Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This report relates to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. We have seen a number of important broadcasts over the last week on the South Australian election. Mr Acting Deputy President, you might recall that last week I spoke about some concerns in South Australia over the fact that the Leader of the Opposition in South Australia, Mrs Redmond, had arrived in Canberra unannounced to have a meeting with the Prime Minister on the issue of water. I think most Australians were quite concerned that she had decided to hop on a plane at the crack of dawn without telling anybody in Canberra that she was coming up here. It was a particularly busy day because we had the President of Indonesia here, and that was being widely broadcast on the ABC. Nobody could have missed the fact that the President of Indonesia was in town, and there was a great deal of concern about Mrs Redmond’s visit.

Some people had started to come to the conclusion that perhaps Mrs Redmond was not ready for government. On the ABC this week we saw some reports about continuing concerns over that issue. The candidate that Mrs Redmond beat for the leadership of the Liberal Party, Vicki Chapman, took 24 hours to announce that she was not intending to run against Mrs Redmond for the leadership of the party. We all know that in political parties division is death.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What has this got to do with the ABC?

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All these things were on the ABC both last week and this week, Senator Macdonald.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is a long bow.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you had watched the ABC last week, Senator Macdonald, you would have seen how concerned South Australians were about the fact that Mrs Redmond turned up unannounced in Canberra. This week, South Australians are very concerned that it is now out in the open that Ms Chapman has decided that she is not going to keep her ambitions under control and she intends at some point to run against the leader.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: I know we allow wide latitude in the debate, but the senator’s speech should be related in some way to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s annual report. We do allow wide latitude, but this is just beyond the pale. If he wants to speak on this, he should do so during the adjournment debate.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, we have traditionally allowed wide-ranging debate. Senator Farrell is being quite innovative and I think he is getting to a detailed discussion of the report. But, as I understand it, his contribution should be considered within order. I remind Senator Farrell of the report to which he is speaking.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to confirm that I did see all of these things on the ABC. What concerned me most was the arrogance of the Leader of the Opposition, Ms Redmond. She thought that she had won this election—she thought it was in the bag. Obviously, Ms Chapman was concerned that in fact she did have it in the bag and wanted to ensure that she could stake her claim to the leadership of the Liberal Party.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Farrell, you have been given some latitude. I encourage you to come to the substance of the ABC report rather than your observations of South Australian politics.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to talk about the ABC. Of course, I went along to the ABC function earlier in the week. One of the things that we talked about, and those of you who attended that function would remember, was the iView.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did they put on some good champagne? I think you’ve been having some!

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. Senator Macdonald, what the ABC had done very brilliantly is to introduce iView. If you are interested in seeing the two events I talked about earlier, the Vicki Chapman challenge or the arrival of Ms Redmond to Canberra unannounced last week—

Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Arrogantly.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

arrogantly, as Senator Arbib said—you can look that up on iView. (Time expired)

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Farrell, it is little wonder that you and your ilk watch the ABC, because it continues to broadcast this typical pro-left, anti-right stuff that the ABC has been doing for years and years. This week was just another example. Do you know why? Because the ABC’s aim is to go in there and attack anything that is remotely right of centre. As with this week, last week, the week before and the week before that, you will inevitably see the ABC out there being anything but conservative. That is exactly what it does. I would like make some comments in relation to the report—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I draw your attention to the points of orders that were taken earlier about speakers being relevant to the report.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Polley, I have heard more references to the ABC report in the first minute of this contribution than I did in all of the last. There is no point of order.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Haven taken some interest in the ABC during my time in this place, I have looked at ABC annual reports. The thing that really concerns me is that, yet again, this report contains the usual concerns in relation to the ABC and, most importantly, the legal issues that the ABC has been involved in. As a consequence, it does not surprise me to see comments like those that Maurice Newman made recently. Fancy the chairman of the ABC board having to castigate his journalists and tell them at their briefing that they have to introduce more balance to the ABC, particularly in relation to the climate change debate, which has been absolutely appalling. Do these people not realise their charter? How often do we have to talk about it in this place for the ABC to work out that its charter requires it to deliver to the Australian public a balanced and non-biased service, for the benefit of all Australians, not just for the left-wing component of Australia?

Since Senator Farrell was given so much latitude to speak about what he watches on the ABC, I would like to raise concerns about what we have seen in recent years on the ABC. We have seen the expose on Brendan Nelson; we saw the expose on Malcolm Turnbull; we saw the expose on the Howard years; and, of course, last week we saw Liz Jackson, who has been churning out the usual left-wing line for 13 or 14 years, with a partisan dump on Tony Abbott. I would like to know: when is the ABC going to do an expose on Kevin Rudd and the Labor government? That is what I would like to see. If the ABC is really non-biased and balanced, like its charter—

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order Mr Acting Deputy President, we are supposed to use the correct titles for those people in the other place, so it is ‘Mr Rudd’ or ‘the Prime Minister’.

