Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share 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—