Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Labor opposes the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment Bill 2006, which reduces the maximum number of directors on the ABC board from nine to eight by abolishing the position of staff elected director. Upon reflecting on the recent comments by the member for Canning, I draw to his attention the fact that the Chairman of the ABC is a friend of the Prime Minister, that the newly appointed Managing Director of the ABC has past connections with the Liberal Party and that it is the purpose of the ABC to provide us with a diversity of opinions, not only opinions or views that the member or his colleagues agree with.

This staff elected position has been a feature of the ABC board for a number of years. It is a position that has been held in the past by people with wide broadcasting and media experience. It is a position that allows for in-depth knowledge and an organisational perspective of the ABC distinct or different from that of externally appointed board members.

The government claims this bill is a reform measure. It is nothing of the sort: it is a revenge measure. The government has had what it perceived to be the bias of the ABC in its sights ever since it was first elected. Its first action upon election was to freeze the funding of the ABC. No clearer message or signal could be sent to the corporation about the government’s faith or views about the ABC than that first primary action from whence all other actions have flowed.

The government have a lack of faith in the ABC that is more a reflection of their bias and values than it is of any quantitative or qualitative assessment of the corporation. I merely make the point, which will have been made at other times in the House, that KPMG conducted a funding adequacy review and found that the ABC is a world leader, that it is efficient, that it is innovative and that it needs significant funding.

Notwithstanding that, the government has a lack of faith in the ABC and an enmity towards the ABC that has been expressed on numerous occasions. It has become an article of faith for this government, and we have heard yet another display of it from the previous speaker. So any measure, however insignificant or petty, which reinforces this sentiment is seen to be a good thing. It is a political goal that has been kicked. What a pitiable state we are witnessing when a government uses its control of the parliament in this way.

I invite the House to consider the past decade of intense media reflection and examination of the government’s actions in relation to refugees, AWB, the falsifying and manipulation of reasons to go to war in Iraq—any number of contentious issues of the past decade—where this government has been exposed by the ABC. I ask the House to reflect on that fact. I also ask the House to reflect on the fact that the same thing would have happened and should have happened if it had been a Labor government. The primary purpose of the ABC is not to report on the government in the way in which it sees as being favourable or unfavourable to its performance but to report in a way which it sees and exercises to its best ability as being fair but befitting serious scrutiny.

The ABC, as befits its role as a national broadcaster, has inquired and reported. The government has taken some heat and it did not like it. That happens to governments of all persuasions, and when they are responsible for funding the organisation they need to resist the temptation to interfere in the way in which this government is doing with this board appointment. Unfortunately, the government cannot resist, so this bill represents a little bit of revenge, a little bit of payback. It has nothing to do with good governance, and it should be seen for what it represents. We oppose it for that reason.

The plain fact is that, if this government were serious about addressing and improving the corporate governance of the ABC in relation to board appointments, it would simply stop stacking the board with appointees whose ideological obsessions match theirs or, in the case of board member Michael Kroger, have a longstanding political association with the government.

The government has asserted that the bill is about removing the possibility for potential conflict of interest between the duties of a director appointed under the Commonwealth authorities act and their election to the position of board member by the staff of the ABC. This is a nonsense, when all the remaining positions are directly appointed by the government and where in the past and certainly today some of those appointments are political in nature. Conflict of interest can hardly be sustained as a charge against having a staff elected position in this case.

The government also claims that, as distinct from other board appointments, the very fact of staff election to a board creates a higher likelihood of a conflict of interest, as the elected board member’s independence is compromised and, as a consequence, they would be less able to fulfil their statutory duties as a board member. If that is the case, the government should take the appropriate action instead of bringing legislation into the House. If a board member has shown a conflict of interest or compromised their position, there is legislation to deal with it.

But this argument does not have substance, because it ignores the fact that board members’ responsibilities and duties are already described under existing legislation. For example, in the case of the ABC, all board members, including the staff elected representative, are bound by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act and by the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 which—with the exception of subsection 17(1)(a), which  provides for non-disclosure of interests by a board member in the case of discussions concerning terms and conditions of employment—provide that the legal duty of staff elected board members is as it is for each and every board member—namely, to the organisation itself. That is as it should be. That is good governance. Legislation is in place and board members are bound by it.

