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'Why Mark Scott Should Resign' 'Why Mark Scott should resign' THE AUSTRALIAN NOVEMBER 26, 2013 12:00AM Janet Albrechtsen Columnist Sydney MARK Scott should resign. When the managing director of the ABC chose to publish information criminally obtained by Edward Snowden about Australia's signals intelligence operations in Indonesia, he also chose to undermine Australia's relationship with our most important neighbour. He chose to fuel tensions and nationalist sentiments in a fledgling democracy. He also chose to undermine an immigration policy aimed at preventing deaths at sea. These consequences were entirely foreseeable. Despite Scott's flimsy arguments to the contrary, in the end, the ABC - and Scott - were willing to risk Australia's national interest for no discernible public interest. The call for Scott to resign is not made lightly. Moreover, I am not the only former ABC board member who believes the managing director of the ABC ought to go or be relieved of his duties for failing to lead the ABC as a responsible editor-in-chief. When Scott applied for, and was given, the job as MD, he was touted as an effective editor-in-chief, something the national broadcaster had lacked under earlier managing directors. There are now serious questions about Scott's prudence as an editor-in-chief - whether or not it was his decision to publish. If the decision were his, he got it badly wrong. By deciding to team up with the left- leaning Guardian Australia, the ABC effectively aided and abetted an online newspaper with minimal reach so the spying allegations would receive maximum reach using the resources of the taxpayer-funded giant. If the decision to team up with the Guardian to get out in front and air the spying allegations did not come to Scott, it should have. A failure to bring such a serious matter to its managing director would suggest the ABC is run by the staff, not by management. To be sure, the story about Australia's intelligence operations would have broken and caused damage without the ABC joining up with the Guardian. But that's not the point. The ABC willingly chose to go out in front - and to draw the ABC into a debate the national broadcaster didn't need to be drawn into. Importantly, the ABC did not even have a genuine scoop or exclusive access to this story. If it had, Scott might have had to agonise over whether to be first to go public. But by acting as a free public megaphone for a commercial outfit, the ABC plainly made a political rather than an editorial decision. The timing of the leak was also a highly political matter. The Guardian has had this information since May. Its decision not to publish the information before the election when it would have harmed Kevin Rudd, but to sit on it until after the election, when it was designed to damage Tony Abbott, is something the ABC must have considered. Its decision to go ahead showed a blatant political preference. The seriousness of the ABC's decision to publish criminally obtained information that involved such profoundly damaging and entirely foreseeable risks also raises questions about the ABC board. Did Scott raise the issue with the board, to whom he is responsible? If not, why not? What about ABC chairman Jim Spigelman? Was he included in the decision? If not, why not? If yes, did he consider the ramifications for the public interest? What is Spigelman's view about Scott's response to questions in senate estimates last week that it was in the public interest to reveal information about Australian intelligence gathering in Indonesia even though he knew that it would "cause some difficulties with the Australian-Indonesian relationship in the short term". Or did Spigelman do what former ABC chairmen lacking spine have too often done - let the MD and therefore the staff - run the show without prudent board oversight? So far, the only public comment Spigelman has made has been a letter to The Australian about the "considerable personal distress" this newspaper caused to his executive assistant by publishing an incorrect salary figure. Compared with the breach of national security perpetrated by the ABC, his focus on a matter of staff welfare is a disappointing demonstration of where the chairman's priorities lie. A responsible board must surely have concerns about Scott's stewardship of the ABC on this matter. Scott is appointed by and subject to removal by the board. As section 13 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act sets out, the managing director holds office subject to terms and conditions determined by the board. The reckless publication of criminally obtained information with the predictable and escalating consequences now unfolding make his position untenable. In short, the ABC board needs to look at its responsibilities here - and its culpability in this matter. As a member of the ABC board for five years between 2005 and 2010, I can attest to the fact that it has a disappointing history of being