The Acting Deputy President:

I did not catch that. Senator Fierravanti-Wells, I remind you of that protocol.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When will the ABC do an expose on Prime Minister K Rudd? That is what I would like to know. If the ABC are truly balanced, like they say they are supposed to be, then we might see that in election years. But, having watched the ABC over time, I do not think that that is going to happen.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So you do watch it?

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, when you want to see the worst, you watch the ABC and SBS, Senator Bilyk. If you want to see the most left-wing portrayal in this country, you watch the ABC and SBS. If you bothered to trawl through the many hours of estimates when these matters have been seriously raised, you will know precisely what I am talking about.

My challenge to Mr Scott and to the board of the ABC is to give us some balance. Let’s see some reporting that is non-biased. Let’s see the board of the ABC do what it is supposed to do: ensure that the charter of the ABC is adhered to and that all Australians receive a non-biased and balanced service.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a contribution on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s report for 2008-09. This corporation, this fully taxpayer-funded agency, is subjected to estimates committee scrutiny because it does receive total funding from the taxpayer. Consequently, like every other element of government expenditure, it should be subject to intense scrutiny. Regrettably, I have to say that when the ABC is called upon to answer questions about how it spent its money in a certain area, the officers have refused to answer. They have actually defied this Senate and this parliament by saying, ‘We know you’re entitled to that information but we are simply not going to give it to you.’

A case in question is the issue of what wages are paid to these high profile, on-air announcers, the sort of people that Senator Fierravanti-Wells was talking about: people who, some suggest, are of an unbalanced—in a policy sense—disposition; people who we know have worked previously for a certain political party. It is something that I think is important for us to know: this corporation should be subjected to the same scrutiny as every other corporation.

I use the case of Kerry O’Brien, not because I am particularly interested in Kerry O’Brien as the person, but I make the point that everybody in Australia knows the salary that Senator Kerry O’Brien gets. We know how much he gets for his travelling allowance. We know how he travels around the countryside—

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We even know what sort of fuel he puts in his car.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which sort of fuel he puts in his car, exactly. We know all of that. There is another Kerry O’Brien who is paid from the same source, and yet we know nothing about him. I do not want this to be personal to Kerry O’Brien, the announcer, so let me remove him. It came up this way because of the story of the two Kerry O’Briens. But let me not talk about the ABC Kerry O’Brien. Let me talk about all of the high profile ABC presenters. What do they get paid? I think we are entitled to know. Are they on half a million dollars a year? Are they on $600,000 a year? Are they on $1 million a year? Do we get good value for the $600,000 a year we might pay them? I do not know what we pay them because they refuse to tell us. Do they travel business class, or do they travel down the back? Do they travel on Virgin or do they travel on Qantas? What do they get when they go away? Do they stay at flash hotels or very modest hotels? You know that about all of my colleagues on both sides of the chamber. But do we know it about these journalists who never seem to worry about attacking parliamentarians for their ‘huge’ salaries and their ‘great’ allowances. They can fly on aeroplanes—well, sorry, this is where we work and this is where we have to get to. But when you ask the ABC what their journalists are paid they refuse to tell us.

Do they have a clause in their contracts that says, because of their high profile that they get from taxpayer-funded appearances on the national TV, they are able to earn additional salaries because they are high profile faces? If they do, what extra salaries do they get by way of private appearances? I do not know. Perhaps their contracts prohibit them from doing that. Why wouldn’t the ABC make those contracts available? I do not want the names written down. They can cross out all the names before they give us the contracts. I am not interested in the individual person. What I am interested in is whether the ABC is spending taxpayers’ money appropriately and diligently. We know it for every other element of government expenditure. We know what the Secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water gets as a salary. We know where he stays. We know how much he gets as TA, but do we know it about the ABC high profile people? Of course we do not because the ABC refuses to say. The sooner this Senate insists that the ABC answers these questions the better we will be.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak to the ABC annual report for 2008-09. We have just seen the campaign of hate and vilification for the ABC from Senator Fierravanti-Wells out here in full flight today. Senator Fierravanti-Wells has got form on the ABC. She thinks that the ABC is some communist plot to vilify the Liberal Party. What you need to understand Senator Fierravanti-Wells is that the ABC reports the truth. When they report the truth about the incompetence of the Liberal Party, when they report on the climate change deniers of the Liberal Party they are doing a public service. They are actually exposing the narrow-minded approach of the Liberal Party on a whole range of issues.

If the Liberal Party—I will come to the National Party in a minute—is so narrow minded that it cannot accept the signs of climate change then it is quite appropriate for the ABC to say the Liberal Party is a bunch of dills, that the Liberal Party is a rabble who really do not know where it is at. I think that it is appropriate for the ABC to deal with the Liberal Party on how they should be dealt with—as incompetents, as a divided party, as a party which now has a leader whose nickname is the ‘mad monk’, who when he came into parliament was the bad boy of the Liberal Party. Well, you have got him as your leader now.

