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Communication breakdown

Ken Inglis

Traditionally, ministers responsible for the ABC have done their best to uphold the broadcasters independence, but Richard Alston is a notable exception, writes Ken Inglis.

In this magazine [the Walkley Magazine] two years ago I wrote a piece headed: Whose ABC? which ended with The Australian's Frank Devine deploring a letter from Senator Richard Alston to Brian Johns which demanded a detailed explanation of bias in reporting of troubles on the waterfront. The letter 'cast doubt', Devine thought, 'on the Government's motive for reducing ABC funding. Is this really prudence with public money, or an attempt to starve the broadcaster into subservience?'

That letter, as I noted, was not the first case of Alston's breaching the tradition that a minister communicates with the ABC through the chair and the board. More generally, I suggested, Alston was the first minister to behave as if the ABC is a government department, not a statutory authority charged with responsibility for conducting, within limits set out in legislation, its own affairs.

Reviewing the history of the ABC's relations with government, I said that Alston was not quite instructing the ABC how to distribute its money, as one of his predecessors, Alan Hulme, had tried to do without success, thanks to courageous resistance from the custodians of the national broadcaster - although it seemed to me that Alston was coming close to doing so.

The minister's intrusions have become more numerous and more flagrant. The Australian's Errol Simper, the one journalist with a standing brief to write coherently about the ABC, has been keeping a tally of them. Last July, he counted six public attacks over previous weeks to which neither the chair, Donald McDonald, nor the managing director, Brian Johns, had responded.

"Two things are wrong here," Simper wrote. Alston is regularly overstepping his ministerial responsibilities. And the broadcaster's upper echelons may not recognise where their territory begins. Wild, ill-informed, unanswered attacks on the fragile broadcaster are contemptuous of its role, destructive of staff morale, a threat to its independence. The century ended with the most swingeing intrusion of all, on 23 December l999, which we know about thanks to Simper and whichever mole in the ABC (they proliferate in hard times) gave him a month later the minister's remarkable letter.

"Dear Mr McDonald," it began, "I am writing following our meeting of 20 December 1999 to address some of the issues which require further attention with respect to the current triennial funding process."

He attached a draft agreement in which these issues were specified. They make a breathtaking list.

• The ABC's corporate plan and annual report need to include 'more measurable performance indicators which use quantifiable targets wherever possible. '
• These are to include 'targets for achieving appropriate ratings'.
• There is to be an annual meeting between the minister and the board to review progress and consider directions, an annual statement of commitment to audiences which details program priorities (examples follow), rolling reviews of all program genres. Independent experts are to be involved in these reviews.
• Moreover, an editorial policies unit, independent of program makers, with direct access to the board, will monitor and review editorial policy.

(The exact words to give you the flavour of the prose are "ongoing, systematic and structured monitoring", to distinguish the process, I suppose, from non-ongoing, unsystematic and unstructured monitoring.) This device is to "ensure speedy, high-level responses to alleged breaches of editorial policies and guidelines."

Here and elsewhere, the minister expresses a menacing lack of confidence in the ABC's own procedures. He also prescribes program policy more specifically than ever before. More television production is to be outsourced. A nightly state-based current affairs program should be restored (the 7.30 Report, which had gone national in 1995 in order to save money). Simper described the letter as "uncomfortably close to blackmail". The board, he suggested, should tell the minister to put his proposals in a recycling bin. But would it, when so many of its members were by now coalition appointees? And could it afford to?

Johns, only weeks away from involuntary retirement, made a short statement the day after The Australian's report, saying that the ABC must spend its money on programs decided upon by itself and not by the government of the day. A spokesperson for the minister said he had been merely responding to suggestions from the ABC. Could that be true? Was the letter an elucidation of agreement between the minister and the chair agreed on 20 December? Did McDonald's silence imply consent? Had the board considered the letter? Had Alston's interference become so routine that the guardians of our ABC were dulled to its impropriety and danger?

Alston responded to criticisms of his letter with a piece in The Australian on 27 January not questioning its authenticity. His reply was rich in buzzwords from the lexicon of the new managerialism, such as "best practice benchmarks". The novelty of his expecting the board to commit itself in advance to do what the government wanted was simply "in line with modern principles of transparency and accountability".

Communication breakdown continued