The fact is that these legislative provisions—including the ABC Act and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act that I have just referred to—make clear, in the case of the ABC Act, the obligations of board members and, in the case of the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act, the penalties that apply in the event that directors breach their duties. Of course, this duty would apply to other similar staff elected positions which are present in organisations such as the ANU or the Australian Film and Television School.

The fact of election is not the source of a conflict of interest, as it is the means by which a board member comes to the board. It is the fact of the proper exercise of board members’ duties that they must fulfil which goes to the heart of the debate about conflict of interest. If they are in breach of their duties, the minister can act. Is she acting here? No. Why not? The reason is a simple one: there are no grounds to act. This is merely a case of there being a staff elected representative, a position that the government wants only to abolish.

Additionally, the government claims that the removal of a staff elected representative is consistent with the recommendations of the Uhrig review. As is often the case in the House, arguments are put to cut the suit of the prejudice of those making the claims. But the Uhrig review was concerned with examining ‘critical business relationships’ in relation to organisations including the Reserve Bank, the Australian Taxation Office and the Health Insurance Commission. It was not concerned with the governance arrangements of the ABC.

Subsequent commentary by, amongst others, Professor Stephen Bartos, Director of the National Institute of Governance, whom the government also relies upon to buttress its arguments for this bill, provides some context for the argument. When Professor Bartos made his submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill he said, ‘Notwithstanding that the Uhrig report did not support the representational appointment to governing boards, it was not specifically concerned with staff elected positions.’ He said that, further, it did not make any formal recommendations on this matter and that the comments about representational appointments, which are common enough in the Public Service, were concerned in the main with government department representations. In other words, Professor Bartos’s comments draw a distinction between the kind of organisation that the ABC is and the kinds of organisations that were the remit of the review and the report done by Mr Uhrig. In any case, Professor Bartos goes on to remark that there are advantages and disadvantages to elected board positions and that it depends on how one views the organisation. Fair enough. The import of his remarks is that it is reasonable to view the ABC as having a character distinct, say, from commercial radio and television stations. Professor Bartos said:

In governance terms, the choice of model to be adopted for a public sector body should not be static or formulaic, but be driven by the objectives of the organisation concerned.

The government has neatly inverted Professor Bartos’s comments as it sought to change the composition of the ABC board to suit its own political objectives. It has done no more or no less than that.

The case here is that the government does not appoint directors to the board of Channel 10 or the Austereo Network, as these organisations are commercial entities with responsibilities to their shareholders. On the other hand, the ABC has a specific charter. It is a national institution. Its shareholders are the Australian people, and nowhere have they claimed that the staff elected position is an affront to their shareholding or that it should be removed. In fact, the general prevailing sentiment, notwithstanding what I have said above regarding the ABC, remains positive. The Mansfield report, amongst other reports on the ABC, has revealed that both staff and the public view the ABC as a special organisation. It is widely supported in the community, and it is not unreasonable to argue that its primary purpose as a public broadcaster to serve the public as opposed to the shareholder interest allows a measure like a staff elected representative.

But this measure has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with revenge. The government wants a tamer ABC. The Prime Minister admitted as much when he lamented the absence of a right-wing Phillip Adams, and subsequently he got his wish—the Counterpoint program was initiated. This bill represents heavy-handed punitive measures by the government, a kind of final, sort of vindictive but unnecessary, burst of antipathy towards the national broadcaster that is still enjoying the confidence of the majority of Australians despite these attacks and despite the government’s own board appointments—and it is held in higher esteem as an organisation than the government that is so often hostile to it.

There have been some extraordinary outbursts by government members, both in this House and in the Senate. Senator Fierravanti-Wells referred to the ‘pernicious left-wing influence that permeates far too much of the ABC’s biased and unbalanced coverage’. Memo to Senator Fierravanti-Wells and her co-conspirators: over 80 per cent of the Australian public believe that the ABC is reasonably balanced. But in other circles, such as psychological circles, what is happening here is called projection. We may as well identify it for what it is. ‘Projection’ is when I project onto another person—or, in this case, an organisation of people—through the prism of my views, what I think their views are; hence the senator’s description ‘pernicious left-wing views’. It is really only those of extreme right-wing views who see in a broadcaster, when it critically reports and investigates events championed by the right, extreme left-wing views. But, regretfully, it seems that the government has been infected with this alarm.