It is appropriate for the ABC to trawl through things and have a look at someone who has got to set himself up as the next Prime Minister of this country and is trying to be a Prime Minister—someone who is untrustworthy, someone who backflips on every commitment, someone who tries to set himself up as a weathervane Prime Minister. What a joke! Then those opposite criticise the ABC for actually focusing on the inability of the Liberal Party to have a policy or a direction for the future of this country. We know you in the Liberal Party hate that because when you go on there you are exposed for the frauds and charlatans that you are. That is the problem you have got with the ABC; it has nothing to do with how much Kerry O’Brien earns or whether you cannot stand his questioning or whether you wilt in the face of the truth. That is the problem with you lot: you have got absolutely no spine, you have got no values, you have got no commitments and you try to blame the ABC for all your weaknesses. Don’t come here bleating about the ABC. Try and have some strength, try and have some policies, try and have some commitments—and by that I mean real ones that will stand up to some scientific analysis, not what you get from Senator Bernardi, who goes onto the right-wing US websites to try to make himself the hero of the climate change sceptics. No wonder the ABC gives you a bit of a roughing-up when you get on there, because you do not deserve to be treated with any credibility. That is the problem for you lot: you have got no credibility, you are absolutely hopeless and the ABC are doing a public service in exposing you.

Let us come to the National Party and let us come to Senator Joyce, the human headline, the great retail politician who forced Mr Abbott to put him in to talk about the economic situation in this country—an absolute joke. Is it any wonder that the ABC would challenge the credibility of Senator Joyce on economic matters? Is it any wonder that they would challenge Mr Abbott on economic matters? The ABC are doing a public service for this country—(Time expired)

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Following the very inventive approaches to discussing this document that both Senator Farrell and Senator Cameron have announced, I would like to briefly discuss the ABC for a moment. Before I get specifically to the content of the ABC report, I would like to address some of the content that has been provided not by the A team of the Labor Party, not by the B team of the Labor Party and not by the C team of the Labor Party but by the Z team of the Labor Party. If it is anything, it is the Z team because they have put out the most vile propaganda. I am not sure whether Senator Cameron was actually auditioning for a role on the ABC, perhaps on the Scottish language news or something like that, or for a role in the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Perhaps he was playing up to Senator Mark Arbib maybe to get a factional deal when they roll Kevin Rudd and install Julia Gillard.

Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. It would be good if Senator Bernardi could actually make some references to the report that he is speaking on. So far I do not think he has made one reference to it.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President—

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to rule on the point of order, Senator Joyce. Senator Arbib, I believe you were here for a previous contribution where some wide latitude was given in respect of mentioning the ABC and discussion of this report. Senator Bernardi, continue and, as I have reminded other speakers, I remind you of the report to which you are speaking.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am coming to the nub of what this report is, and Senator Fierravanti-Wells summed it up when she said it is about the charter for the ABC. I can understand why those on the other side champion the ABC, because more often than not their perspective is portrayed in a favourable light. But we have seen those rare occasions on the ABC where they have investigated some of the haplessness and failings of the Labor Party. Senator Farrell claimed that because he saw it on TV it is relevant to this report, but I will not go down that grubby path. But I would like to raise a couple of truly serious issues. Firstly, I would like to know why the ABC pulled the only documentary that provided an insight into the Rudd Labor government. Why is The Hollow Men no longer on television? This is absolutely important. Perhaps, just perhaps, one of the powerbrokers, Senator Arbib or maybe Senator Cameron, did not like the caricatures of themselves given how they saw themselves in operation. Perhaps that was the case. I do not know how much influence they have there, but I know that, as they plot against Mr Rudd, in order to install Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister, they are desperately scrambling for chairs as it all falls apart around them. In the 2½ minutes that I have left, I would like to raise two further issues about the requirement for balanced, fair and unbiased presentations. I quite like the ABC and I watch it quite a lot.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is another intellectual interjection from the other side! It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. I would like to address two particular shows. One is Insiders, which I enjoy on Sunday mornings. It is meant to be fair and balanced. What I find slightly annoying about it is that of the three commentators that sit there, being normally journalists in the chairs, two are always left leaning—and that has been admitted—and one is deemed to be from the fair and balanced and moderate side of the political debate. Why are there always two left-leaning journalists and one moderate, fair and balanced person? I think that is a legitimate question that needs to be asked. A similar question could be asked about Q&A, which is another show that I enjoy on occasions, if only to see the hysterical claims of some of the more extreme members of the left commentariat. But, once again, there is always a preponderance of people on the panel who, it could be quite legitimately claimed, are of a left-leaning persuasion. When you have got three and sometimes 3½—

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or four.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

or, perhaps, four people that have a perspective that is more Labor orientated or left orientated, rather than having on the other side those of a fair and balanced persuasion, I think it calls into question exactly what is unbiased, what is fair and what is balanced. There has to be a modicum of sense in this. You do not want equal time on every issue because you are not going to have that sort of consensus, but there should not be repeated abuse and failure in this. I am concerned about it.  (Time expired)

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allowed for consideration of government documents has now expired.