Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to oppose the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment Bill 2006. On 11 October 2004 the Prime Minister gave a radio interview during which he promised to use his Senate majority sensibly. He stated:

We’re not going to allow this to go to our head. We’re not going to start proposing things that are disruptive.

We have seen time and time again this arrogant government break this promise and allow this power to go to its head. Sadly, for the electorate, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment Bill 2006 will do precisely this. This government is not acting sensibly at all. Ideological changes that seriously erode the independence of the ABC are callous and spiteful—anything but sensible. This is a cultural war against the ABC that has raged on for more than a decade. A 2001 committee recommendation unanimously endorsed the advice to retain the position of the staff elected director on the ABC board. The only conceivable difference now is the government’s Senate majority.

The ABC is a pillar of Australia’s system of accountable and responsible government. It has provided us with decades of independent and critical reporting that has helped keep governments honest and the public aware and informed. It has also played an important role in nurturing Australian culture and epitomising the Australian identity. The ABC keeps Australians informed and entertained. Australians value its independence, which helps produce the wide array of quality programming demanded of our national broadcasting corporation. This is why I am so alarmed that the government is planning to abolish the position of the staff elected director, the only independent director on the board of the ABC. The government is clearly aiming to abolish the position before current director Ms Ramona Koval’s term expires on 15 June 2006. It is bad enough that since 1996 the government has starved this institution of the funding it deserves. Now it is taking a swipe at the independence upheld as essential by so many Australians.

I would firstly like to discuss the value of the staff elected director. The staff elected directors at the ABC have always brought considerable experience in broadcasting to the deliberations of the board. At a time when the government is intent on cramming the board full of government cronies, it is essential that this contribution is maintained. Often, this director is the only individual on the board with the expertise to question the advice coming from the ABC’s executive. In the 74 years the ABC has existed, the government has appointed only one person with broadcasting experience. That one person was Mr Robert Raymond, a former producer for both the ABC and Channel 9. Mr Raymond served only one term.

The position of the staff appointed director has always brought a fresh perspective to the board that can only come from the staff elected position. For the past 23 years it has ensured that at least one member of the board has an extensive understanding of broadcasting, especially public broadcasting. I agree with the suggestion of the Friends of the ABC in my state of South Australia that this position provides an ‘important safeguard’. There is no evidence of abuse of this position. David Salter, a former executive producer of the ABC’s Media Watch, is right to suggest that to abolish this position would be to ‘amputate a perfectly useful limb’. Senator Coonan has wrongfully suggested that this position is an anomaly amongst Australian government agency boards. The minister needs to be clear on the term ‘anomaly’ or to stop exaggerating. The boards of the Australian National University and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, just to name a few, all have a staff elected board position.

Why abolish this position? The answer is clearly to fulfil an ideological agenda. The excuses provided by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts are almost laughable. The government has continued to argue that the staff elected director is subject to potential conflict because they may feel obliged to represent the interests of the people who elected them rather than to act in the best interests of the ABC. But no evidence has been produced demonstrating that any staff elected director has failed to carry out their duties. The Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee received submissions from several former staff elected directors of the ABC and from one of the current directors, Ms Koval. There was no evidence in any of these submissions that suggested any staff elected director had breached their obligation to act in the best interests of the ABC. To claim that because this position is staff elected the director is representative only of staff is simply ludicrous. The minority report of the committee made the obvious point:

In the case of the ABC, the staff elected director is not a representative of the staff just as directors appointed by the Government should not be representatives of the Government on the Board.

The same logic of Senator Coonan’s implication that the staff elected director would act in the interest of staff could be applied, as the South Australian Friends of the ABC suggest with more concrete evidence, to the other directors. They stated:

... the politicians who appointed the other directors might expect those directors to place the interests of their political party ahead of those of the ABC.

This government clearly has no aversion at all to a biased ABC board, as long as the bias is in its favour. In fact, the Senate committee heard a number of examples of where staff elected directors opposed proposals that would have benefited staff because they would have undermined the independence of the ABC. For instance, the proposed partnership between Telstra and the ABC was opposed by the staff elected director. This could have allowed Telstra to influence production decisions and thus undermine independence. What is more is that, even if the staff elected director does breach their duties—and we certainly have not seen that they have—they could be dismissed for misbehaviour under the current legislative arrangements.

The government has relied on the Uhrig report to condone this decision. I am afraid this is misplaced. Mr Uhrig did not specifically examine government arrangements at the ABC but rather focused upon agencies with critical business relationships, such as the ATO, the ACCC and ASIC. Mr Uhrig did not examine the governance arrangements at the ABC nor did he make inquiries of any current or previous member of the ABC board. The government has further cited evidence submitted to the committee by Professor Stephen Bartos, who is Director at the National Institute for Governance. However, Professor Bartos did not endorse the abolition of the staff elected director but rather stated it was a matter for political judgment. The fact that the government cannot even back up its own amendments with hard and fast advice is appalling. What more evidence do the Australian people need that this government is not acting sensibly at all but is again embarking on an ideological rampage? This time the ABC is in the firing line.

