00:00:07
Speaker 1: Hello Aber, and good evening, Good morning, James dibblin Sydney, Welcome to the ABC News in Color.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: It's Australia's largest broadcaster. It has the most staff, the largest budget, the most television and radio stations, and with dozens of broadcasts and digital platforms, the ABC's tentacles now reached further than ever before, all thanks to you, the taxpayer. So what's going on and what's going wrong at our national broadcaster? It's time for your ABC to be exposed. What's wrong with the ABC?
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Speaker 3: I think the ABC generates a lot of different emotions and views in Australians, and to the contrary, I think that that is a good thing.
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Speaker 4: What's wrong with the ABC? Wow?
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Speaker 3: It's a question that I've thought about, worked at, tried to decipher.
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Speaker 4: But in the end it's simple.
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Speaker 3: The ABC is run by the staff for the staff. It's really that simple.
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Speaker 4: Chris, why is this song?
00:01:22
Speaker 1: We've been in save the Treasury Building now for a little more than three quarters of.
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Speaker 2: An hour from the outset, the ABC had an air of authority. Could I ask if any of these men were captured near the village of wah Long. It was a trusted voice of record.
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Speaker 5: I think South Australia, the ALPP is certain to win the seats of Adelaide, Ray and Kingston.
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Speaker 2: And gave nourishment to a nation. But how times have changed.
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Speaker 3: I come to this as an optimist about public broadcasting. I think public broadcasting has an incredibly important role. I joined the board because I believed in public broadcasting. But I'm losing faith in that belief. I don't think the ABC can change enough for it to remain a legitimate public broadcaster.
00:02:19
Speaker 4: In this country.
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Speaker 2: Janet Olbrookson is a columnist with The Australian newspaper. She knows the ABC well after five years on its board.
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Speaker 3: Even before I had joined the ABC, I think there were journalists in.
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Speaker 4: The Melbourne headquarters of the ABC who threatened to go and strike.
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Speaker 3: Wow, they must think I'm a real revolutionary. I've never thought of myself as a revolutionary. And again, the ABC doesn't need a revolution. It's got a charter. All it needs to do is abide by the charter and it would produce terrific, terrific content.
00:02:59
Speaker 6: The ABC, I've always said it's a flawed institution. It makes mistakes, there can be inexperience, but the goodwill that exists there from the Australian public has sustained the ABC and built up the strong support that it enjoys.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: The ABC is a big player in Australian media.
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Speaker 7: Don't be an idiot.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: Take the money and go from drama to gardening.
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Speaker 8: Your delicious veggies are going to attract plenty of hungry mouth and cartoons to comedy.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: One game, then bet Auntie is everywhere.
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Speaker 7: Change.
00:03:41
Speaker 2: More than four thousand people work at the ABC, with around half involved in news and current affairs. Welcome to insiders, and it's all paid for by US more than one billion of our tax dollars every year.
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Speaker 9: Stand by now for an ABC news special.
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Speaker 4: Navari is shutdown.
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Speaker 2: You referred to the ABC as Australia's greatest sheltered workshop.
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Speaker 5: Why well, essentially because it has this business model that is built around the idea of protection. I don't think it's deliberate, but that's how it ends up.
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Speaker 2: Richard Olsten was the long serving Communications Minister during the Howard government.
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Speaker 5: It doesn't have any real competitors. For a start, it has this huge moat. It doesn't have to earn a living. It gets a guaranteed billion plus each year, it becomes not accountable to its stakeholders, so it doesn't really care what the audience thinks. And of course half the audience should be right of center, half should be left, roughly speaking, but he only in vocaters for one side.
00:04:51
Speaker 2: Jonathan SCHEI you are the test case. You are the person who tried to change the ABC and you failed.
00:04:59
Speaker 10: Why When I applied for the job and was received that, a lot of people said to me, well, you know, you just don't know what you're getting yourself into, and that was certainly true.
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Speaker 2: Jonathan Shire was appointed managing director of the ABC in March two thousand. While there's such a failure at the job, his time in the job is the shortest on record, less than two years.
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Speaker 10: I was a young liberal, I think when I was twenty one, and so some people decided therefore I was on that side of politics and for them.
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Speaker 2: That was enough. Shire was brought in to reform the ABC, including its news department.
00:05:42
Speaker 10: There was clearly a topic bias. I mean it's a bias in a number of ways, but one of the clear ones for me was the topics that were addressed. I remember in the first year I was there, I think I said to somethingbody. Nothing happened in Africa or South America last year at all, except I think a football game. So I saw that as both lazy journalism and also a failure to address other.
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Speaker 2: Issues that really concerned to people.
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Speaker 10: And the example I gave was I didn't think most people in Australia understood superannuation and how it would affect them, and I thought the ABC had a duty to explain things like that.
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Speaker 2: You moved some executives on, you tried to shake up the organization. Again, was their staff resistance? Well, there was.
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Speaker 10: The ABC is obviously unionized. There was obviously a situation where people had decided that I was the enemy, that I had gone in there to make a change.
00:06:35
Speaker 2: The ABC staff had put a target on Jonathan Shire's back, and the seven point thirty report took.
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Speaker 4: Aim Jonathan Shire.
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Speaker 5: How much more time do you think you could reasonably expect to demonstrate to the public that you can actually do this job.
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Speaker 2: That's just open defiance from your own staff, isn't it.
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Speaker 10: Well, I mean carry O'Brien was in his own view of God and therefore he had the right to say that to a chief executive. Some people said, if I had actually been in that position, Jonathan, I think would have had a chat to him next morning.
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Speaker 2: But you know, that's how it was. Who is in control at the ABC?
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Speaker 5: Well, in terms of management, I think the management.
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Speaker 7: Still runs the place.
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Speaker 5: You know, keeps the books roughly balanced and does the sort of things you expect the management. But in terms of what content controls there are, I think it's essentially outsourced to start, and that's part of the problem.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: I now call the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The current boss of the ABC is David Anderson, but the review was conducted by He's an ABC lifer and became the managing director in twenty nineteen. It wasn't that simple at the time, center so the top job was handed to him by the ABC board, which is less by chair Eighter butt Rods. During her time as a director there, Janet Olbrookson believes the staff were the real power brokers.
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Speaker 3: You go to a lot of events at the ABC, they schmooze, you take selfies with celebrities, and soon enough you have become so connected to the staff and management that you lose sight that your role is actually to lead. In fact, I think you know the staff have a near perfect record of seducing chairman CEOs, many board members, and those that they can't seduce, you know, they can't paralyze with that warm embrace they basically get rid of.
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Speaker 10: There was a wonderful quote that somebody gave me once in the organization. They say, Jonathan, we don't really worry about chairmen because we just find that we flattered them and they coalesce in the end.
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Speaker 2: And certainly that.
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Speaker 10: Was true of my chairman. I think it's been few chairmen that they are. They are smothered with affection and at the end the day back off.
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Speaker 2: Is it true as some critics would argue that the ABC is a staff run collective.
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Speaker 7: I reject that completely. Alan Jones, that's a staff run collective.
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Speaker 2: Ray Adley has staff run collective of one. Yes, but this is four thousand people who don't seem to be cowed by anybody.
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Speaker 7: You're barking up the wrong tree.
00:09:22
Speaker 6: The ABC has its internal disciplines, if you want to use a good word like discipline.
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Speaker 7: It has its internal disciplines.
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Speaker 6: And you're not a law run to yourself when you work for the ABC, because there are a lot of peer checks and balances on what you're doing.
00:09:41
Speaker 2: The ABC also has a charter. It's written into law and it states that the ABC must reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community.
00:09:54
Speaker 3: That term cultural diversity, I believe has been perverted to create this taxpayer funded playground for identity politics. And conservatives simply aren't welcome at the ABC. It's as simple as that.
00:10:07
Speaker 5: So they have this view that if you're a conservative, you're so fundamentally wrong on so many things.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: I can't be bothered explaining why.
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Speaker 5: And that's why you need to get out there and understand that that's not how the average trade thinks, or the average person starting a family or trying to earn a decent living. Then they don't follow a lot of these debates.
00:10:32
Speaker 3: There is a smugness at the ABC that conservatives are not welcome because there is something truly wrong with their views.
00:10:42
Speaker 2: And I have a confession to make. I used to work at the ABC. Or to men, find a young woman like yourself a fairly threatening proposition. It does make life difficult. That's me as a young reporter in Adelaide back in the nineteen eighty.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: Pleasure.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, then they call my name and an off, I go into the line den and on the odd occasion they even invite me back. On this occasion it was Q and A with Stan Grant. The main topic the Indigenous voice to Parliament. I think it's disappointing tonight that everybody on this panel supports the voice. We'll do it from different perspectives, will support an Indigenous voice. Although I've from time to time been a mild critic of the ABC, I'm not going to criticize you this time because I know you try to get a couple of indeed, but.
00:11:48
Speaker 3: The reason now at our organization, at the Australian, you put forward a you that's different to mine.
00:11:53
Speaker 4: We do that.
00:11:54
Speaker 3: Our readers are enriched, they think about things differently. That creates a debate. That's what I see as a country. At the ABC, I don't think I've ever heard of someone who is opposed to putting a race based voice into the Constitution.
00:12:07
Speaker 4: Why not? What are they afraid of?
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Issues like the Ulary statement and the heart I argue my case. I write my pieces and in the same newspaper are other people opposing points of view? I argue for this on my television show at five o'clock Sky and News. You can subscribe anytime your life again, Butt, But straight after me, Peter Kretlin comes on and runs the entirely opposite argument. One day, Peter and I must just do it.
00:12:32
Speaker 11: Certainly, appearing on Q and A, as I have on a number of occasions, there aren't a lot of Coalition supporters in the audience. It does feel and look on air as if it's leaning to one side of politics, and that's not to our side of politics. And certainly you can say the same thing about the drama.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: I would have thought that's unarguable, right, and it's obvious to anybody who watches these programs. You can fix that overnight by just having more balance in your power. So inviting more right of center people onto your programs.
