As the year draws to a close the Morrison government couldn’t be clearer about its media priorities. The Coalition has kept up its decades-long war on the ABC even though there is now barely a leftie to be found at the national broadcaster.
This week Communications Minister Paul Fletcher invoked the ABC’s code of practice to attack the Four Corners report on government ministers’ behaviour towards female staff, alleging the story was not in the public interest.
Fletcher’s end-of-year showdown with the ABC comes accompanied by tough talk from Canberra as the government finalises laws compelling Google and Facebook to share revenue with Australian media publishers. The question is: will that include the public broadcaster?
“You’d have a better chance of selling ice to Eskimos than convincing the party room to support the ABC at the moment,” one anonymous Liberal MP told Nine.
The eternal push against the ABC is presumably from the oft-quoted “small but powerful conservative grouping” within the federal government which has opposed such other popular initiatives as marriage equality, the push for a federal anti-corruption agency, and action on climate change. The public might be on side with these issues, but so what?
But in the case of the ABC, the Coalition’s reflexive hostility is barely rational.
In truth this “conservative grouping” is fighting an enemy that no longer exists. Maybe it did a quarter of a century ago when the Howard government got stuck into what it considered to be a hotbed of insurrection at the national broadcaster, but the cultural reengineering of the ABC is all but done.
Funding cuts have this year led to yet another exodus of experienced staff. The ABC’s board is stacked with Liberal appointments, with two more to be made before the end of the year. News Corp’s right-wing opinionators are dotted through the ABC’s panel discussion programs in the name of balance.
But less well known to the public is a trend for some of the ABC’s biggest names to also have outside engagements with organisations run by corporate Australia or linked to the government. The arrangement is permitted under the ABC’s rules which allow high profile staff to MC conferences, run panel discussions or host government and corporate events.
There is no public register of outside engagements, making it impossible for a viewer to check on any possible conflict for themselves. The ABC cites privacy reasons for this, and maintains that it has processes to guarantee there is no conflict of interest or threat to the ABC’s reputation.
A quick online search can yield an inexhaustive snapshot of the extra-curriculars that some ABC personalities have been getting up to.
Leigh Sales — host, 7.30
Sales been MC, speaker or interviewer at:
- Corporate Club Australia’s annual business lunch, 2017 to 2019 (Sales conducted a chat-style interview with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian for the NSW government entity)
- The CEO Institute NSW summit
- The Australian Governance Summit, run by the Australian Institute of Company Directors
- Women In Mining West Australia annual summit — 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Annabel Crabb — presenter and chief political writer
Crabb has featured at:
- The 2019 icare awards (Crabb hosted the awards night in the months before alleged corruption at icare, the scandal-ridden NSW government insurer, became known)
- North Sydney Community Awards (organised by Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman)
- Women In Mining West Australia summit (2017 and 2018, with Leigh Sales)
- Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals
- Coleman Greig Lawyers Women in Business Forum lunch.
Stan Grant — international affairs analyst
As first reported in Pearls and Irritations, Grant was a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a Commonwealth agency which receives most of its funding from the Defence Department as well as sponsorship from global defence manufacturers.
Grant hosted an ASPI interview series at a time when he was also a “contributor” on global affairs with the ABC. Grant has since rejoined the ABC full time and is no longer listed as an ASPI senior fellow.
Andrew Greene — security and defence reporter
As again reported in Pearls and Irritations, Greene was a panellist at a conference organised by the Australian British Chamber of Commerce and defence manufacturer BAE Systems. He also appeared in a short BAE sponsored video carrying BAE branding.
Emma Alberici — former chief economics correspondent
Prior to leaving the ABC, Alberici hosted events for (among others):
- The federal government’s Export Finance Corporation
- Quantum Financial Independent Wealth Management (an investor seminar)
- The leaders summit at the Salesforce World Tour, Sydney (for leading C-Suite and senior executives)
- The Telstra business women’s awards.
An ABC spokesperson said that senior management had to approve outside engagements and took into account the subject matter and whether or not the organisations were politically aligned or functioned as lobby groups. The amount of money, if any, is also taken into account. Anything over $5000 per engagement is considered a high risk to the “perception of independence”, as are “regular payments and ongoing relationships”, the corporation’s guidelines say.
According to the spokesperson the positives included “the public and community benefit” of experienced ABC staff facilitating public debate and the value for the ABC and individual staff members of participating in events.
Whether or not the ABC’s on-air staff are blurring professional lines — and if the public has a right to know about that — is a topic for another day.
The point is that, despite the odd critical piece of reporting, there is no evidence that the ABC of 2020 is a nest of left-wing, anti-business bias.
How could it be when its leading journalists are rubbing shoulders with Australia’s corporate elite and government agencies, often in the company of government ministers?
Despite this the Coalition continues to fight last century’s war. At the same time, a real threat to the health of the information ecosystem — Sky News’ pushing of wild and baseless conspiracy theories about the US election — is going unchecked.
There is the old ABC/gov trade-off in play, it goes something like this:
For all the huffing and puffing, such instances as the Tudge/Porter (non-)yarn are actually music to ALP/LNP hardhead ears. They give the illusion – especially to the Useful Idiot tenured hacks who churn ’em out – that ‘our ABC’ is indeed fearlessly ‘Telling Troof To Power’, man. Apart from handing tactical victories – and cynical excuses for yet more resource-thinning and time-wasting (ie on endless ABC internal procedural navel gazing and hand-wringing) – all it really does is keep ABC resources – and would-be fired-up, good ABC journalists – from aiming their firepower at the authentically concerning areas of power abuse.
