Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment Bill 2006. This is a short bill which reduces the maximum number of directors on the ABC board from nine to eight by abolishing the position of the staff elected director. The government has argued that the staff elected director is subject to a 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. Labor opposes this bill. Absolutely no evidence has been produced to demonstrate that any staff elected director has failed to comply with their duties. This legislation is simply a further attempt by the government to undermine the independence of the ABC.

In March 2006, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, announced that the government would ‘restructure’ the ABC board, and that is what we see before us today. It is just one small change, but it is a very significant change and one which will significantly impact on the independence of our ABC. That change is to abolish the only non-Howard-government appointed director of the ABC board—the staff elected director.

I will give a bit of history that shows the commitment of Labor governments to the ABC and to the independence of the ABC. In 1975, Gough Whitlam’s Labor government created the position of the staff elected director. In 1978, that position was abolished by the Liberal government under Malcolm Fraser. In 1983, the Labor government under Bob Hawke reinstated the position. In 1986, the Hawke government, under section 13A of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act, formalised the staff elected position.

Past staff elected directors have been Quentin Dempster, from June 1992 to June 1996; Kirsten Garrett, from 1996 to 2000; and Ian Henschke, from 2000 to 2002. Our current staff elected director is Ramona Koval and her term, I think, expires on 15 June, when she should have been replaced by Quentin Dempster.

The explanatory memorandum and the minister’s speech emphasise that the basis of this legislation is the Uhrig review. Indeed, the explanatory memorandum refers to pages 98 and 99 of the Uhrig review. The report of the Uhrig review was a document of 133 pages; only two of those pages alluded to representational appointments to governing boards. The Friends of the ABC’s submission to the Senate inquiry said:

The Bill appears to rely heavily on findings contained within the Uhrig Review of June, 2003.

The Friends of the ABC submitted that the Uhrig review focused on taxation, regulation and provision of services. In all of its 133 pages, the Uhrig review made no reference to the ABC or any of the other organisations that had representational appointments to their boards. It is a fairly damning indictment of the government and the minister that they have based this legislative change to the board of the ABC on a review which does not mention the ABC once.

The Uhrig review was established by the Prime Minister in 2002. The terms of reference were to review governance practices of statutory authorities and office holders, particularly those agencies which impact on the business community. I do not know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I do not see the ABC as a statutory authority or an agency having as much impact on the business community as many other government boards or authorities. The Uhrig report dealt briefly with representational appointments, as I mentioned before. According to the Bills Digest:

The review did not consider staff elected representation specifically except a brief consideration of departmental public servants sitting on boards of other government agencies.

Apparently the ABC is not the only Commonwealth authority or company that has a staff elected board member. Other organisations include the Australian National University, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Film Television and Radio School. We have not seen the government move to eliminate or abolish the staff elected representatives on those boards, but I suppose that will come.

There has been debate today about a supposed conflict of interest—whether or not a staff elected representative on the board would put the interests of the ABC and the independence of the ABC before the interests of the staff who elected that particular director. In my mind, those interests coincide and would not conflict at all. I understand that there is a section of the act which deals with the elected director’s participation or non-participation in any discussion which relates to the conditions and pay of ABC staff.

On 24 March 2006, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Helen Coonan, said that there is a clear legal requirement of the staff elected director that means that he or she has the same rights, duties and obligations as other directors, including to act in the interests of the ABC as a whole. That is covered in section 8 of the act. If a staff elected director of the ABC was in breach of this part of the legislation, that director would be removed from the ABC board. That has not happened over the past decades when we have had a staff elected representative. If it did happen, there is a clear legal avenue for the government or the rest of the board to rectify that situation. But it has not happened and I would not anticipate that it would happen. As I said, staff representatives have a legal duty the same as that of other board members. It is not to their constituents but to the organisation more generally. These are set out in section 8 of the ABC Act, as I said.

The Bills Digest also said that it is worth noting that if there is a concern that staff elected board members might prosecute particular interests, that must equally apply to other board members who are appointed by the government. And, of course, they are in the majority. There is only one staff elected board member, as opposed to up to seven or eight appointed by the government. Of course, they would have their personal interests at heart as well.

There is also a moral duty. The staff elected director at the ABC board brings with him or her a wide range of experience in journalism and broadcasting. That is not necessarily the case with the government appointed directors. The staff appointed director is able to advise the board on a professional basis in the areas of journalism and broadcasting. They bring that whole depth of experience with them. That is the reason they are nominated and selected by the staff of the ABC.