ineffective. I can attest to the fact that information that ought to have been provided to the board was not. And I can attest to the fact that, unlike commercial boards that work together, the ABC board is too often a numbers game. If you don't have the board numbers then the status quo at the ABC becomes untouchable. Moreover, if the chairman's main aim is to be loved by staff, then the MD is untouchable. Instead of providing genuine oversight and counsel to management, the board gets bogged down drafting policies, codes of conduct and other fine-sounding documents. It's a management driven make-work gig for board members to make them feel important. It justifies them jumping on planes, travelling business class, checking into nice hotels and turning up for a fine lunch at Ultimo - all at taxpayer expense. Meanwhile the focus is taken off what really matters - the output of the ABC. The output this past week by the ABC has let taxpayers down. Badly. While questions have been raised about the curious timing of this dump of information, consider what we do know about the ABC. The orthodoxy at the ABC has long been to oppose strong border policy and offshore processing as lacking compassion and human decency. You only need to sit on the Q&A panel - as I have done on many occasions - to witness the strength and persistence of that orthodoxy. Never mind that these policies will stop deaths at sea as they did from the time of the Tampa standoff in 2001 until Rudd started to dismantle the immigration policy in 2008. Just as Abbott's boat policy appeared to deliver results with a 75 per cent decline in arrivals in the past eight weeks, the ABC's handiwork as an activist media organisation has seen Indonesia suspend co-operation. Just as 300 terrorists are about to be released from Indonesian prisons in the next 12 months - including some involved in bomb attacks against Australians in Jakarta and Bali between 2002 and 2009 - intelligence co-operation between the two countries has been derailed by the spying revelations. Is that in the public interest? Remember, it was joint co-operation between Indonesia and Australia that led to the arrests of the Bali bombers and the dismantling of the Jemaah Islamiah terror network. In senate estimates last week, Scott likened the ABC's disclosure of Snowden's revelations about Australian intelligence operations in Indonesia to the Australian Wheat Board scandal. Scott could not be more wrong. The AWB scandal involved criminal kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime. By contrast, as Michael Bohm, the opinion page editor of The Moscow Times, wrote back in August when Russians were hyperventilating about news that the US gathers intelligence in Russia, spying is a sovereign right. All responsible countries spy on friends and foes alike. Snowden is not a whistleblower. "The type of spying on foreigners that Snowden revealed is not in violation of any international law, treaty or convention," wrote Bohm. The only criminal activity here was Snowden stealing information from the National Security Agency. Scott also said there would be short-term consequences for Australia; the revelations would "cause some difficulties". Not only was this a reckless understatement, the truth is that Scott cannot know where this will end. Will the latest reports about spying further inflame hatred of Australia and Westerners? Will terrorists retaliate? Will Australia's ability to use intelligence gathered in Indonesia to identify terrorists and likely terrorist attacks be hampered? Will a critical immigration policy collapse? That is the wish of left-wing Abbott- haters. Moreover, the ABC's decision has brought into question the propriety of the ABC receiving $223 million to provide Australia with what Scott himself calls "soft diplomacy" in the Asia-Pacific through the government-funded Australia Network. As another former board member, Keith Windschuttle, tells The Australian, "by publicising illegally obtained information that patently works against Australian interests in the region, the ABC appears to have abrogated its claim to be acting in the spirit of its original submission". Scott appears to consider it appropriate to take these risks, using taxpayer dollars to indulge his staff in the publication of criminally obtained information. All week, the ABC has pursued the line that Abbott ought to apologise for actions of the former PM, Rudd. Where is the apology from the ABC for its reckless, irresponsible actions? How can the managing director of the ABC claim with a straight face that the leak of ABC salaries was a serious matter that should not have happened and yet in the same week, publish illegally obtained leaks about Australia's intelligence operations overseas when the known consequences were far more serious to an entire nation? These are grave questions not only for the ABC board but also for all Australians whose taxes fund the national broadcaster.
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