00:13:03
Speaker 11: I don't understand it either. It's not hard and they should be doing it.
00:13:08
Speaker 2: And that's all we have. Card forward tonight, Well, what did that established? The ABC shouldn't have a position on the voice, but clearly it does. The panel spoke with one voice. Never mind that in this case the ABC's view matches my own. Where was the contest of ideas? It's this lack of diversity on the issues that matter that keeps getting the national broadcasts are into trouble, Stark goes into Crawley, Crawley is caught behind. Is he bigger? One of the times I really feel like the ABC does bind this nation together is when you're driving around anywhere in the country listening to the cricket. The ABC has been doing this now for nearly a century, since the Depression era, when no Sport Night of Australia like the Test Cricket.
00:14:06
Speaker 4: Ah that time, a.
00:14:09
Speaker 12: Lot of the crowd got up one hundred, one hundred up once more.
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Speaker 7: The Bradman mcave being.
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Speaker 2: Nick Nick Tavern, the Great Don Bradman made us proud.
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Speaker 9: The mcaven, the Tan the Bradman that they meet in the th of the wicket.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: No doubt Bradman that danger and his rise coincided with the birth of the National Broadcaster. It was a game changer. Not only did it bring us together, but it connected us in real time to the outside world.
00:14:42
Speaker 6: Radio had just been invented by Marconey and it was sweeping the world and the ABC was formed and the Lions Joe Lyons government at the time said it's an exercise in nation building and we're going to exploit radio.
00:15:00
Speaker 5: It followed in the footsteps of the BBC, and Australia quite rightly saw the need for something like that.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: The ABC was launched in July nineteen thirty two.
00:15:11
Speaker 12: The Diggers stood beside us in nineteen fourteen, and the Diggers are with us again.
00:15:15
Speaker 2: For the first time there was a national service that linked and informed all Australia.
00:15:20
Speaker 12: Prime Minister, Mister rg Menzi, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that as a result, Australia is also a war.
00:15:42
Speaker 2: News came in from the front line and radio shows built up a loyal audience.
00:15:54
Speaker 7: However, and realer, better and gentlemen.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen fifty six, the ABC embraced television.
00:16:05
Speaker 4: Come in Peers, Western Australia.
00:16:08
Speaker 13: What kind of chain carried? Chewing gum kids, TV dotos, rude.
00:16:16
Speaker 2: Drama and entertainment followed. Who could forget Johnny O'Keefe. The ABC's news service was soon considered to be one of the world's best.
00:16:35
Speaker 12: Good evening I'm Bill pitch in the Programers This Day.
00:16:38
Speaker 7: To Night.
00:16:41
Speaker 2: And TV Current Affairs followed with landmark programs like This Day to Night.
00:16:47
Speaker 8: A child Stone reporting to you from the top of Australia's highest Billy, Australia.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Square, and Ounoun Sandy. It was important to bind the nation together, wasn't it?
00:17:01
Speaker 7: Absolutely? And I think it did.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Hello Jerry, what's it like up there in the car? You need any oxygen? As the ABC's funding grew, oh my god, it's staff expanded all right, thanks Valma, along with its reach.
00:17:23
Speaker 5: It was around the fifties early sixties that they suddenly decided now they'd to get a bit more aggressive. And if you're a journalist in the OBC, you want to impress your colleagues, you want to impress the board. You're not really interested in the audience because you don't have to be, because you're guaranteed.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: This is the bad one of the most exclusive ex soldiers organizations in the world.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: Even quite early on, mainstream values seemed to be mocked or challenged, like in this four Corners story on the RSL.
00:18:00
Speaker 1: Reasent years, it has become a powerful and controversial force in Australian politics, regarded by its admirers as the citadel of Australian nationalism. Labeled by its critics as reactionary and militaristic, it.
00:18:16
Speaker 2: Was panned, even described as a triumph of one sided reporting, a criticism that haunts the ABC to this day.
00:18:32
Speaker 11: Well, the ABC has a very important statutory obligation to report news in a manner which is both impartial and accurate, and I see this constantly being an issue, and particularly leading up to the election. I just got a very strong sense that many journalists at the ABC were campaigning rather than reporting. It is not the role of a journalist to campaign. The job of a journalist is to report.
00:19:09
Speaker 14: Hello and welcome to four Corners. Tonight we begin our special three part investigation into the story of the century.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: When Donald Trump won power. Four Corners soon had a conservative US president in its sits.
00:19:25
Speaker 14: Over the next few weeks, you'll meet the characters at the center of this extraordinary saga. The intelligence they gathered would fuel the cyber war in the coming presidential election.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: It was an extraordinary and unlikely conspiracy theory pushed by many on the liberal left in the US, and the ABC fell for it.
00:19:47
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker 5: Look, it's bad enough to be let astray because you haven't done your search, probably, but I think a lot of media in the US will let astray. Perhaps happy to be led astray, I might say, because it was deep Trump.
00:20:02
Speaker 14: The Kremlin's puppetmaster, now has America dancing to his discordant tune. He couldn't have planned it better.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Why would the ABC do that expensive bit of reporting? But more importantly, now that it's been debunked, why wouldn't they correct the record and apologize for that misinformation?
00:20:26
Speaker 6: The only thing I can say is that you have to go to the producers and to get their responses.
00:20:33
Speaker 2: But as the Australian National Broadcast, they're funded by taxpayer. As a three part series on a lopy left wing conspiracy theory against Donald Trump that all the leftist media in the US are doing. Anyway, is it a good use of our resources? And shouldn't it be corrected if it's wrong?
00:20:50
Speaker 6: You say, let us if there's factual error, it should be corrected.
00:20:53
Speaker 14: Tonight on four Corners, how America's number one cable news network became a propaganda vehicle for don Or Trump and helped destabilize democracy.
00:21:05
Speaker 5: Demon as Rupert Murdoch, I mean, went nowhere. It was a ridiculous story trying to say that somehow Fox News was sort of got Trump across the line.
00:21:16
Speaker 7: Public nonsense.
00:21:17
Speaker 5: We all know a Trump got across the line because Hillary was a dud and Trump accommodated the middle ground.
00:21:23
Speaker 2: Tony Abbott, already the most destructive politician of his generation, now intends waging war on what he calls environmental theology.
00:21:32
Speaker 5: Remember when Proben called Abbott the most obstructive politician of his generation. Never any idea of apologizing or explaining that. In fact, they tried to pretend. I know that was just to comment on climate change. We had nothing to do with climate change, and the regular I said that, but again they're just impervious to criticism.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: Programs like Q and A often set the agenda, but for all the wrong reasons. We've got someone in the audience who actually has faced the security agencies and the courts on these issues, named Zachi Malay. The first Australian charged under anti terrorism laws, was handed a platform on national television.
00:22:17
Speaker 3: Question to the panel, what would have happened if my case had been decided by the minister himself and.
00:22:25
Speaker 7: Not the courts?
00:22:26
Speaker 9: Steve Chaber, I'm happy to look you straight in the eye and say that I'd be pleased to be part of a government that would say.
00:22:34
Speaker 7: That you are out of the country as far as I'm concerned. Rubbish.
00:22:38
Speaker 3: It beggars belief that he was included in a live audience.
00:22:44
Speaker 2: A frankly head should roll out of this. A mountain of complaints came in and this time the ABC apologized effectively, admitting that got this horribly wrong. Is the ABC allowed to have editorial positions on political or social issues?
00:23:02
Speaker 3: Well, of course it has independent in independent editorial positions, and.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: It's not supposed to have editorial positions, is it. It's not supposed to have a position on climate change, or on border protection, or on digitous affairs.
00:23:15
Speaker 4: Well, let's think about that.
00:23:16
Speaker 3: You've got producers, you've got news directors and other functions being performed within the ABC to bring all these stories together, including journalists. It's not the role of government to direct any of those people about how to do their job or how to present their stories.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: But the law says the ABC should be objective and pluralistic. Do you believe that it is.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: If it wasn't, then we would have a situation where people would be by and large very ready for the ABC to cease to be in existence.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: Not for critics. There are plenty of critics to point this bias out.
00:23:51
Speaker 3: And we should welcome. We should welcome those criticisms because the ABC is not infallible.
00:23:58
Speaker 15: Tonight on Full Corner is the inside story of how a prince of the Church was brought to justice.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: The controversies, the transgressions have continued to mount.
00:24:13
Speaker 15: What's your view about George Powell?
00:24:15
Speaker 4: What sort of person is he?
00:24:17
Speaker 5: It's only a monster described someone like.
00:24:19
Speaker 2: That damaging the ABC's standing.
00:24:24
Speaker 10: You're just a dirty, rotten, sneaky, conniving bastard.
00:24:27
Speaker 2: A reporter Louise Milligan on various programs and platforms to shued Cardinal George Pearl with uncommon vigor. Cardinal Powell, what's your response to the charges?
00:24:41
Speaker 9: You're guilty, Garden, absolute key blow.
00:24:48
Speaker 2: The case took years to play out in the courts. It was leading news for all media, but Milligan and the ABC led the charge paper and there seemed to be little room for George Pearl's presumption of innocence. What was wrong with the ABC's purshoot of George.
00:25:06
Speaker 3: Pell, Chris If they'd followed their own guidelines and been open minded.
00:25:11
Speaker 4: If they'd applied scrutiny, if.
00:25:13
Speaker 3: They had questioned their own preconceived ideas about George Pearl, they would have produced a better form of journalism. They would have produced journalism that would make us proud. Instead, they produced a form of journalism that breached the Act, that was deeply unfair to George Pearl. And in the end you had a unanimous decision from the High Court which debunked everything that the ABC had said about George Pearl.
