Justin Milne has to resign from the ABC board. It’s almost impossible for him to be sacked, should the government decide it wanted to.
Under the ABC Act, Milne, along with directors other than the managing director and the staff-elected director, is appointed by the Governor-General. Section 18 provides that “the Governor‑General may remove a non‑executive Director from office for misbehaviour or physical or mental incapacity”. Those are standard words for a statutory appointment that echoed the constitutional rationale for removal of a judicial officer.
But for judges, there’s now an entire Commonwealth act for the process of determining misbehaviour or incapacity, which involves setting up a parliamentary commission to determine if a judge should be removed. But “misbehaviour” is one of those terms that is purposefully left vague to give decision-makers wriggle room to cover all circumstances. But it would be very hard to claim Milne was guilty of “misbehaviour”.
And a director must be removed if they go bankrupt or miss three or more board meetings in a row without leave. But that doesn’t apply either.
Even if a director breaches the duties of the board that are outlined under section eight, sacking them for that is problematic, because that section also provides this: “Nothing in subsection (1) or (2) is to be taken to impose on the Board a duty that is enforceable by proceedings in a court.”
The whole point of this difficulty is that it prevents governments from sacking statutory officers it doesn’t like merely out of partisan malice or because they’re too independent for the liking of politicians. The rules are intended to protect the independence of bodies like the ABC. The problem is, in this case the independence of the national broadcaster is under threat from the actions of the chair.
If you are at the helm of a business that makes the future Prime Minister $57M then you can expect the public to question any future appointments made by Mr Turnbull.
Such as being appointed Chairman to ABC or a Board director of NBN.
Mr Milne is Chairman and Director of Netcomm Wireless whose profit increased 295% last year following a $66m contract with NBN.
Mr Turnbull mysteriously halted his call for the NBN boardroom minutes to be excluded from FOI once his team were installed.
Turnbull interfered with management of ABC QandA and of course massive cutbacks in ABC budget over the years has left ABC in fear of extinction. ABC admit a critical technical report on NBN was spiked until after the election. The answer to why the NBN has been allowed to continue to rollout out on its doomed path is found within this post.
Governance of ABC and NBN are two rotten peas in pod.
Dutton would know how to deal with him.
Too right. BUT, in this case Malcontent and the rest of the LNP disastrous team have had far too much influence into who was elected as Chairman of the Board.
That ‘out’ – “Nothing in subsection (1) or (2) is to be taken to impose on the Board a duty that is enforceable by proceedings in a court.” could have been written by, and for, Milo Minderbender.