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Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. Submission to the Senate Inquiry Into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010

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Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. Submission to the Senate Inquiry Into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 Executive Summary Friends of the ABC NSW (Inc) is an independent and unaligned community organisation. Nearly everyone agrees that the ABC Board appointment process has been abused. The Coalition, the A.L.P. and minor parties have criticised the abuse of the appointment process. Politicisation of the ABC Board is damaging because it threatens ABC independence, because it is destabilising, and because it erodes public trust in the ABC. The more open process envisaged by this Bill will go a long way towards restoring confidence in the ABC Board. However in accordance with the Westminster tradition of ministerial responsibility the Minister, under this Bill, retains the right to reject the advice of the selection committee. This is balanced, to some degree, by the fact that the Minister would be obliged to make the reasons for his/her decision public. This is why the position of the staff-elected Director is so important. The staff-elected Director would be the only non-Executive Director not appointed by the Minister. The submission outlines some of the many instances wherein the staff-elected Director has acted to protect the independence and integrity of the ABC. The proposal to exclude from eligibility for appointment to the ABC Board former parliamentarians or people who have recently been “senior political staff members” is also likely to lead to greater public confidence in the ABC Board. Indeed the public tends to perceive unelected political advisors as faceless manipulators. While the Uhrig Review was been critical of what it called “representational appointments” to government authorities, we note that the previous government, when it abolished the staff-elected Director of the ABC did not abolish similar positions in other Commonwealth authorities. These included the Australian National University, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and the Rural Industries Development Corporation. Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc believes that the independence of the ABC is just as important as these other organisations. Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 Submission The official historian of the ABC, K.S. Inglis has noted: The ABC is bound to broadcast information and opinion useful and harmful to people in public life. More particularly, the ABC accommodates criticisms, sometimes severe, of the government on which it depends for revenue, and that is bound to be a rich source of conflict.i It is not surprising therefore that both of the major parties represented in the Australian parliament have expressed concern at the tendency of the party in office to appoint political sympathisers to the ABC board. I have already commented on the stacked nature of the board, which at one stage saw six out of nine members with past or present ALP affiliations. Senator Richard Alston, Senate Hansard, 30 March 1995. For 10 years the government has tried to stack the ABC board with its political mates to try to control the ABC. People like Michael Kroger, Ron Brunton and Janet Albrechtsen have been dispatched to the board with orders to bring the ABC to heel. Senator Stephen Conroy, Senate Hansard, 28 March 2006. In Australia many cultural and educational organisations are governed by boards operating at arm’s length from government. In many cases the composition of the governing body, and the process for making appointments to it, is set out in the relevant Act. This Bill makes similar provisions for the ABC, including a provision for one member to be elected by the staff. This system needs to be retained both with educational bodies and the ABC because of their key role in opinion formation. Without these safeguards there is a serious risk of active government interference in the transmittal of knowledge and opinion, and the possible hiding or distortion of the truth. The relevant experience of ABC Board members In the eighty-eight years that the ABC has existed the government has only once appointed a person with broadcasting experience to the ABC Board. Robert Raymond, a distinguished television producer for both the ABC and Channel 9, served only one term. By contrast the ABC staff have always elected a broadcaster, when they could have elected a clerk, an accountant, or a technician. Without the staff-elected Director the ABC would have been without a person with broadcasting experience on the Board for 90% of the time. This Bill is long overdue. At last we have some fundamental principles, like the public advertisement of vacancies, applied to the selection of the ABC Board. At last we have the development and publication of selection criteria, so that both applicants for the position, and the committee formed to recommend the appointment of the successful applicant, will both know the requirements of the job. With the 2 Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 restoration of the staff-elected Director position we can be confident that there will be greater diversity on the Board. Being clear about the selection criteria will enable the Board of the ABC to have a voice in the mix of skills and experience needed for it to function effectively. Now that the process is much more open there is likely to be better appointments and thus better governance. It is also likely that there will be greater public confidence in the ABC Board. The proposal to exclude from eligibility for appointment to the ABC Board former parliamentarians or people who have been “senior political staff members” is also likely to lead to greater public confidence in the ABC Board. Indeed the public often perceive unelected political advisers as faceless manipulators. We note that this process follows the Westminster conventions on ministerial responsibility, with the Minister retaining the power to reject the recommendations of the selection committee and appoint someone else. This is balanced, to some degree, by the fact that the Minister would be obliged to make the reasons for his decision public. While this has the virtue of exposing his decision to debate, the government of the day retains a great deal of influence over the national broadcaster under this system. The ABC should, in its editorial decisions, be independent of the government. This is why it is critically important that the position of the staff elected Director, the only non-executive Director not appointed by the government of the day, be retained. In a Media Release dated November 2009 Senator Minchin, the then Coalition Shadow Minister for Communications said: The position creates the potential for conflict of interest with the staff-elected director legally bound to act in the best interests of the Corporation, despite having been appointed as a representative of staff and elected by them. Senator Minchin is correct when he says that the staff-elected Director is legally bound to act in the best interests of the Corporation. He is also right when he says that the staff-elected Director is elected by staff. That is basically a tautology. However he is wrong when he says that the staff-elected Director’s role is to represent staff. Senator Conroy made this clear in his second reading speech. The staff-elected Director has the same duties, rights and responsibilities as all other non-executive Directors. Like any other ABC director, the staff-elected Director’s primary duty is to act in the best interests of the corporation. The only difference between the staff-elected Director and other ABC directors is their means of appointment. A similar point was made by John Cleary, a former staff-elected Director of the ABC in a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment Bill 2006. Mr. Cleary wrote: The position of staff-elected Director is not a ‘staff representative’ position. The Director is elected by all staff of the organization and, on taking office, assumes 3 Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 the same responsibilities as all other directors. These responsibilities are defined in the provisions of the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act of 1997 There has been no expectation from staff that the staff-elected Director should act in the interests of staff, indeed there have been significant occasions such as the opposition to ‘infotainment’ programs, and the decision over Pay TV, when the staff-elected Director has put the independence of the corporation ahead of the ‘interests of staff’ when narrowly defined as more jobs and money. Responding to an announcement by the then Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, that the staff-elected Director would be abolished, the then staff-elected Director, Ramona Koval wrote in the Melbourne Age: All directors are obliged to act independently, in the best interests of the ABC. Only the method of our appointment differs. I am elected by staff. All other board members have been picked by the Government, except the managing director who has been picked by the Board. I am the only director independent of government.ii In support of its decision the then Coalition government quoted from the Uhrig Report on corporate governance in the federal public sector. In particular the then government referred to Mr. Uhrig’s comments that “representational” appointments to statutory authorities were not desirable. The Uhrig report was delivered in June 2003. At the time a significant number of federal government authorities had provision for the election of board members by staff or industry bodies.
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