00:25:41
Speaker 16: I believe in free speech, but in a national broadcaster to have an overwhelming presentation of one view and only one view, I think that's a betrayal of the national interest.
00:25:59
Speaker 3: This is the cardinal George Pell became a free man after serving more than four hundred days in jail.
00:26:05
Speaker 4: He was driven out of Barwin Prison ledge along.
00:26:09
Speaker 2: And after a unanimous seven nil verdict from the High Court. You surely can't argue that Pell is not innocent of the charges.
00:26:19
Speaker 6: The ABC, as with other media, followed the Pel case from.
00:26:27
Speaker 7: The get go.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: It drove the Pel case.
00:26:30
Speaker 7: Followed the Pell case from the get go.
00:26:31
Speaker 6: Don't forget Chris that the ABC was instrumental in exposing police cover up of child sexual abuse in the Maitland Newcastle Diocese of the Catholic Church.
00:26:44
Speaker 2: And as some great work.
00:26:47
Speaker 6: George was going to put this in context, and you're you're trying to say that that Pearl was targeted.
00:26:54
Speaker 7: I reject that.
00:26:55
Speaker 6: The context was that a Royal commission with the Commonwealth, the States and the Territories was established into not just Catholic Church, but the entire institution responses to child sexual abuse. It was cathartic and it was very beneficial.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: Should the ABC apologize to him and correct the narrative of their reporting over the past decade.
00:27:19
Speaker 6: No, No, the ABC doesn't George Pell an apology. It followed the story as all other media followed the story.
00:27:32
Speaker 5: There had many occasions when they've even apologized, but they don't do it anymore. The George Pearl case was a classic. I mean, Milligan was taken to the cleaners by the court and yet she was allowed to write another book in which she basically questioned whether the verdict was right. Said, but maybe Pell shouldn't have even been allowed to appeal. You know, it just carried on as though nothing had happened, and not a beep out of the.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: ABC Vigilanti journalism, cap journalism is what happens at the ABC, and it happens on our dime.
00:28:05
Speaker 2: How do they choose their targets?
00:28:07
Speaker 4: Oh, well, it's pretty simple.
00:28:09
Speaker 3: They're usually conservative, aren't they, so, so it's not too hard for them to choose their targets. I'm sure there are lots of stories out there that viewers would be very interested in on all sides of politics, but in the last few years the focus has very much been on trying to bring down Liberal ministers in the Morrison government.
00:28:32
Speaker 15: Tonight, on Full Corners, we go inside the Canberra Bubble with an investigation that questions the conduct of some of the most senior politicians in the nation.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: Liberal Party ministers like Christian Porter and Alan Touch.
00:28:50
Speaker 3: The behavior wasn't okay and the culture's not okay and there should.
00:28:54
Speaker 4: Be something done about it.
00:29:00
Speaker 3: They interviewed a woman called Rachelle Miller who made claims against her former boss, Alan Touch, and I just wondered whether there was more to that story, whether possibly she was complaining because the relationship hadn't ended the way she wanted it to end. So when I wrote up a story that exposed the other side that In fact, Rachelle Miller had been chasing Alan Touch for many years, trying to pursue him, trying to restart a relationship again, a story that the ABC started. They were not the least bit interested in presenting the other side too. It's such an obvious breach of the ABC Act.
00:29:39
Speaker 10: Then, in relation to Christian Porter, I mean, I think Christian Porter was a disgraceful exercise.
00:29:44
Speaker 15: Now, after minister Porter came forward last week, we can finally bring you the story of the untested allegation he has categorically denied.
00:29:56
Speaker 2: Another ABC hatchet job, but this one more serious. Attorney General Christian Porter was accused of a rape that allegedly took place back in nineteen eighty eight when he was seventeen.
00:30:10
Speaker 10: It looked to me, as a member of the public that this man was being pill read for an unsubstantiated encounter with someone where even that person's family seemed to have reservations about the whole thing.
00:30:24
Speaker 15: Now that minister Porter has come forward to vehemently deny it, we are able to bring you the story behind the allegation and that of the woman who made it, who took her own life in June last year.
00:30:38
Speaker 3: It's so clear that the ABC suppressed information because it had in its control an eighty eight page statement that was signed by Kate, the woman at the center of this story, that did include huge inconsistencies that created a lot of doubt around the credibility of her allegation. And yet the ABC not only didn't refer to that statement as its source, it simply suppressed all of the material that cast out on that allegation.
00:31:09
Speaker 2: Porter sued the ABC and a settlement was reached. The ABC was forced to declare it did not contend that these serious allegations could be proven in a criminal or even civil court. They've just left, but a prominent political career was over, and Porter has submitted a detailed complaint to the ABC.
00:31:35
Speaker 10: There's no turning the clock back once someone writes a sensationalist article like this with allegations that would lead ordinary readers.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: To jump to a conclusion of guilt.
00:31:49
Speaker 10: Christian Porter may have been the candidate that, if he kept your seat, might now be a leader of the Liberal Party. But he was crucified, and therefore a lot of other people had an interesting being crucified, and I think it was it was disgraceful and I don't think it was handled fairly. Mister Anderson, do you think the ABC is the best version of itself that it could possibly be?
00:32:14
Speaker 9: Senator I'm incredibly proud of the ABC and what it achieve and what it's been doing, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always room to improve from time to time.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: A case in point is social media. The ABC's headaches always seem self imposed thanks to unashamed activism by journalists and producers, especially online.
00:32:43
Speaker 5: So the journalists have been able to send out social media posts which are completely personal opinions, quite contrary to what the ABC should be doing. But no, the best you'll get is, oh, well, we spoke to Laura Tingle, but we're not going to tell you what happened.
00:32:58
Speaker 7: You know, wet letters.
00:33:02
Speaker 2: As we know, it's open slaver in the digital world. And yet the ABC tried to defend the indefensible.
00:33:09
Speaker 8: It was just in a snowstorm of republication of accusations. But what was important was that virtually every responsible news entity and prominent individual apologized promptly.
00:33:25
Speaker 7: The question is the motion we agree to?
00:33:27
Speaker 2: The Andrew Lamming was a federal coalition MP who was wrongly accused of taking an inappropriate photo of a woman. Milligan was one of many who jumped on the trolling train and.
00:33:40
Speaker 8: Actually didn't even know who Louise Milligan is because I don't watch the ABC and I don't follow on Twitter. So when all this happened, I treated this like everyone else. I had no idea that they ABC had joined Louise's case.
00:33:53
Speaker 2: For Louise Milligan, it was just another tweet taking down a conservative male politician. But for Andrew lam it ended up much more.
00:34:02
Speaker 8: Why on Earth am I taking the national broadcast at a court Any individual on street could see that this was an indefensible case.
00:34:10
Speaker 2: So why would Louise Milligan have decided to republish to promote this falsehood?
00:34:16
Speaker 8: Or probably because every other entity was doing it at the same time.
00:34:19
Speaker 7: Many were doing it.
00:34:20
Speaker 8: Many apologized, and where I couldn't extract apology, I had no option but to take it to the courts.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: The ABC paid for lawyers to step in and incredibly defend Louise Milligan. Andrew Lamming went on to win the case and was awarded a handsome payout.
00:34:42
Speaker 7: And it went all away to the federal court.
00:34:44
Speaker 8: What I believe was a simple non defense and effectively paying whatever it took to not have to apologize.
00:34:52
Speaker 4: In what universe would an employer pay over two.
00:34:54
Speaker 3: Hundred thousand dollars in defamation, settlement fees and legal fees for an employee who tweeted in a personal capacity. That doesn't happen in any other workplace in Australia. But it happened at the ABC. Why because the managing director was basically too afraid to say, this is not something that the ABC, This is not something for taxpayers to pay for.
00:35:19
Speaker 4: It comes down to fear and who controls the ABC?
00:35:22
Speaker 2: Is it our ABC, Your ABC or their ABC?
00:35:25
Speaker 3: It's our ABC when I mean ow, it's all Australians.
00:35:37
Speaker 2: Well, I've been trying for a few weeks to speak to someone from the ABC ITA, buttro's senior management star reporters all to no avail. So much for accountability aid, So I thought I'd turn up here tonight at one of the ABC's fanciest annual events and try in person. As part of the ninetieth anniversary celebrations, ABC Chair Eida Buttrose was the keynote speaker at the Andrew Ollie Media Lecture Please welcome Eida Buttrose.
00:36:16
Speaker 13: Could anyone seriously imagine Australia without the ABC? Of course not the ABC is brand Australia.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: Among such lofty sentiment, Ita spotted me in the audience and couldn't resist having a dig.
00:36:33
Speaker 13: No I was either too young or when I was appointed chair of the ABC too old, Chris Kenny.
00:36:43
Speaker 2: Tita was actually referencing my column welcoming her appointment in twenty nineteen. She was in the autumn phase of her career. I wrote, Yet her energy remains obvious. A word about Idam's speech.
00:36:57
Speaker 7: That was a fantastic speech.
00:36:58
Speaker 2: It was a great night. She was always going to deliver a fantastic speech.
00:37:02
Speaker 4: She was.
00:37:03
Speaker 2: She talked about needing to get commentary and opinion out of news coverage. Do you think that's happening effectively at the ABC? Oh?
00:37:10
Speaker 9: Look, I think that when you look at what the ABC does, you look at it's reporting. Yes, that we will do a lot of coverage that is post In fact, of course we've got commentators that are experienced that will commentate. If ever we do opinion, we label it as opinion.
00:37:26
Speaker 2: But on been some instances where Tony Abbott was called the most distructive politician of our time, where Laura Tingle has talked about ideological Barstardrey, do you think that you need to do more to try and keep that sort of political bias out of your coverage.
00:37:42
Speaker 9: Oh look, I think there's well one of those things you're talking about was on social media, and I think that anybody as human has the odd lapse in judgment, particularly on social media and personal use of social media.
