Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

I should say, the senator made a very good recovery. I've done exactly the same thing. We've all been there; don't worry. I don't agree with a lot of what you said, but it was a very good recovery!

The issue I have with the minister's response is that the minister referred to editorial independence. This is not a question of editorial independence; this was a situation where the audio in relation to a key piece of footage was altered. It was doctored so that it appeared through the audio that six shots had been fired in the relevant scenario, instead of one. That's what happened. It's hard to classify that as a mistake, and it's certainly, in my view, not something which could be classified as falling within the purview of editorial independence. Editorial independence, from my perspective, is that the government cannot dictate to the ABC what stories it should run, what the content of those stories should be or what the editorial opinion should be in relation to those stories, and that commercial entities can't dictate to the ABC or challenge its independence in that way, nor can non-government organisations or anyone else. That's what independence means.

But this is an issue of the audio being doctored in a particular case. I also say that this is in the context of the relevant individual, Mr Heston Russell, having been successful in his defamation claim and receiving a payout in October 2023 of $390,000. This was also a nine-day trial. I can tell you that, in a nine-day defamation trial with silks, the legal fees would have been north of $1 million—and that's taxpayers' money. Then we hear from the news editor yesterday that the news budget for the ABC is $311 million, and all this money has been spent on this defamation case, which they lost, in a situation where the judge said this:

There may be several reasons why this dispute resulted in expensive and protracted litigation, but one of them was the existence of a defensive mindset inhibiting a proper remedial response to criticism.

That's what the judge said. So the ABC has questions to answer. It's not a question of editorial independence; it's a question of standards, which we expect our national public broadcaster to uphold.

Question agreed to.