criminal proceedings, but the trial is unlikely to be quick, and given the complexity of the case it may well sit on the other side of the next federal election. Being charged is not the same as being convicted. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and he is entitled to run for parliament. But if BRS were convicted, he would almost certainly become constitutionally ineligible to remain in parliament, assuming he won.

For now, file this extraordinary possibility under the 'Budget Week rumour mill' - but don’t file it too far away. Because if Roberts-Smith really does run for One Nation against Hastie in Canning, you heard it here first at Inside Mail.

One Nation, one family 

News Corp columnist Vikki Campion has been front and centre of One Nation's Farrer by-election campaign, which sailed to victory last weekend with David Farley's win, putting him alongside Campion's husband, Barnaby Joyce, in Federal House of Representatives seats for Hanson's party.

So integral has Campion been that tongues are wagging as to whether the 41-year-old journalist might be considering a leap from the fourth estate to her husband's world of politics.

Inside Mail has it from virtually the horse's mouth: Vikki's father, Peter Campion - a One Nation candidate himself in North Queensland, a former firefighter and a stinging critic of the Liberals, who were just smashed in Farrer, and the Nationals, whom his son-in-law dumped.

Peter has tried to convince his daughter to capitalise on her 'name and recognition' by running - especially if Joyce makes the switch sometime in the future to the Senate.

But Vikki says she's too busy being a mother of two young boys, a political wife and writing her column for The Daily Telegraph.

'I wouldn't rule it out when the boys are grown,' Peter told Inside Mail.

He also revealed a surprisingly moving link between Vikki and Hanson, who Peter said was 'on cloud nine' and 'a bit stunned' by the scale of Saturday's win.

Peter explained that when Vikki was 13 - around 1998 - he took her to meet Hanson during One Nation's fledgling years, as she campaigned at an Atherton supermarket. Hanson duly put her signature on a Lotto ticket for the teen.

During the Farrer campaign, Vikki returned the signed paper, which she had kept all these years, to Hanson, who 'was astonished and touched' by the gesture.

Peter described Hanson as 'like a fragile, weathered old rock' who has endured 'more attacks than anyone in Australian politics' and willed the orange wave to roll on.

Nowhere to Hyde

The saga generated endless column inches and sparked wild speculation.

But in the end, the mystery of why hairy-chested crooner Adam Hyde - better known for being Abbie Chatfield's boyfriend - was denied entry to the US last week was solved with three blunt words from American authorities.

'National security concerns'.

Ever since Hyde announced he was detained at the US-Canadian border last Thursday, the prevailing assumption has been that his partner's inflammatory social media posts about American politics and President Donald Trump were to blame.

Chatfield did little to hose down this speculation when she posted a 10-minute video statement on Tuesday apologising for a 'joke' from a year ago that some critics interpreted as encouraging harm towards Trump.

Inside Mail contacted the White House for comment about why Hyde was refused entry and our enquiry was directed to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

A spokesperson would not be drawn into saying that Chatfield's comments directly affected Hyde's ability to travel, but the thunderous tone of the statement made two points clear: U.S. authorities were inspecting foreign nationals 'on a case-by-case basis' at the border and that a 'visa is a privilege, not a right'.

'Adam Hyde was not deported,' a CBP spokesperson said via email on Wednesday.

'He was denied entry at Toronto Pearson International Airport on May 7, 2026, due to national security concerns.

'The Trump Administration is enforcing immigration laws - something the Biden administration failed to do.

'All persons arriving at a port of entry to the United States are subject to inspection on a case-by-case basis.

'As part of their critical national security mission, CBP officers routinely determine admissibility of foreign nationals using longstanding U.S. immigration law which lists more than 60 grounds of inadmissibility divided into several major categories.

'If statutes or visa terms are violated, travelers may be subject to detention and removal.

'A visa is a privilege, not a right, and only those who respect our laws and follow the proper procedures will be welcomed.'

Departures at Crikey

There were two significant exits from independent news website Crikey this month.

Editor-in-Chief Sophie Black left for the Guardian, where she will be associate editor.

She described the EIC role as 'utterly exhausting' - and as someone who reads Crikey... we get it!

Meanwhile, tech reporter Cameron Wilson is bound for the ABC, where he will be their national AI reporter - a role he insisted will involve reporting on all matters artificial intelligence, and not simply inputting prompts.

Intern Pete on KJO's final fight 

Industry favourite Pete Deppeler (aka Intern Pete) has opened up about the behind-the-scenes fallout after the axing of The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

As the presenter/producer prepares to move across to The Christian O'Connell Show on KIIS FM's sister station GOLD, Deppeler was asked about the past few months working at ARN.

'I found it mentally hard to believe what was real and what wasn't until the court stuff,' he said on YouTube show McKnight Tonight.

'It's actually a little bit much for me mentally, to be fair.'

Deppeler is avoiding media coverage of the case and plans to withhold judgement until the final verdict. As a loyal member of the KJO team, he lived off the adrenalin highs that came with the job and found himself at a loss when the show abruptly came to an end.

'You realise how big that show was and I don't think we'll get another one in Australia in our lifetime,' he said.

When asked about that infamous February 20 on-air blow-up, Deppeler admitted that it felt different from the rest.

'There was something not quite right because normally there's a storm-out. Normally someone leaves, slams the doors and goes home for the day,' he said.

'The show continued on, and that was the difference for me, because normally there's an ending and there wasn't an ending until the end of the show. So that's why I just felt a little bit different on that one.

'I just remember feeling... "Nah, they'll be fine. They'll be back on Monday. They've done this a million times before."'