00:37:53
Speaker 2: The BBC are getting their journalists off social media. Would the ABC think about doing that?
00:37:58
Speaker 9: I think I'm on the record by saying that we know that we can't legally prevent people from being on social media. We do live in the democracy that we live in, so people are free to do it. What we do is ask people that are ABC staff to respect their obligations as an ABC employee when they're using their personal social media accounts.
00:38:22
Speaker 2: The job of managing director is more than just running the place. It carries official responsibility as editor in chief, having the final say over all output concluding news and current affairs. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. So who is editorially in charge to set the tone for the organization to make sure its reporting is fair and objective.
00:38:47
Speaker 6: The editor in chief, who's the managing director who's not a journalist, and that can happen as well as a problem.
00:38:53
Speaker 7: But no, no, it's not a problem.
00:38:56
Speaker 6: You'd hope that a publisher, a publisher would have that sort of experience.
00:39:01
Speaker 7: Or David Anderson had that experience. He had a lot of He's had a lot of editorial.
00:39:06
Speaker 6: Experience now before he was appointed as managing director and as a publisher and a commissioner of content.
00:39:13
Speaker 11: I think the buck does stop with a managing director, and that's why it's so important to be across the way the ABC functions editorially and to have a very very deep understanding of news and current affairs.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Is David Anderson up to the job?
00:39:31
Speaker 11: I look, David Anderson is a very experienced television executive. I just hope and trust that he does the best possible job that he can do and takes the airBC from strength to strength.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: When you look at the George Pearl saga, the Christian Porter saga, the Alan Tudje saga, there's this element of vigilante journalism creeping in. Are you doing anything in the organization to try and arrest that as a as a trend as a problem for organization.
00:40:00
Speaker 9: I would disagree with the characterization that it is vigil anti journalism.
00:40:04
Speaker 7: I don't think it is.
00:40:05
Speaker 2: I think what we do.
00:40:07
Speaker 9: Is we hold people to account and in doing soorry people will sometimes try to string together stories as if it is vigil anti journalism, and I don't believe it is.
00:40:20
Speaker 2: With so many of its news programs under fire, the ABC has announced it will appoint an on boardsman to handle complaints more effectively. The on woodsman under this new arrangement, will report directly to the board. Is that useful.
00:40:36
Speaker 5: Well, for a start, we won't ever know what the complaints so sort comings are. So it's just not consistent with the concept of independence, I mean accountability. We all understand transparency, we all understand, but it doesn't seem to apply it to them.
00:40:53
Speaker 2: So what's the answer.
00:40:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, answer is to appoint an independent of woodsman who is arm's length, accountable to the ABC, accountable to this data and public if you like, is there the complainants and he simply does the proper job, takes the complaint, asks the ABC for their response, makes the judgment.
00:41:15
Speaker 2: That's independent. Over the past ninety years, the ABC has grown into a broadcasting behemoth. In twenty thirteen, it was gifted unlimited scope when digital media was added to its charter. Radio and television had shiny new siblings. I view YouTube, social media, the web and podcasts, and much of it comes from the ABC's inner city headquarters in Sydney's Ultimo.
00:41:50
Speaker 11: I worked at the ABC in Sydney and I worked at the ABC in Melbourne and it was chalk and cheese, and regrettably the Ultimo headquarter is the taj Mahal and most other parts of Australia really do suffer.
00:42:05
Speaker 2: Is the ABC captive of sort of inner city elites rather than mainstream Australia.
00:42:13
Speaker 6: You're saying that elitism comes from Ultimo. There may be some truth in that, and I think the ABC has acknowledged that is trying to move people out. Will it change editorial judgments from what you may think are elitist judgments. I think the ABC's judgments on what to cover are just the same as any other quality news organization.
00:42:42
Speaker 2: They seem to talk at the ABC about paramatter as if it's a foreign country, let alone west of the divide.
00:42:48
Speaker 11: I admire the efforts to move the news division out of Ultimow. But really the ABC net needs to get out to all of Australia because.
00:42:58
Speaker 2: It's out of touch with the stream.
00:43:01
Speaker 11: Because it's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it's not the Sydney Broadcasting Corporation.
00:43:16
Speaker 15: It's been a very good start to the morning and getting really excited about jumping in the truck and heading down to Panawonica for the rodeo tomorrow.
00:43:23
Speaker 2: Indeed, it's the one thing that ABC critics and supporters agree on. It does really well in the bush.
00:43:31
Speaker 3: The ABC does great stuff in regional Australia. I remember when I sat on the board. We would visit all our regional studios and you'd meet very normal people, not terribly political, presenting news and current affairs and information to people in those regions without any kind of bias. And that's what we should get at the public broadcaster. And as soon as you go into the city headquarters in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, it's completely different. The spectrum of cultural diversity spans the hard left to the soft left. Let's be clear, the ABC spends a third of its budget in regional Australia. It has undertaken very deliberate steps to be able to report from outside capital cities and out of suburban areas well. This is where its operations are. And I know that this is a critique that's leveled at the ABC quite regularly, that they are some in a city clique. But the fact is that it is exactly the opposite of that which is the goal of the ABC.
00:44:37
Speaker 2: There was a survey a few years ago that showed forty ABC staff voted green. That shows the disconnect, doesn't it.
00:44:45
Speaker 3: Well, people can vote in this country however they like Chris and.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Sure why out of whack with the rest of the country.
00:44:51
Speaker 3: And the fact that they choose to vote a particular way is not my business as Minister. Anyone watching this program or watching the AB can choose to vote however way they lie.
00:45:04
Speaker 2: Or to introduce when the ABC turns twenty one. Way back in nineteen fifty three, it's then chairman, Sir Richard Boyer had this to say about our national broadcast.
00:45:15
Speaker 7: For the ABC is yours, not ours.
00:45:20
Speaker 17: We are merely your trustees operating your broadcasting service with your money. It was you, the people, through our Parliament, who conceived the idea.
00:45:35
Speaker 2: Back then, the ABC truly united Australia invasion day. But the question now is this, is that still the case? If it used to bind the nation together, does the ABC now seek to divide the country.
00:45:54
Speaker 5: I don't think it sets out with that. I think it just wants to be a player. You can run political lines every day of the week, and because they're all basically inner city, left of center, probably quite wealthy relatively speaking, they can afford to be self indulgent and they're not accountable.
00:46:15
Speaker 2: You're saying that ABC journalists and produces are political players.
00:46:19
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, Well, otherwise they would have political diversity. Otherwise they would give you the other side of the story on climate change, refugees, whatever else.
00:46:28
Speaker 3: I think the ABC, by just reflecting one part of Australia, is playing politics and they basically stick up the middle finger on a daily basis to mainstream Australians, and I don't think that is uniting the country in any possible way.
00:46:43
Speaker 11: It is a much loved institution by many many Australians. But my concern, Chris, is that the ABC needs to be the very best it can be, and in some respects it hasn't always met that standard.
00:46:56
Speaker 2: Does it sometimes divide the nation rather than bind it together.
00:47:00
Speaker 4: Yes, it does.
00:47:02
Speaker 11: I think we've seen some examples where it hasn't met its statutory obligations to be impartial and to be accurate, and that has reflected very poorly on the ABC.
00:47:14
Speaker 10: If you're a broadcasting activist, right or a broadcasting campaigner, do you think you have a duty to educate the population. And there are clearly some journalists the ABC who believe it doesn't matter what the mainstream think now, because what we're going to do is change them. So they start from the premise, well, you know my views aren't extreme because I hold them, and everyone I go to the pub withholds them. So they think they're on a mission to explain. And I think at the end of the day they miss the mainstream, and in many cases the mainstream therefore decides they're not going to watch them.
00:47:46
Speaker 2: We hit them. What reform could be made to give the board some sort of control to make journalists and producers more accountable.
00:47:54
Speaker 3: Well, some of the things are just so simple. You could have performance pay, that is real performance paid. You could hold managers to account for.
00:48:04
Speaker 4: The way that they manage.
00:48:06
Speaker 3: You could hire differently, could hire people like us.
00:48:09
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we're not monsters.
00:48:11
Speaker 3: We just would present different views, right, we might think about issues a little bit differently. The days of public organizations marking their own homework are over, but they're not over at the ABC.
00:48:21
Speaker 2: That still happens they're ABC. Does that summarize the mindset at the ABC?
00:48:29
Speaker 10: Chris, I know exactly what you're saying. All i'd say is any organization should be proud of having staff that admire the organization.
00:48:38
Speaker 2: So you know that's not a fault. Sure, you get emotional when you say that.
00:48:44
Speaker 10: Why public broadcasting manageter.
00:48:55
Speaker 2: I'm not one of those people who thinks the ABC should be sold off for starters that will never happen. And besides, I think it's crucial for our country to have a public broadcaster. Only it needs to be a lot better, a lot more mainstream, and more accountable.
00:49:13
Speaker 9: I don't mind the critics, and I don't mind the criticism because what that means is.
00:49:17
Speaker 2: That we're relevant. It was good to be here tonight, good to catch up with you. It's strange that the ABC has been so reluctant in giving us interviews. We're happy to interview you anywhere, anytime, I to other reporters, why retreat from public debate about the ABC. I have a retreat to Chris. I'm giving you this interview right now because I've been trying to organize it for weeks and I.
00:49:39
Speaker 9: Have been waiting for you to invite me onto your program anytime.
00:49:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a standing invitation, right. Well, well, I've actually we've sent requests in in the past. We'll make that date soon. Okay, All rights
Speaker 1: Hello Aber, and good evening, Good morning, James dibblin Sydney, Welcome to the ABC News in Color.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: It's Australia's largest broadcaster. It has the most staff, the largest budget, the most television and radio stations, and with dozens of broadcasts and digital platforms, the ABC's tentacles now reached further than ever before, all thanks to you, the taxpayer. So what's going on and what's going wrong at our national broadcaster? It's time for your ABC to be exposed. What's wrong with the ABC?
