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Quarterly Newsletter:Winter 2001, Vol.3 No.2

A better way to choose the directors of the ABC

The National Conference of FABC determined to make this a public issue.

On the weekend of May 5/6 delegates from all state Friends met in Adelaide for a conference of sharing and planning for our election campaign.

We were buoyed by the huge success of the Canberra rally - since followed by the amazing Extraordinary General Meeting at the Opera House. We are confident that the crisis at the ABC will be a major issue in the federal election and that we will be able to alert our supporters and the public to the parties which offer the best hope for its rebuilding.

It was a time for sharing each other's strengths and skills, determining what we will seek from the political parties, and setting up an action group to coordinate our election campaign.

Two informative guest speakers addressed the conference: Stewart Fist, technology and communications writer in The Australian, and Graeme Thomson from the Community and Public Sector Union.

* * * * *

Among several decisions taken at the conference was our determination to bring the issue of the politicisation of the Board into the public arena. From the ABC's beginnings in 1932 governments have appointed, among others, political allies to the Board, but never before has it been brought to such a crisis. This is the result of its current extreme politicisation.

The Labor Party might privately agree with this but are reluctant to give up their own right to appoint to the board. Stephen Smith, Labor's shadow minister for communications has said this: "Unlike the Howard Government, Labor is committed to the ABC as an adequately funded, genuinely independent and truly national public broadcaster."

If the ABC is to be 'genuinely independent' there must be another way of choosing its Board. An alternative system of appointing the Board should be based on genuine merit instead of party mateship. In our meetings with Stephen Smith he has shown a willingness to listen to our suggestions. We look forward to further discussion.

FABC's intention is to propose options for an alternative way of appointing the Board and to make this the subject of public debate.

Monica Pflaum ACT, Penelope Toltz NSW, Karen Treanor WA and Austra Maddox TAS

The Dangers of Politicisation

STEWART FIST

Most people now accept as inevitable the politicisation or privatisation of any organisation capable of exerting power or generating revenues. It doesn't matter which party governs; each will load up the boards with roughly the same people, and each will flog off whatever they can - all to keep the other from benefiting from asset sales or appointments after a change in government.

No-one really pretends any more that the best people are being selected for their expertise, or that what they are doing is really important.

But the idea of using multiple sources of selection to insulate important committees from one-sided political influence still deserves further consideration. And if ever we needed such a process it is with the ABC Board.

In May 1999, to their great credit, the Democrats moved a private member's bill to reform 'this blatant board-stacking exercise [that] endangers the independence and integrity of the ABC and has the potential to do grave danger to Australia's international reputation'. But the bill is still sitting on the table of the Senate; it can't find support from either side of the main political divide.

Yet clearly, "it is absolutely critical that the ABC is not compromised in its work and that it does have a genuine and impartial board". The quote is from Alston, back in 1994 when he was in Opposition. What's more, Alston predicted it would be "a great disappointment to all those who are looking to the Government to take this opportunity to make appointments to the board on the basis of merit".

Unquestionably, he was right in his judgement. The Coalition gave us Liberal political lackeys to replace the Labor ones, and merit didn't get a look in.