We have heard that the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Legislation Committee had an inquiry into this. The inquiry was held in a period when there were five non-sitting weeks, and the government deemed that the inquiry would last for one day. It was a very short inquiry. There ended up being a minority report by Labor and the minority parties who did not believe that the evidence that was provided to them warranted a change of this significance.

I want to talk about the submission by the current staff elected director, Ramona Koval. Her submission to the inquiry included the statement:

Generally, there is an expectation that members of a Board of Directors will act collectively ... However, this is subject to the overriding duty of each individual member of the Board to act in good faith in the Corporation’s best interests.

That was when she had been criticised for some actions or decisions that she had taken as a director of the board, but she had done them on the basis of sound principles, values and good governance. Ms Koval talked about the criticism of her when she would not sign a particular document. She said:

One version of the document required that I not participate in “public (including media) discussions, interviews or articles relating to ABC Board matters”. This could imply that as a Director I cannot comment in public on any matter to do with the ABC at all, as a Board matter is really anything to do with an organisation.

Here is a document that is going to gag members of the ABC board, who are directed with running and governing the ABC, so they cannot discuss publicly anything about the ABC. It is quite extraordinary. I agree that she was quite within her rights to refuse to sign that particular document, and of course, as we have seen, she has been criticised widely for it.

Another staff representative on the ABC board from 1996 to 2000, Kirsten Garrett, said in relation to this legislation:

This is just red raw politics with an extraordinary disregard for the Australian people. If it succeeds, the Government will have complete control of the ABC.

We have heard many discussions since July last year of Howard’s extravagance since he has gained control of the Senate, and this is just another ideological push on his part of his personal responsibility, as he sees it, to destroy our independent broadcaster. Now that he has control of the Senate, he will have control of the ABC.

Our ABC is not only under attack in this legislation; it is also under attack in this year’s budget. In the 2006-07 budget just brought down this month, the ABC received $88.2 million over three years for drama and documentary making, regional and local programming and capital renewal. This is not enough to sustain programming needs, and it is substantially less than the ABC’s budget submission log of claims. Speaking on the budget, the Friends of the ABC spokesperson—and I need to declare a vested interest here: I am a member of the Friends of the ABC—Margaret O’Connor described the ABC’s funding situation as ‘grim’ and ‘dire’ and forecast that the ABC is facing significant programming cuts.

In their last annual report, the board of directors said that ‘a critical point has been reached’ and that unless ‘adequate funding is secured for the coming triennium, the Board will be faced with a range of fundamental questions about the extent and quality of ABC programming and services’.

Further, the government commissioned KPMG to investigate the ABC’s funding. The government will not release this report and has been withholding it from the parliament and from the public. This is something that taxpayers have paid for. It is a review into the funding of our ABC—the ABC that belongs to each and every Australian—and now the government is hiding it. There must be something in this KPMG report that the government does not like, and it will not release it to the general public.

I would also like to quote from a letter to the Australian Financial Review of 15 May by Judith Rodriguez, who is a Friend of the ABC in Melbourne. She writes:

While funding to the ABC was increased, the broadcaster received less than it needs to maintain its existing level of service. The additional funds come with strings attached that undermine the ABC’s independence.

The ABC budget appropriation is $37.6 million short of the amount that leaked from a government-commissioned report revealing ABC needs for the next three years.

She concludes:

The community values the ABC because it knows the public broadcaster is not compromised by government or commercial influence.

Undermine the ABC’s independence, and there will be no reason for the ABC to exist.

It looks like this is precisely what the government is seeking to do.

The community will need to be vigilant if the ABC is to survive in more than name.

Well done Judith Rodriguez, and there are so many more people like her who are Friends of the ABC and who will continue to stand up for the independence of the ABC.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from a recent newsletter from the Friends of the ABC in New South Wales. We have a very active branch in Newcastle of which I am very proud to be a member. A boxed article at the bottom of page 3 entitled ‘DID YOU KNOW?’ says:

Friends of the ABC (NSW) celebrates the 30th anniversary of its founding in April. It was formed in protest at funding cuts (familiar?) imposed by the Fraser Government. Here we are thirty years later with many of the same issues existing in 1976 and some additional ones to challenge us.

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