Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am simply quoting the Australian Financial Review. The article continued:

Rapidly growing companies such as ABC need directors whose core competencies are reading accounts, vetting deals and reining in entrepreneurial chief executives.

Clearly, this was not the case with ABC.

If I recall correctly, I think, for instance, Tony Jones described the previous CEO, Eddy Groves, as ‘the child of John Howard’. This is the level of the previous government’s connection—and ‘problem child’ is probably a better description given the situation. Accordingly, the government has closely monitored ABC’s situation for some time. In fact, I recall that in Senate estimates, when I was a shadow minister, the department indicated back then that they were monitoring market share issues and potential risks associated with ABC. They demonstrated no contingency plan then, Senators, but on this occasion, yes, we do have a contingency plan: $22 million has been provided to work with receivers to ensure these services stay open for another two months. Let us understand this situation. Unlike Mr Turnbull, who suggests that you should simply allow unviable businesses to go—