But hey. ‘Social ishoos’ are easy-peasy, right? You can keep pulling in your $200K+ tenured Boomer ABC pay packet (or build your future one as a Millennial ‘future safe pair of ABC hands’), keep hanging out in all the equally wealthy-prog pockets of the inner city Info Set, with your prog credentials nicely polished, along with your Walkleys.
Apropos of feeding ’em muck, during the Greek Colonels junta I was amazed by the vast array of newspaper (in colour – late 60s!) available daily at subsidised prices.
Naturally I wondered what was in them as politics was a dangerous indulgence.
Before I was able to read them (a couple of years too late) native friends explained “Not much – sex scandals, sports, dodgy small (NB!) businesses, sports, gossip, sports, recipes and celebrity divorces”
Did I mention sport? Lots & lots of sport.
Could not happen here thought the naif abroad.
Then it did and nobody cared – Fraser went to the 1975 election promising that soon we would be able to read a newspaper the proper, old fashioned way – turning to the back pages first.
So very true, JR.
Let’s make sure we DO have this discussion another day please, Crikey and David Hardaker.
Because this moonlighting thing – from tenured Public Servants well paid to work fulltime by taxpayers – is, however normalised it has become…utter, utter, utter, utter bullsh*t. It is beyond acceptable on any level – quite aside from the conflict and perceptions etc side. It’s just odious, at a time when journalism’s business models are struggling, that secure, taxpayer-funded permanent employees are allowed to hoover up the choicest of the few remaining scraps of private sector gigs needing journo skillsets. AND I object to the fact that we taxpayers don’t see a dime of the ‘MC’ fees that, let’s be frank, a marginal journeyman like Crabbe can command from said-same private sector…ONLY on the back of her tax-payer underwritten profile. She’s selling her ‘fame’, not her magnificent conference information skills (I’ve seen them at work; they’re fine…but so are those of about 5000 other – unemployed – journalists.)
Sorry, but it’s just taking the p*ss. Seriously, this is a dirty little double-dipping rort that has to be stopped. If you’re an ABC ‘name’, please: be thankful for a well-HR-policed, well-paid, satisfying job doing what you love, and leave the non-journalism information gigs for journalist colleagues who aren’t so lucky. IMO you’re a hair’s breath away from being a kind of scab.
But let’s have a comprehensive debate on this, Crikey. And include book deals and commercial media columns, too, for that matter. None of the rest of the F/T public service get to mix and match like this, do they?
Agree, a significant issue as in the past it was not possible work outside the PS, or maybe donate any fees to charity.
Further, this is a moral and idoelogical trap as it encourages PS journalists and presenters to, if not seek extra curricula paid employment, be open to offers.
Seems that we have all these (mono)culturally similar people in media, crossing over to politics &/or business, leading them to become bland PR sock puppets who will not rock the boat?
Yes. It is for all the ‘diversity’ lip service being paid increasingly homogenous across the media/info work landscape now. Diversity is not about skin colour or gender or any other ID marker, it’s about journalistic attitude/edginess. And when you do get someone who’s genuinely willing to rock boats/push hard where it matters, in an area of their expertise especially, it invariably brings with it great personal/career cost. Emma Alberici is a good example from the recent past, as is in terms of tomorrow’s ABC I suspect an Omar Faruqi (or other similarly unruly Millennials generally career-confined to 3RRR or other ABC niche sub-sectors)…you just can’t see his ilk being allowed to progress to a longer, broader-platformed ABC career these days (in the way edgy Boomers once were).
TBH I don’t much like either Alberici or Faruqi (but mostly because they push my socially conservative buttons),,,journalistically, they are the kind of authentically awkward voices the ABC should be promoting…rather than figures who i think are only superficially ‘controversial‘ careerists, ie like Louise Milligan, say.)
The mad search for a younger audience for RN is maddeningly puerile – promos of excruciating banality complement progs. seemingly pitched at shut-in adolescents.
It infuriates we rusted on ancients and hasn’t a hope in Hades attracting under 50.
Arguably Media Watch still sometimes gets the Coalition’s goat.They react to it like Paul Barry is sticking needles into a voodoo doll carrying a tiny lump of coal.
Occasionally Q+A gets a good guest and lets them speak their minds.
Plus Planet America with Chas Licciardello and John Barron seem as balanced as one can be with the very interesting politics there over the last 5 years.
Can we write off AM yet as a balanced source of radio news? It’s true there have been budget & time cuts there, but they keep trying to summaries the issues of the day.
Paul Barry several years was compelled to divulge his political preferences after accusations that he was a lackey for the ‘left’; he apparently votes Liberal.
My issue with Planet America is that it’s a bit over the top, at least the Chaz dude is, and conditions viewers to think there is only the US and/or UK (not even Canada, NZ or Ireland?).
I would prefer to see ‘Planet Earth’ looking at politics and educating Australians about various nations in e.g. the EU, Asia, etc.; especially as the politics in the US, UK and Australia are hardly normal nowadays but too many Australians accept it as normal….
when one does the research on the ABC, as Crikey did under Stephen Mayne back in the day and another Crikey article about 10 years ago, and you find that a slight majority of presenters and journalists went on to work for the conservative side of politics as MP’s and Staffers than the progressive side… sort of kills off the faux arguments ABC detractors always use….