00:00:53
Speaker 3: I think the ABC generates a lot of different emotions and views in Australians, and to the contrary, I think that that is a good thing.
00:01:05
Speaker 4: What's wrong with the ABC? Wow?
00:01:07
Speaker 3: It's a question that I've thought about, worked at, tried to decipher.
00:01:12
Speaker 4: But in the end it's simple.
00:01:13
Speaker 3: The ABC is run by the staff for the staff. It's really that simple.
00:01:16
Speaker 4: Chris, why is this song?
00:01:22
Speaker 1: We've been in save the Treasury Building now for a little more than three quarters of.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: An hour from the outset, the ABC had an air of authority. Could I ask if any of these men were captured near the village of wah Long. It was a trusted voice of record.
00:01:39
Speaker 5: I think South Australia, the ALPP is certain to win the seats of Adelaide, Ray and Kingston.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: And gave nourishment to a nation. But how times have changed.
00:01:59
Speaker 3: I come to this as an optimist about public broadcasting. I think public broadcasting has an incredibly important role. I joined the board because I believed in public broadcasting. But I'm losing faith in that belief. I don't think the ABC can change enough for it to remain a legitimate public broadcaster.
00:02:19
Speaker 4: In this country.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: Janet Olbrookson is a columnist with The Australian newspaper. She knows the ABC well after five years on its board.
00:02:36
Speaker 3: Even before I had joined the ABC, I think there were journalists in.
00:02:39
Speaker 4: The Melbourne headquarters of the ABC who threatened to go and strike.
00:02:44
Speaker 3: Wow, they must think I'm a real revolutionary. I've never thought of myself as a revolutionary. And again, the ABC doesn't need a revolution. It's got a charter. All it needs to do is abide by the charter and it would produce terrific, terrific content.
00:02:59
Speaker 6: The ABC, I've always said it's a flawed institution. It makes mistakes, there can be inexperience, but the goodwill that exists there from the Australian public has sustained the ABC and built up the strong support that it enjoys.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: The ABC is a big player in Australian media.
00:03:24
Speaker 7: Don't be an idiot.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: Take the money and go from drama to gardening.
00:03:29
Speaker 8: Your delicious veggies are going to attract plenty of hungry mouth and cartoons to comedy.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: One game, then bet Auntie is everywhere.
00:03:39
Speaker 7: Change.
00:03:41
Speaker 2: More than four thousand people work at the ABC, with around half involved in news and current affairs. Welcome to insiders, and it's all paid for by US more than one billion of our tax dollars every year.
00:03:57
Speaker 9: Stand by now for an ABC news special.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: Navari is shutdown.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: You referred to the ABC as Australia's greatest sheltered workshop.
00:04:08
Speaker 5: Why well, essentially because it has this business model that is built around the idea of protection. I don't think it's deliberate, but that's how it ends up.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: Richard Olsten was the long serving Communications Minister during the Howard government.
00:04:29
Speaker 5: It doesn't have any real competitors. For a start, it has this huge moat. It doesn't have to earn a living. It gets a guaranteed billion plus each year, it becomes not accountable to its stakeholders, so it doesn't really care what the audience thinks. And of course half the audience should be right of center, half should be left, roughly speaking, but he only in vocaters for one side.
00:04:51
Speaker 2: Jonathan SCHEI you are the test case. You are the person who tried to change the ABC and you failed.
00:04:59
Speaker 10: Why When I applied for the job and was received that, a lot of people said to me, well, you know, you just don't know what you're getting yourself into, and that was certainly true.
00:05:11
Speaker 2: Jonathan Shire was appointed managing director of the ABC in March two thousand. While there's such a failure at the job, his time in the job is the shortest on record, less than two years.
00:05:24
Speaker 10: I was a young liberal, I think when I was twenty one, and so some people decided therefore I was on that side of politics and for them.
00:05:33
Speaker 2: That was enough. Shire was brought in to reform the ABC, including its news department.
00:05:42
Speaker 10: There was clearly a topic bias. I mean it's a bias in a number of ways, but one of the clear ones for me was the topics that were addressed. I remember in the first year I was there, I think I said to somethingbody. Nothing happened in Africa or South America last year at all, except I think a football game. So I saw that as both lazy journalism and also a failure to address other.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: Issues that really concerned to people.
00:06:06
Speaker 10: And the example I gave was I didn't think most people in Australia understood superannuation and how it would affect them, and I thought the ABC had a duty to explain things like that.
00:06:16
Speaker 2: You moved some executives on, you tried to shake up the organization. Again, was their staff resistance? Well, there was.
00:06:24
Speaker 10: The ABC is obviously unionized. There was obviously a situation where people had decided that I was the enemy, that I had gone in there to make a change.
00:06:35
Speaker 2: The ABC staff had put a target on Jonathan Shire's back, and the seven point thirty report took.
00:06:42
Speaker 4: Aim Jonathan Shire.
00:06:44
Speaker 5: How much more time do you think you could reasonably expect to demonstrate to the public that you can actually do this job.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: That's just open defiance from your own staff, isn't it.
00:06:55
Speaker 10: Well, I mean carry O'Brien was in his own view of God and therefore he had the right to say that to a chief executive. Some people said, if I had actually been in that position, Jonathan, I think would have had a chat to him next morning.
00:07:10
Speaker 2: But you know, that's how it was. Who is in control at the ABC?
00:07:17
Speaker 5: Well, in terms of management, I think the management.
00:07:21
Speaker 7: Still runs the place.
00:07:22
Speaker 5: You know, keeps the books roughly balanced and does the sort of things you expect the management. But in terms of what content controls there are, I think it's essentially outsourced to start, and that's part of the problem.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: I now call the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The current boss of the ABC is David Anderson, but the review was conducted by He's an ABC lifer and became the managing director in twenty nineteen. It wasn't that simple at the time, center so the top job was handed to him by the ABC board, which is less by chair Eighter butt Rods. During her time as a director there, Janet Olbrookson believes the staff were the real power brokers.
00:08:11
Speaker 3: You go to a lot of events at the ABC, they schmooze, you take selfies with celebrities, and soon enough you have become so connected to the staff and management that you lose sight that your role is actually to lead. In fact, I think you know the staff have a near perfect record of seducing chairman CEOs, many board members, and those that they can't seduce, you know, they can't paralyze with that warm embrace they basically get rid of.
00:08:37
Speaker 10: There was a wonderful quote that somebody gave me once in the organization. They say, Jonathan, we don't really worry about chairmen because we just find that we flattered them and they coalesce in the end.
00:08:49
Speaker 2: And certainly that.
00:08:50
Speaker 10: Was true of my chairman. I think it's been few chairmen that they are. They are smothered with affection and at the end the day back off.
00:09:01
Speaker 2: Is it true as some critics would argue that the ABC is a staff run collective.
00:09:07
Speaker 7: I reject that completely. Alan Jones, that's a staff run collective.
00:09:13
Speaker 2: Ray Adley has staff run collective of one. Yes, but this is four thousand people who don't seem to be cowed by anybody.
00:09:20
Speaker 7: You're barking up the wrong tree.
00:09:22
Speaker 6: The ABC has its internal disciplines, if you want to use a good word like discipline.
00:09:28
Speaker 7: It has its internal disciplines.
00:09:30
Speaker 6: And you're not a law run to yourself when you work for the ABC, because there are a lot of peer checks and balances on what you're doing.
00:09:41
Speaker 2: The ABC also has a charter. It's written into law and it states that the ABC must reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community.
00:09:54
Speaker 3: That term cultural diversity, I believe has been perverted to create this taxpayer funded playground for identity politics. And conservatives simply aren't welcome at the ABC. It's as simple as that.
00:10:07
Speaker 5: So they have this view that if you're a conservative, you're so fundamentally wrong on so many things.
00:10:14
Speaker 2: I can't be bothered explaining why.
00:10:17
Speaker 5: And that's why you need to get out there and understand that that's not how the average trade thinks, or the average person starting a family or trying to earn a decent living. Then they don't follow a lot of these debates.
00:10:32
Speaker 3: There is a smugness at the ABC that conservatives are not welcome because there is something truly wrong with their views.
00:10:42
Speaker 2: And I have a confession to make. I used to work at the ABC. Or to men, find a young woman like yourself a fairly threatening proposition. It does make life difficult. That's me as a young reporter in Adelaide back in the nineteen eighty.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: Pleasure.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, then they call my name and an off, I go into the line den and on the odd occasion they even invite me back. On this occasion it was Q and A with Stan Grant. The main topic the Indigenous voice to Parliament. I think it's disappointing tonight that everybody on this panel supports the voice. We'll do it from different perspectives, will support an Indigenous voice. Although I've from time to time been a mild critic of the ABC, I'm not going to criticize you this time because I know you try to get a couple of indeed, but.
00:11:48
Speaker 3: The reason now at our organization, at the Australian, you put forward a you that's different to mine.
00:11:53
Speaker 4: We do that.
00:11:54
Speaker 3: Our readers are enriched, they think about things differently. That creates a debate. That's what I see as a country. At the ABC, I don't think I've ever heard of someone who is opposed to putting a race based voice into the Constitution.
00:12:07
Speaker 4: Why not? What are they afraid of?
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Issues like the Ulary statement and the heart I argue my case. I write my pieces and in the same newspaper are other people opposing points of view? I argue for this on my television show at five o'clock Sky and News. You can subscribe anytime your life again, Butt, But straight after me, Peter Kretlin comes on and runs the entirely opposite argument. One day, Peter and I must just do it.