This is just another example of the government’s blatant attempts to diminish the independence of the ABC. The Prime Minister has consistently attempted to undermine the independence of the board since 1996. The only reason the Prime Minister seeks to abolish this position is that it is a position he cannot control. This has absolutely zero to do with corporate governance. If the government were really serious about corporate governance, it would instead install an independent process to appoint directors to the board. There must be an open and transparent process for making appointments to the ABC board. As my colleagues have mentioned, a Labor government would advertise all board vacancies and install clear, merit based selection criteria. An independent selection panel would conduct the short-list selection process, and this process would be independent of the minister. If the minister then chose not to appoint a short-listed candidate, he or she should have to table in parliament a formal statement of the reasons for departing from the short list. This would enhance Australia’s democracy by strengthening the independence of the ABC. We need to look at every possible chance to strengthen Australia’s democracy.

I would also like to state on the record my opposition to the government’s personal attacks on Ms Koval. Government members of the Senate committee questioned her integrity and in paragraphs 1.17 and 1.19 of the majority report criticised her for her failure to sign the ABC board protocol, claiming that this demonstrated a lack of independence. In Ms Koval’s defence, she had received legal advice that the protocol jeopardised her legal obligation to act independently, and this advice was not challenged before the committee. I think this must be publicly acknowledged. It is absolutely disgraceful that the government would single out Ms Koval and tarnish her reputation in pursuit of their own ideological agenda, but I suppose this is not surprising in light of the government’s history. The government have been stuffing the board full of their political buddies in an effort to undermine the independence of the ABC.

I have previously spoken in this parliament about my strong views on the ABC and my belief that a strong, independent ABC needs adequate funding. I would like to take this opportunity to comment further on the Howard government’s insistence on steadily stripping the ABC of its funding.

The 2006 budget contained some modest increases in funding, but this figure is well below both what the ABC requested and, importantly, is below the KPMG recommendation of what is necessary to sustain its current range of services. The ABC is expected to put 20 hours of Australian drama on television this year, significantly down from 102 hours five years ago. The new money will allow the ABC to produce only 28 hours of new content a year. This government has led the ABC into a state of chronic underfunding, which must, and must only, be delivered by the federal government. I will again use this opportunity to call on the government to adequately fund our ABC.

I would also like to read an excerpt from an email which was sent to me by one of my constituents. She wrote when she heard of these proposals:

I have just read that John Howard has decided to axe the elected member of the ABC staff from the Board of the ABC. I fear this is the beginning of some very bad news. Please do everything you can to stop this!

This view is not uncommon amongst the ordinary constituents in my electorate. I assure this constituent—and, indeed, all others—that I will do everything I can to stop this, including voting against this proposal today.

We have seen on so many occasions the manner in which this government is prepared to misuse its Senate power in the pursuit of attacking its so-called opponents. This legislation is an extension of this pattern. This was perhaps most obviously highlighted by the pitiful contribution of the member for Canning, where he stooped to attack one respected journalist in an effort to argue the case for this proposal. ‘What was this journalist’s crime?’ you might ask. The crime, as the member for Canning said, was that she criticised the government. In Howard’s Australia, it seems, we cannot have any of that anymore, can we? The nerve of some people—to dare to criticise this government!

The government is no stranger to using its power to attack perceived opponents or dissenting voices. We have seen it time and time again. We have seen it continually attack Australia’s trade unions and the role that they play. We have seen it attack and attempt to silence university students with its voluntary student unionism legislation, seeking to silence the student voices who quite rightly dare to speak out about the government’s continued attacks on the higher education sector. We have seen this government foster a culture of fear amongst community organisations which are reliant upon federal funding, threatening to strip them of their grants if they dare speak in opposition to Howard government policies. And, just last week, we saw one of the government’s most recent attacks on our very democracy when this chamber passed legislation to disenfranchise thousands of Australians, presumably on the basis that they may dare to oppose the government in the polls.

So whilst this government is perfecting its art form of attacking any perceived opponents, it must stop and recognise that the ABC are not enemies of the government. By doing their job—acting as a strong and independent voice reporting on current events, and educating, informing and entertaining the Australian public—they are playing a tremendous role, which must be recognised and respected by this government as it is by the Australian people.

I think it is important to fight for the ABC, because I want our children to enjoy the same quality, independent news and entertainment that everyone in this chamber has experienced. The government will obliterate the independence of the ABC if it goes ahead unchecked and that will be a very sad day for Australian democracy and for the Australian people. I oppose these measures, and I urge all members to do likewise and vote down this callous and ideologically driven drivel for what it is.

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