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The Project's Waleed Aly takes subtle swipe at Carrie Bickmore's salary
Waleed's co-host Sarah Harris burst into laughter at the comment.
The Project host Waleed Aly appeared to take a subtle dig at his former co-hosts Carrie Bickmore and Lisa Wilkinson’s enormous salaries during a discussion about the gender pay gap on Thursday night.
Comedian Sam Taunton, who joined the show’s presenting lineup earlier this year, cheekily asked Waleed, Sarah Harris and guest host Kate Langbroek to reveal their salaries to see which panellist was earning the most money.
While he chose not to answer the question, Waleed received plenty of laughs when he said: “I really wish we’d done this last year.”
“Oh, I see what you’re getting at there,” Sam replied.
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It's believed Waleed’s comment was poking fun at how his rumoured annual salary of $900,000 was significantly less than both Carrie's and Lisa’s when they were still on the show last year.
The Daily Telegraph reported in 2021 that Carrie, who hosted the programme since its inception in 2009, was earning $1.5 million a year while Lisa was on a salary of $1.7 million. Both presenters departed The Project last year, leaving Waleed as the longest-serving panellist currently on the show.
Kate Langbroek's surprising admission
During the on-air pay discussion, Kate Langbroek spoke about her own pay disparity with Dave Hughes when they hosted the long-running radio show Hughesy & Kate.
“Hughesy and I, we did a radio show together for 18 years, had never ever discussed what we got paid,” she said. “Then the second last job we did together, it turned out he was getting paid 40 per cent more than I was.
“Now, in show business, we know that someone’s got a higher profile and whatever and all of that’s fine, but this was the Hughesy and Kate Show that we had made together. It didn’t exist without Hughesy and Kate.”
Kate said the financial revelation changed her relationship with Hughesy, and she ended up quitting in 2019 to spend time with her family while they were living in Bologna, Italy.
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