00:12:32
Speaker 11: Certainly, appearing on Q and A, as I have on a number of occasions, there aren't a lot of Coalition supporters in the audience. It does feel and look on air as if it's leaning to one side of politics, and that's not to our side of politics. And certainly you can say the same thing about the drama.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: I would have thought that's unarguable, right, and it's obvious to anybody who watches these programs. You can fix that overnight by just having more balance in your power. So inviting more right of center people onto your programs.
00:13:03
Speaker 11: I don't understand it either. It's not hard and they should be doing it.
00:13:08
Speaker 2: And that's all we have. Card forward tonight, Well, what did that established? The ABC shouldn't have a position on the voice, but clearly it does. The panel spoke with one voice. Never mind that in this case the ABC's view matches my own. Where was the contest of ideas? It's this lack of diversity on the issues that matter that keeps getting the national broadcasts are into trouble, Stark goes into Crawley, Crawley is caught behind. Is he bigger? One of the times I really feel like the ABC does bind this nation together is when you're driving around anywhere in the country listening to the cricket. The ABC has been doing this now for nearly a century, since the Depression era, when no Sport Night of Australia like the Test Cricket.
00:14:06
Speaker 4: Ah that time, a.
00:14:09
Speaker 12: Lot of the crowd got up one hundred, one hundred up once more.
00:14:14
Speaker 7: The Bradman mcave being.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: Nick Nick Tavern, the Great Don Bradman made us proud.
00:14:20
Speaker 9: The mcaven, the Tan the Bradman that they meet in the th of the wicket.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: No doubt Bradman that danger and his rise coincided with the birth of the National Broadcaster. It was a game changer. Not only did it bring us together, but it connected us in real time to the outside world.
00:14:42
Speaker 6: Radio had just been invented by Marconey and it was sweeping the world and the ABC was formed and the Lions Joe Lyons government at the time said it's an exercise in nation building and we're going to exploit radio.
00:15:00
Speaker 5: It followed in the footsteps of the BBC, and Australia quite rightly saw the need for something like that.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: The ABC was launched in July nineteen thirty two.
00:15:11
Speaker 12: The Diggers stood beside us in nineteen fourteen, and the Diggers are with us again.
00:15:15
Speaker 2: For the first time there was a national service that linked and informed all Australia.
00:15:20
Speaker 12: Prime Minister, Mister rg Menzi, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that as a result, Australia is also a war.
00:15:42
Speaker 2: News came in from the front line and radio shows built up a loyal audience.
00:15:54
Speaker 7: However, and realer, better and gentlemen.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: Then in nineteen fifty six, the ABC embraced television.
00:16:05
Speaker 4: Come in Peers, Western Australia.
00:16:08
Speaker 13: What kind of chain carried? Chewing gum kids, TV dotos, rude.
00:16:16
Speaker 2: Drama and entertainment followed. Who could forget Johnny O'Keefe. The ABC's news service was soon considered to be one of the world's best.
00:16:35
Speaker 12: Good evening I'm Bill pitch in the Programers This Day.
00:16:38
Speaker 7: To Night.
00:16:41
Speaker 2: And TV Current Affairs followed with landmark programs like This Day to Night.
00:16:47
Speaker 8: A child Stone reporting to you from the top of Australia's highest Billy, Australia.
00:16:53
Speaker 2: Square, and Ounoun Sandy. It was important to bind the nation together, wasn't it?
00:17:01
Speaker 7: Absolutely? And I think it did.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Hello Jerry, what's it like up there in the car? You need any oxygen? As the ABC's funding grew, oh my god, it's staff expanded all right, thanks Valma, along with its reach.
00:17:23
Speaker 5: It was around the fifties early sixties that they suddenly decided now they'd to get a bit more aggressive. And if you're a journalist in the OBC, you want to impress your colleagues, you want to impress the board. You're not really interested in the audience because you don't have to be, because you're guaranteed.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: This is the bad one of the most exclusive ex soldiers organizations in the world.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: Even quite early on, mainstream values seemed to be mocked or challenged, like in this four Corners story on the RSL.
00:18:00
Speaker 1: Reasent years, it has become a powerful and controversial force in Australian politics, regarded by its admirers as the citadel of Australian nationalism. Labeled by its critics as reactionary and militaristic, it.
00:18:16
Speaker 2: Was panned, even described as a triumph of one sided reporting, a criticism that haunts the ABC to this day.
00:18:32
Speaker 11: Well, the ABC has a very important statutory obligation to report news in a manner which is both impartial and accurate, and I see this constantly being an issue, and particularly leading up to the election. I just got a very strong sense that many journalists at the ABC were campaigning rather than reporting. It is not the role of a journalist to campaign. The job of a journalist is to report.
00:19:09
Speaker 14: Hello and welcome to four Corners. Tonight we begin our special three part investigation into the story of the century.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: When Donald Trump won power. Four Corners soon had a conservative US president in its sits.
00:19:25
Speaker 14: Over the next few weeks, you'll meet the characters at the center of this extraordinary saga. The intelligence they gathered would fuel the cyber war in the coming presidential election.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: It was an extraordinary and unlikely conspiracy theory pushed by many on the liberal left in the US, and the ABC fell for it.
00:19:47
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker 5: Look, it's bad enough to be let astray because you haven't done your search, probably, but I think a lot of media in the US will let astray. Perhaps happy to be led astray, I might say, because it was deep Trump.
00:20:02
Speaker 14: The Kremlin's puppetmaster, now has America dancing to his discordant tune. He couldn't have planned it better.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Why would the ABC do that expensive bit of reporting? But more importantly, now that it's been debunked, why wouldn't they correct the record and apologize for that misinformation?
00:20:26
Speaker 6: The only thing I can say is that you have to go to the producers and to get their responses.
00:20:33
Speaker 2: But as the Australian National Broadcast, they're funded by taxpayer. As a three part series on a lopy left wing conspiracy theory against Donald Trump that all the leftist media in the US are doing. Anyway, is it a good use of our resources? And shouldn't it be corrected if it's wrong?
00:20:50
Speaker 6: You say, let us if there's factual error, it should be corrected.
00:20:53
Speaker 14: Tonight on four Corners, how America's number one cable news network became a propaganda vehicle for don Or Trump and helped destabilize democracy.
00:21:05
Speaker 5: Demon as Rupert Murdoch, I mean, went nowhere. It was a ridiculous story trying to say that somehow Fox News was sort of got Trump across the line.
00:21:16
Speaker 7: Public nonsense.
00:21:17
Speaker 5: We all know a Trump got across the line because Hillary was a dud and Trump accommodated the middle ground.
00:21:23
Speaker 2: Tony Abbott, already the most destructive politician of his generation, now intends waging war on what he calls environmental theology.
00:21:32
Speaker 5: Remember when Proben called Abbott the most obstructive politician of his generation. Never any idea of apologizing or explaining that. In fact, they tried to pretend. I know that was just to comment on climate change. We had nothing to do with climate change, and the regular I said that, but again they're just impervious to criticism.
00:21:56
Speaker 2: Programs like Q and A often set the agenda, but for all the wrong reasons. We've got someone in the audience who actually has faced the security agencies and the courts on these issues, named Zachi Malay. The first Australian charged under anti terrorism laws, was handed a platform on national television.
00:22:17
Speaker 3: Question to the panel, what would have happened if my case had been decided by the minister himself and.
00:22:25
Speaker 7: Not the courts?
00:22:26
Speaker 9: Steve Chaber, I'm happy to look you straight in the eye and say that I'd be pleased to be part of a government that would say.
00:22:34
Speaker 7: That you are out of the country as far as I'm concerned. Rubbish.
00:22:38
Speaker 3: It beggars belief that he was included in a live audience.
00:22:44
Speaker 2: A frankly head should roll out of this. A mountain of complaints came in and this time the ABC apologized effectively, admitting that got this horribly wrong. Is the ABC allowed to have editorial positions on political or social issues?
00:23:02
Speaker 3: Well, of course it has independent in independent editorial positions, and.
00:23:07
Speaker 2: It's not supposed to have editorial positions, is it. It's not supposed to have a position on climate change, or on border protection, or on digitous affairs.
00:23:15
Speaker 4: Well, let's think about that.
00:23:16
Speaker 3: You've got producers, you've got news directors and other functions being performed within the ABC to bring all these stories together, including journalists. It's not the role of government to direct any of those people about how to do their job or how to present their stories.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: But the law says the ABC should be objective and pluralistic. Do you believe that it is.
00:23:38
Speaker 3: If it wasn't, then we would have a situation where people would be by and large very ready for the ABC to cease to be in existence.
00:23:48
Speaker 2: Not for critics. There are plenty of critics to point this bias out.
00:23:51
Speaker 3: And we should welcome. We should welcome those criticisms because the ABC is not infallible.
00:23:58
Speaker 15: Tonight on Full Corner is the inside story of how a prince of the Church was brought to justice.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: The controversies, the transgressions have continued to mount.
00:24:13
Speaker 15: What's your view about George Powell?
00:24:15
Speaker 4: What sort of person is he?
00:24:17
Speaker 5: It's only a monster described someone like.
00:24:19
Speaker 2: That damaging the ABC's standing.
00:24:24
Speaker 10: You're just a dirty, rotten, sneaky, conniving bastard.
00:24:27
Speaker 2: A reporter Louise Milligan on various programs and platforms to shued Cardinal George Pearl with uncommon vigor. Cardinal Powell, what's your response to the charges?
00:24:41
Speaker 9: You're guilty, Garden, absolute key blow.
00:24:48
Speaker 2: The case took years to play out in the courts. It was leading news for all media, but Milligan and the ABC led the charge paper and there seemed to be little room for George Pearl's presumption of innocence. What was wrong with the ABC's purshoot of George.
00:25:06
Speaker 3: Pell, Chris If they'd followed their own guidelines and been open minded.
00:25:11
Speaker 4: If they'd applied scrutiny, if.
