Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

There has been speculation that the ABC may receive extra funding this evening, earmarked for producing local content programs. If this speculation turns into reality in tonight’s budget then it will certainly be a good thing for the ABC and long overdue. The government should be providing the ABC with the funding it needs to be a leader in the transition to digital TV in Australia. It should be providing the ABC with the funding it needs to boost coverage to underserviced areas of rural and regional Australia.

Earlier this year the government began softening up the Australian people to the idea of advertising on the ABC. The government went to the last election with a promise to maintain the prohibition on advertising. Does the government intend to honour this election promise it made to the Australian people? If not, why not? The Australian taxpayers are certainly entitled to know the truth about that issue as well.

With the introduction of this bill, the government has moved its attack on the ABC up another notch. Over the past 10 years the government has stacked the ABC board with its political mates, so much so that there is a clear political bias amongst the current board members. As a result, many Australians—particularly those living in rural and regional Australia, where the impacts of the government’s funding crunch have been particularly devastating—have lost confidence in the independence of the ABC.

The staff-elected position on the board of the ABC is the one and only appointment that the Prime Minister has no direct control over. Naturally, he is seeking to remove it. The staff-elected director is a valuable and important position on the ABC board. When one looks at the current board, the staff-elected director, as I said before, is often the only person with operational experience. The staff-elected director is often the only person with the skills, knowledge and background to question advice from the ABC’s executive. But the Prime Minister does not care about the future of the ABC. He does not care about appointing people to the board who have experience in public broadcasting. What he does care about is appointing his ideological mates to the board—people who have no understanding of the whole charter of public broadcasting.

Labor believes that vacancies should be advertised and a rigorous merit based selection process should be followed in appointing members to the ABC board. Certainly, under Labor an independent selection panel will shortlist suitably qualified applicants. Under Labor, the ABC will remain independent of the minister. If the minister does appoint a non-shortlisted candidate, he or she would actually be required to explain the reasons for that to the parliament and the Australian people.

Senator Coonan claims there is a conflict of interest for the staff-elected director. She believes the staff-elected director will place the interests of ABC staff ahead of the interests of the ABC as a whole. Frankly, that is an insult to ABC staff and it really demonstrates the government’s low opinion of the ABC. Another submission to the Senate inquiry succinctly summed up this insulting assertion: ‘There is another view: an elected board member has an operational perspective that those outside the organisation cannot have. This provides a more balanced view when deciding policy issues. It is important that decisions made by the ABC board are as completely informed as possible, since such decisions potentially affect all citizens.’

In the second reading speech to this bill, the minister said:

Despite the abolition of the staff-elected Director position on the ABC Board, the Government expects the ABC Board and management to continue to take the interests of staff into account in its deliberations.

On the one hand, the minister says the staff-elected director position must be abolished because an ABC staff member will take the interests of staff into account during deliberations, then on the other the minister asserts that the board will be expected to take into account the interests of staff after the staff-elected director position is abolished. You cannot have it both ways, Minister. Page 21 of the ABC’s 2005 annual report states:

A critical point has been reached. Unless adequate funding is secured for the coming triennium, the Board will be faced with a range of fundamental questions about the extent and quality of ABC programming and services.

The Howard government should join Labor in recognising the ABC as a national asset, not an opportunity for cronyism. It should also end its extreme industrial relations campaign and recognise that the staff-elected director of the ABC is not elected to the ABC board as a union delegate. The staff-elected director does not sit on the board—and is not elected to the board by the staff of the ABC—to put the industrial interests of staff to the board. That would be the managing director’s role.

The Senate inquiry heard no examples of actual or potential conflicts of interest from current or former staff-elected directors. It is an insult for the minister to claim that the staff-elected director is incapable of acting independently—as is required of all directors, not just the staff-elected director—in the best interests of the ABC as a whole. By using the Uhrig report as the sole reason for presentation of this bill to parliament, the government does a great disservice to both Professor Uhrig and the ABC. Unfortunately, Professor Uhrig’s terms of reference were completely distorted, leading to widespread criticism that Uhrig’s focus was misplaced. Former chairman of the ACCC Professor Allan Fels and journalist Fred Benchley both argued that the report was ‘basically a business wish list’. The Uhrig report focused on the need for effective dialogue with business, failing to highlight the need for protection of regulatory agencies from the threat of regulatory capture. It also failed to highlight the need for the scrutiny of statutory agencies through the Senate estimates process. So, unfortunately, Professor Uhrig and the ABC were failed by this government through incomplete terms of reference. It is in the best interests of the ABC and its charter, and the ABC’s obligations under that charter to the Australian people, that the staff-elected director’s position remain.