Stacking the ABC: Alan Knight investigates the Howard strategy

Arena Magazine, Oct-Nov, 2007 by Alan Knight

Peter Hurley, another Board member, and South Australian President of the Australian Hotels Association, is a generous donor to the Liberal Party. According to the Melbourne Age, Australian Electoral Commission records show Hurley made a $3,000 donation to the NSW Liberal Party in 2004-05 via his Hurley Hotel Group. A similar donation was made in 2003-04. In 1998-99, P. and J. Hurley made a $3,665 donation to the Free Enterprise Foundation, which is a Liberal front. Liberal sources said Hurley had organised donations by the South Australian and the Australian Hotels Association, and was a regular at 'high roller' fundraising business functions with the Prime Minister ( The Age, 17 June 2006). The Deputy Chair, John Gallagher QC, is the Board's longest serving member, being appointed in 1999. Like Peter Hurley, Gallagher has links with the hotel industry.

It seems obvious that stacking the ABC Board with Howard's like-minded mates is no way to run a half billion dollar publicly owned corporation. It is known that, before appointment, a number of the Board members were trenchant critics of the ABC. Most of the new Board members could now be identified as being actively interlinked with organisations opposed to public enterprise.

It is worth asking what evidence exists to support the claim that the ABC is swinging to the Right as a result of ideologically driven governance. The answer may lie in the failure of the Shier experiment. Former ABC CEO Johnathan Shier attempted to break the ABC's internal culture with a frontal assault, trumpeting a more market-driven approach led by a string of new managers. As a result, ABC staff united and mobilised their external supporters. The ABC proved to be too popular with the public, which included rural conservatives as well as leftwing 'luvvies', for radical right-wing nostrums to win. Shier's attack ultimately foundered on the rock of former chair Donald McDonald's commitment to the arts, and the broader intellectual community which sustains them. A friend of the Howards, McDonald subsequently came to be characterised by the radical Right as captured by ABC culture.

Maurice Newman, the new chair, comes from the floor of the stock exchange. Most of his Board members are not merely Liberal Party supporters but right-wing ideologues who regularly meet and greet at think tanks funded by industry to transform Australian society after their image. They have little to no experience in public broadcasting. Their decisions are made in secret.

A government which claims to represent all Australians should govern 'our' ABC through a representative and qualified Board. In a country where most of the newspapers are effectively foreign owned, the ABC produces comprehensive, professionally produced, commercially independent news and information. This informs our politics and underpins Australians' increasingly politicised systems of governance.

In 1995, John Major's Conservative government created the post of Commisioner for Public Appointments, independent of the government and the civil service. The Friends of the ABC demands a similar system that would ensure that members of the Board be appointed on merit, and that they show commitment to an independent and comprehensive public broadcaster. Australia deserves it.