00:25:13
Speaker 3: They had questioned their own preconceived ideas about George Pearl, they would have produced a better form of journalism. They would have produced journalism that would make us proud. Instead, they produced a form of journalism that breached the Act, that was deeply unfair to George Pearl. And in the end you had a unanimous decision from the High Court which debunked everything that the ABC had said about George Pearl.
00:25:41
Speaker 16: I believe in free speech, but in a national broadcaster to have an overwhelming presentation of one view and only one view, I think that's a betrayal of the national interest.
00:25:59
Speaker 3: This is the cardinal George Pell became a free man after serving more than four hundred days in jail.
00:26:05
Speaker 4: He was driven out of Barwin Prison ledge along.
00:26:09
Speaker 2: And after a unanimous seven nil verdict from the High Court. You surely can't argue that Pell is not innocent of the charges.
00:26:19
Speaker 6: The ABC, as with other media, followed the Pel case from.
00:26:27
Speaker 7: The get go.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: It drove the Pel case.
00:26:30
Speaker 7: Followed the Pell case from the get go.
00:26:31
Speaker 6: Don't forget Chris that the ABC was instrumental in exposing police cover up of child sexual abuse in the Maitland Newcastle Diocese of the Catholic Church.
00:26:44
Speaker 2: And as some great work.
00:26:47
Speaker 6: George was going to put this in context, and you're you're trying to say that that Pearl was targeted.
00:26:54
Speaker 7: I reject that.
00:26:55
Speaker 6: The context was that a Royal commission with the Commonwealth, the States and the Territories was established into not just Catholic Church, but the entire institution responses to child sexual abuse. It was cathartic and it was very beneficial.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: Should the ABC apologize to him and correct the narrative of their reporting over the past decade.
00:27:19
Speaker 6: No, No, the ABC doesn't George Pell an apology. It followed the story as all other media followed the story.
00:27:32
Speaker 5: There had many occasions when they've even apologized, but they don't do it anymore. The George Pearl case was a classic. I mean, Milligan was taken to the cleaners by the court and yet she was allowed to write another book in which she basically questioned whether the verdict was right. Said, but maybe Pell shouldn't have even been allowed to appeal. You know, it just carried on as though nothing had happened, and not a beep out of the.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: ABC Vigilanti journalism, cap journalism is what happens at the ABC, and it happens on our dime.
00:28:05
Speaker 2: How do they choose their targets?
00:28:07
Speaker 4: Oh, well, it's pretty simple.
00:28:09
Speaker 3: They're usually conservative, aren't they, so, so it's not too hard for them to choose their targets. I'm sure there are lots of stories out there that viewers would be very interested in on all sides of politics, but in the last few years the focus has very much been on trying to bring down Liberal ministers in the Morrison government.
00:28:32
Speaker 15: Tonight, on Full Corners, we go inside the Canberra Bubble with an investigation that questions the conduct of some of the most senior politicians in the nation.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: Liberal Party ministers like Christian Porter and Alan Touch.
00:28:50
Speaker 3: The behavior wasn't okay and the culture's not okay and there should.
00:28:54
Speaker 4: Be something done about it.
00:29:00
Speaker 3: They interviewed a woman called Rachelle Miller who made claims against her former boss, Alan Touch, and I just wondered whether there was more to that story, whether possibly she was complaining because the relationship hadn't ended the way she wanted it to end. So when I wrote up a story that exposed the other side that In fact, Rachelle Miller had been chasing Alan Touch for many years, trying to pursue him, trying to restart a relationship again, a story that the ABC started. They were not the least bit interested in presenting the other side too. It's such an obvious breach of the ABC Act.
00:29:39
Speaker 10: Then, in relation to Christian Porter, I mean, I think Christian Porter was a disgraceful exercise.
00:29:44
Speaker 15: Now, after minister Porter came forward last week, we can finally bring you the story of the untested allegation he has categorically denied.
00:29:56
Speaker 2: Another ABC hatchet job, but this one more serious. Attorney General Christian Porter was accused of a rape that allegedly took place back in nineteen eighty eight when he was seventeen.
00:30:10
Speaker 10: It looked to me, as a member of the public that this man was being pill read for an unsubstantiated encounter with someone where even that person's family seemed to have reservations about the whole thing.
00:30:24
Speaker 15: Now that minister Porter has come forward to vehemently deny it, we are able to bring you the story behind the allegation and that of the woman who made it, who took her own life in June last year.
00:30:38
Speaker 3: It's so clear that the ABC suppressed information because it had in its control an eighty eight page statement that was signed by Kate, the woman at the center of this story, that did include huge inconsistencies that created a lot of doubt around the credibility of her allegation. And yet the ABC not only didn't refer to that statement as its source, it simply suppressed all of the material that cast out on that allegation.
00:31:09
Speaker 2: Porter sued the ABC and a settlement was reached. The ABC was forced to declare it did not contend that these serious allegations could be proven in a criminal or even civil court. They've just left, but a prominent political career was over, and Porter has submitted a detailed complaint to the ABC.
00:31:35
Speaker 10: There's no turning the clock back once someone writes a sensationalist article like this with allegations that would lead ordinary readers.
00:31:44
Speaker 2: To jump to a conclusion of guilt.
00:31:49
Speaker 10: Christian Porter may have been the candidate that, if he kept your seat, might now be a leader of the Liberal Party. But he was crucified, and therefore a lot of other people had an interesting being crucified, and I think it was it was disgraceful and I don't think it was handled fairly. Mister Anderson, do you think the ABC is the best version of itself that it could possibly be?
00:32:14
Speaker 9: Senator I'm incredibly proud of the ABC and what it achieve and what it's been doing, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always room to improve from time to time.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: A case in point is social media. The ABC's headaches always seem self imposed thanks to unashamed activism by journalists and producers, especially online.
00:32:43
Speaker 5: So the journalists have been able to send out social media posts which are completely personal opinions, quite contrary to what the ABC should be doing. But no, the best you'll get is, oh, well, we spoke to Laura Tingle, but we're not going to tell you what happened.
00:32:58
Speaker 7: You know, wet letters.
00:33:02
Speaker 2: As we know, it's open slaver in the digital world. And yet the ABC tried to defend the indefensible.
00:33:09
Speaker 8: It was just in a snowstorm of republication of accusations. But what was important was that virtually every responsible news entity and prominent individual apologized promptly.
00:33:25
Speaker 7: The question is the motion we agree to?
00:33:27
Speaker 2: The Andrew Lamming was a federal coalition MP who was wrongly accused of taking an inappropriate photo of a woman. Milligan was one of many who jumped on the trolling train and.
00:33:40
Speaker 8: Actually didn't even know who Louise Milligan is because I don't watch the ABC and I don't follow on Twitter. So when all this happened, I treated this like everyone else. I had no idea that they ABC had joined Louise's case.
00:33:53
Speaker 2: For Louise Milligan, it was just another tweet taking down a conservative male politician. But for Andrew lam it ended up much more.
00:34:02
Speaker 8: Why on Earth am I taking the national broadcast at a court Any individual on street could see that this was an indefensible case.
00:34:10
Speaker 2: So why would Louise Milligan have decided to republish to promote this falsehood?
00:34:16
Speaker 8: Or probably because every other entity was doing it at the same time.
00:34:19
Speaker 7: Many were doing it.
00:34:20
Speaker 8: Many apologized, and where I couldn't extract apology, I had no option but to take it to the courts.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: The ABC paid for lawyers to step in and incredibly defend Louise Milligan. Andrew Lamming went on to win the case and was awarded a handsome payout.
00:34:42
Speaker 7: And it went all away to the federal court.
00:34:44
Speaker 8: What I believe was a simple non defense and effectively paying whatever it took to not have to apologize.
00:34:52
Speaker 4: In what universe would an employer pay over two.
00:34:54
Speaker 3: Hundred thousand dollars in defamation, settlement fees and legal fees for an employee who tweeted in a personal capacity. That doesn't happen in any other workplace in Australia. But it happened at the ABC. Why because the managing director was basically too afraid to say, this is not something that the ABC, This is not something for taxpayers to pay for.
00:35:19
Speaker 4: It comes down to fear and who controls the ABC?
00:35:22
Speaker 2: Is it our ABC, Your ABC or their ABC?
00:35:25
Speaker 3: It's our ABC when I mean ow, it's all Australians.
00:35:37
Speaker 2: Well, I've been trying for a few weeks to speak to someone from the ABC ITA, buttro's senior management star reporters all to no avail. So much for accountability aid, So I thought I'd turn up here tonight at one of the ABC's fanciest annual events and try in person. As part of the ninetieth anniversary celebrations, ABC Chair Eida Buttrose was the keynote speaker at the Andrew Ollie Media Lecture Please welcome Eida Buttrose.
00:36:16
Speaker 13: Could anyone seriously imagine Australia without the ABC? Of course not the ABC is brand Australia.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: Among such lofty sentiment, Ita spotted me in the audience and couldn't resist having a dig.
00:36:33
Speaker 13: No I was either too young or when I was appointed chair of the ABC too old, Chris Kenny.
00:36:43
Speaker 2: Tita was actually referencing my column welcoming her appointment in twenty nineteen. She was in the autumn phase of her career. I wrote, Yet her energy remains obvious. A word about Idam's speech.
00:36:57
Speaker 7: That was a fantastic speech.
00:36:58
Speaker 2: It was a great night. She was always going to deliver a fantastic speech.
00:37:02
Speaker 4: She was.
00:37:03
Speaker 2: She talked about needing to get commentary and opinion out of news coverage. Do you think that's happening effectively at the ABC? Oh?
00:37:10
Speaker 9: Look, I think that when you look at what the ABC does, you look at it's reporting. Yes, that we will do a lot of coverage that is post In fact, of course we've got commentators that are experienced that will commentate. If ever we do opinion, we label it as opinion.