The government has produced a bill that offers no credible reasons for its support. It really looks like the final scene of Witch Hunt. After Senator Alston instituted his series of investigations into bias concerning the reporting of the Iraq war and failed—with the exception of a small number of counts—to prove anything approaching a permeating bias, the die was cast. That ‘small number’ was two out of 68, I would remind the House, regarding the first investigation; it was no more than that. But what to do next? Of course, he went on to the Independent Complaints Review Panel and, I think, ultimately across to the Australian Broadcasting Authority. But the public was not clamouring for heads to roll. To all intents, the current chair has managed to serve the interests of the ABC diligently, although sometimes earning rebuke from others in this House for his work. But, clearly, the position of staff elected representative had to go.

Given that the government appoints all other board members, the bill is about gestures and really has nothing to do with governance and independence. I call on the government to follow up this bill with similar legislation ensuring that ministers do not directly appoint CEOs of stand-alone government entities like the Australian Film Commission. If it were serious about governance, it would consider these things—but, of course, the government will do no such thing.

This bill, regretfully, comes after 10 years of sniping, complaining, undermining and underresourcing by this government of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It is a campaign that has signally failed to dent the confidence of the public in the ABC, but which has significantly impaired the ABC’s capacity and witnessed the decline in drama productions, which we became aware of last year, and the freezing of funding levels for the ABC in the past.

I acknowledge that this year’s budget contains some much-needed resources for an independent commissioning arm to produce urgently required local documentary and drama, for regional radio and for infrastructure repairs. But this amount does not compensate for past neglect. It is well short of the amount sought by the corporation and well short of the figure identified by the KPMG funding adequacy review, which said that the ABC needed a $126 million increase above inflation over the next thee years to maintain services. The ABC is still underfunded.

Whilst underfunded, thankfully the ABC is still respected. Although many observers have raised concerns about recent board appointments, it is watched and listened to as much as ever, if not more so. The political class that inhabit this place are avid ABC consumers. Member from rural and remote electorates often have the ABC as the only consistent source of timely news and information. Most members I observe draw regularly on the ABC, especially when we dine in the parliamentary dining room. I would say to the House that the ABC continues to play a critical role in ensuring that our democracy is healthy; that, as it is expressed through governments—here and in the states, in the territories and locally—the ABC’s provision of accurate and comprehensive reporting about what governments do is absolutely essential to our democracy. It is the oxygen of democracy—no more and no less than that.

Notwithstanding the rage of commercial broadcasters afoot, the ABC is also the only national media organisation that consistently addresses politics and issues of the day across the country and in the international sphere through news, current affairs reporting, specialist programs, television and radio, podcasting and online. Is the position of a staff elected representative the burning issue for the corporation, given its real achievements and its challenges? Hardly.

Labor has long supported the establishment of an independent process for selecting candidates to fill vacancies on the ABC board. The position of staff elected representative was created in 1975, removed by the Fraser government but five years later restored by the Hawke government. We believe that it is essential to establish a truly independent process for selecting candidates that is both open and transparent. Vacancies should be advertised. There should be clear merit based selection criteria. That is how it happens in the corporate world and that is how it should happen here. An independent panel should conduct a selection process—and it may well turn up people with a background in politics, and there is nothing wrong with that. But, critically, the selection of the shortlist should be independent of the minister. It should no longer be a selection choice by a minister of any government.

Under Labor, the ABC would boast a truly independent board, thus ensuring the removal of perceptions of bias or taints of bias that inevitably accompany appointments that are not truly independent but which are a feature of the current appointment processes as practised by this government. I conclude by reminding the House that, in 1995, the Prime Minister himself said:

You not only must have a board that is completely politically neutral, but it must be seen to be neutral.

In that respect, the legislation that we oppose today and the comments of the Prime Minister stand in complete opposition to one another. We condemn the bill.

See this speech in context