background briefing 2-1 ..............3

The ABC Board - trustees for the people of Australia

David Bowman comments on Senator Alston's leaked letter to Chairman Donald McDonald.

This is taken from an article in The Adelaide Review 2/2000

There is another reference to which the minister points. He says that this ...

specifically allows the minister to furnish the board with a statement of government policy 'on any matter relating to broadcasting or any matter of administration', and the board is then required to give it proper consideration.

So, he asks innocently, what is all the present fuss about?

He knows well enough. It is about his motives and intentions. It is, to repeat, the duty of the ABC board to preserve the Corporation's independence. The managing director, Brian Johns, who is to retire next month, says it is vital (his word) to the independence of the ABC that programming and internal budget decisions continue to be the preserve of the broadcaster itself.

And it is just such decisions that the minister is trying to encroach upon. He is acting for a government which, as the ominous words of a leaked cabinet document showed two years ago, seeks changes:

'to give us the ability to influence future ABC functions and activities more directly.'

Well, if the ABC board members remember that they are trustees for the public, they will be wary indeed of Senator Alston's Trojan horse.There is a previous case of a minister barging into this no-go area of ABC but it remains relevant.

We must go back to May 1970, and the Gorton government. The ABC had sent its budget request to Alan Hulme, the relevant minister. He told the ABC chairman, Robert Madgwick, that he would pass this on to the Treasurer with the advice that it be reduced by $500,000, at least half the sum to be taken out of television current affairs. The account that follows here is based on This is the ABC, Ken Inglis's indispensable history published in 1983.

The ABC commissioners (predecessors of today's board members) are under no illusions about the implications in the minister's action and were resolute. They prepare a reply telling Mr Hulme that while they recognise the government's right to make the ABC live within whatever overall budget is granted, it is they, the commissioners, who have to decide how the budget will be divided up.

The six commissioners who can get to Canberra wait on Mr Hulme. The ABC staff back them up; the Leader of the Opposition, Gough Whitlam, raises the matter in parliament; newspapers in several states defend the ABC. Five days after the meeting between minister and commissioners, ABC staff hold a mass meeting of protest. On the same day, the minister capitulates. Sir Robert Madgwick issues a statement that the reduction proposed would have been completely unacceptable to the commission. 'The time had come when we had to dig in our toes', he said later.

And all those ABC commissioners who stood up to the Liberal minister had been appointed by Liberal-Country Party governments.

DAVID BOWMAN