00:37:26
Speaker 2: But on been some instances where Tony Abbott was called the most distructive politician of our time, where Laura Tingle has talked about ideological Barstardrey, do you think that you need to do more to try and keep that sort of political bias out of your coverage.
00:37:42
Speaker 9: Oh look, I think there's well one of those things you're talking about was on social media, and I think that anybody as human has the odd lapse in judgment, particularly on social media and personal use of social media.
00:37:53
Speaker 2: The BBC are getting their journalists off social media. Would the ABC think about doing that?
00:37:58
Speaker 9: I think I'm on the record by saying that we know that we can't legally prevent people from being on social media. We do live in the democracy that we live in, so people are free to do it. What we do is ask people that are ABC staff to respect their obligations as an ABC employee when they're using their personal social media accounts.
00:38:22
Speaker 2: The job of managing director is more than just running the place. It carries official responsibility as editor in chief, having the final say over all output concluding news and current affairs. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. So who is editorially in charge to set the tone for the organization to make sure its reporting is fair and objective.
00:38:47
Speaker 6: The editor in chief, who's the managing director who's not a journalist, and that can happen as well as a problem.
00:38:53
Speaker 7: But no, no, it's not a problem.
00:38:56
Speaker 6: You'd hope that a publisher, a publisher would have that sort of experience.
00:39:01
Speaker 7: Or David Anderson had that experience. He had a lot of He's had a lot of editorial.
00:39:06
Speaker 6: Experience now before he was appointed as managing director and as a publisher and a commissioner of content.
00:39:13
Speaker 11: I think the buck does stop with a managing director, and that's why it's so important to be across the way the ABC functions editorially and to have a very very deep understanding of news and current affairs.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Is David Anderson up to the job?
00:39:31
Speaker 11: I look, David Anderson is a very experienced television executive. I just hope and trust that he does the best possible job that he can do and takes the airBC from strength to strength.
00:39:46
Speaker 2: When you look at the George Pearl saga, the Christian Porter saga, the Alan Tudje saga, there's this element of vigilante journalism creeping in. Are you doing anything in the organization to try and arrest that as a as a trend as a problem for organization.
00:40:00
Speaker 9: I would disagree with the characterization that it is vigil anti journalism.
00:40:04
Speaker 7: I don't think it is.
00:40:05
Speaker 2: I think what we do.
00:40:07
Speaker 9: Is we hold people to account and in doing soorry people will sometimes try to string together stories as if it is vigil anti journalism, and I don't believe it is.
00:40:20
Speaker 2: With so many of its news programs under fire, the ABC has announced it will appoint an on boardsman to handle complaints more effectively. The on woodsman under this new arrangement, will report directly to the board. Is that useful.
00:40:36
Speaker 5: Well, for a start, we won't ever know what the complaints so sort comings are. So it's just not consistent with the concept of independence, I mean accountability. We all understand transparency, we all understand, but it doesn't seem to apply it to them.
00:40:53
Speaker 2: So what's the answer.
00:40:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, answer is to appoint an independent of woodsman who is arm's length, accountable to the ABC, accountable to this data and public if you like, is there the complainants and he simply does the proper job, takes the complaint, asks the ABC for their response, makes the judgment.
00:41:15
Speaker 2: That's independent. Over the past ninety years, the ABC has grown into a broadcasting behemoth. In twenty thirteen, it was gifted unlimited scope when digital media was added to its charter. Radio and television had shiny new siblings. I view YouTube, social media, the web and podcasts, and much of it comes from the ABC's inner city headquarters in Sydney's Ultimo.
00:41:50
Speaker 11: I worked at the ABC in Sydney and I worked at the ABC in Melbourne and it was chalk and cheese, and regrettably the Ultimo headquarter is the taj Mahal and most other parts of Australia really do suffer.
00:42:05
Speaker 2: Is the ABC captive of sort of inner city elites rather than mainstream Australia.
00:42:13
Speaker 6: You're saying that elitism comes from Ultimo. There may be some truth in that, and I think the ABC has acknowledged that is trying to move people out. Will it change editorial judgments from what you may think are elitist judgments. I think the ABC's judgments on what to cover are just the same as any other quality news organization.
00:42:42
Speaker 2: They seem to talk at the ABC about paramatter as if it's a foreign country, let alone west of the divide.
00:42:48
Speaker 11: I admire the efforts to move the news division out of Ultimow. But really the ABC net needs to get out to all of Australia because.
00:42:58
Speaker 2: It's out of touch with the stream.
00:43:01
Speaker 11: Because it's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it's not the Sydney Broadcasting Corporation.
00:43:16
Speaker 15: It's been a very good start to the morning and getting really excited about jumping in the truck and heading down to Panawonica for the rodeo tomorrow.
00:43:23
Speaker 2: Indeed, it's the one thing that ABC critics and supporters agree on. It does really well in the bush.
00:43:31
Speaker 3: The ABC does great stuff in regional Australia. I remember when I sat on the board. We would visit all our regional studios and you'd meet very normal people, not terribly political, presenting news and current affairs and information to people in those regions without any kind of bias. And that's what we should get at the public broadcaster. And as soon as you go into the city headquarters in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, it's completely different. The spectrum of cultural diversity spans the hard left to the soft left. Let's be clear, the ABC spends a third of its budget in regional Australia. It has undertaken very deliberate steps to be able to report from outside capital cities and out of suburban areas well. This is where its operations are. And I know that this is a critique that's leveled at the ABC quite regularly, that they are some in a city clique. But the fact is that it is exactly the opposite of that which is the goal of the ABC.
00:44:37
Speaker 2: There was a survey a few years ago that showed forty ABC staff voted green. That shows the disconnect, doesn't it.
00:44:45
Speaker 3: Well, people can vote in this country however they like Chris and.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Sure why out of whack with the rest of the country.
00:44:51
Speaker 3: And the fact that they choose to vote a particular way is not my business as Minister. Anyone watching this program or watching the AB can choose to vote however way they lie.
00:45:04
Speaker 2: Or to introduce when the ABC turns twenty one. Way back in nineteen fifty three, it's then chairman, Sir Richard Boyer had this to say about our national broadcast.
00:45:15
Speaker 7: For the ABC is yours, not ours.
00:45:20
Speaker 17: We are merely your trustees operating your broadcasting service with your money. It was you, the people, through our Parliament, who conceived the idea.
00:45:35
Speaker 2: Back then, the ABC truly united Australia invasion day. But the question now is this, is that still the case? If it used to bind the nation together, does the ABC now seek to divide the country.
00:45:54
Speaker 5: I don't think it sets out with that. I think it just wants to be a player. You can run political lines every day of the week, and because they're all basically inner city, left of center, probably quite wealthy relatively speaking, they can afford to be self indulgent and they're not accountable.
00:46:15
Speaker 2: You're saying that ABC journalists and produces are political players.
00:46:19
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, Well, otherwise they would have political diversity. Otherwise they would give you the other side of the story on climate change, refugees, whatever else.
00:46:28
Speaker 3: I think the ABC, by just reflecting one part of Australia, is playing politics and they basically stick up the middle finger on a daily basis to mainstream Australians, and I don't think that is uniting the country in any possible way.
00:46:43
Speaker 11: It is a much loved institution by many many Australians. But my concern, Chris, is that the ABC needs to be the very best it can be, and in some respects it hasn't always met that standard.
00:46:56
Speaker 2: Does it sometimes divide the nation rather than bind it together.
00:47:00
Speaker 4: Yes, it does.
00:47:02
Speaker 11: I think we've seen some examples where it hasn't met its statutory obligations to be impartial and to be accurate, and that has reflected very poorly on the ABC.
00:47:14
Speaker 10: If you're a broadcasting activist, right or a broadcasting campaigner, do you think you have a duty to educate the population. And there are clearly some journalists the ABC who believe it doesn't matter what the mainstream think now, because what we're going to do is change them. So they start from the premise, well, you know my views aren't extreme because I hold them, and everyone I go to the pub withholds them. So they think they're on a mission to explain. And I think at the end of the day they miss the mainstream, and in many cases the mainstream therefore decides they're not going to watch them.
00:47:46
Speaker 2: We hit them. What reform could be made to give the board some sort of control to make journalists and producers more accountable.
00:47:54
Speaker 3: Well, some of the things are just so simple. You could have performance pay, that is real performance paid. You could hold managers to account for.
00:48:04
Speaker 4: The way that they manage.
00:48:06
Speaker 3: You could hire differently, could hire people like us.
00:48:09
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we're not monsters.
00:48:11
Speaker 3: We just would present different views, right, we might think about issues a little bit differently. The days of public organizations marking their own homework are over, but they're not over at the ABC.
00:48:21
Speaker 2: That still happens they're ABC. Does that summarize the mindset at the ABC?
00:48:29
Speaker 10: Chris, I know exactly what you're saying. All i'd say is any organization should be proud of having staff that admire the organization.
00:48:38
Speaker 2: So you know that's not a fault. Sure, you get emotional when you say that.
00:48:44
Speaker 10: Why public broadcasting manageter.
00:48:55
Speaker 2: I'm not one of those people who thinks the ABC should be sold off for starters that will never happen. And besides, I think it's crucial for our country to have a public broadcaster. Only it needs to be a lot better, a lot more mainstream, and more accountable.
00:49:13
Speaker 9: I don't mind the critics, and I don't mind the criticism because what that means is.
00:49:17
Speaker 2: That we're relevant. It was good to be here tonight, good to catch up with you. It's strange that the ABC has been so reluctant in giving us interviews. We're happy to interview you anywhere, anytime, I to other reporters, why retreat from public debate about the ABC. I have a retreat to Chris. I'm giving you this interview right now because I've been trying to organize it for weeks and I.
00:49:39
Speaker 9: Have been waiting for you to invite me onto your program anytime.
00:49:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a standing invitation, right. Well, well, I've actually we've sent requests in in the past. We'll make that date soon. Okay, All rights
