Shier's war on the ABC

by Peter Mac

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has increasingly come to resemble 
an organisation under open attack. Eleven members of the national 
broadcaster's staff were last week questioned by police over the leak of 
information to the commercial media about further recruitment to the ABC's 
already bloated layer of top executives.

Hard on the heels of these events, two more lower-ranking members of staff 
were sacked, and the ugly information has now surfaced that ABC Director 
Jonathan Shier intends to hire broadcasting staff with overtly right-wing 
views.

The police investigation was prompted by commercial media sources receiving 
details of Shier's plan to hire additional top-level executives from the 
private sector, at an additional cost to the taxpayer of $7,421,000, while 
the ABC is still reeling from the latest savage cuts in program funding.

The police questioning failed to pinpoint the source of the leak, but the 
subsequent sacking of at least one ABC staff member is thought to be 
connected with the leakage.

Shier has denied responsibility for initiating the police investigation, 
but is known to have been enraged when told of the leak, and to have 
discussed the matter with Finance Manager Russell Balding, who instructed 
audit staff to "act proactively" in investigating the matter.

When later questioned by Labor Senators, Shier refused to accept 
responsibility for the police interrogation, stating that the matter had 
been discussed with police, who then "asked that the matter be referred to 
them".

Shier has since declined to admit that there was anything improper in the 
investigation.

On the other hand, ABC Chairman Don McDonald was apparently horrified when 
told of the police investigation, and sought to have it terminated.

However, the police subsequently issued a statement that there was no firm 
date for finalisation of the enquiry, thereby raising the possibility that 
the case might remain open indefinitely, providing a pretext for further 
police intervention in ABC operations.

Shier was a favoured appointee of former Liberal politician and now ABC 
Board member Michael Kroger, and of Liberal Party Communications Minister 
Richard Alston.

However, the suitability of Shier to run the ABC is coming increasingly 
under critical attention, even from the right-wing media itself.

One commentator recently noted dryly that "He doesn't make much of the fact 
that his role has been as an advertising executive, a skill not strongly in 
demand at the ABC".

Shier and his newly introduced cronies at the top of the ABC do not appear 
particularly disturbed by such comments, but have, on the other hand, been 
greatly alarmed by the fightback of broadcasting staff, some of whom 
organised a press conference to discuss cuts to the ABC budget, and the 
deterioration of the organisation.

The ABC's executive salary bill has grown by 28 percent since Shier was 
appointed, and most of the 12 directors receive salaries well in excess of 
$200,000 per annum.

If the new appointments go ahead, the ABC's upper management will balloon 
out to 304 executives.

In the meantime the ABC's "in-house" production (including its current 
affairs programs) is shrinking, and has largely lost its ability to act as 
a training ground for the nation's most gifted TV writers, directors and 
performers. (Current affairs presenter Quentin Dempster has even written a 
book about the current situation, entitled Death Struggle.)

One national newspaper recently described the ABC with grudging admiration 
in the following terms: "It is highly unionised, but more focused on 
guarding editorial independence than fighting for bigger salaries, staff 
are extremely loyal to the broadcaster but not to its bosses, quality is 
vigorously pursued but too often frustrated by ultra-restrictive budgets."

Most taxpayers would probably agree that this is an admirable state of 
affairs for such an organisation, apart from the funding issue. But not Mr 
Shier, who has actually announced his intention to employ right-wing 
broadcasters to this organisation, in order to stamp out what he describes 
as the ABC's current left-wing bias.

In a recent statement he declared stridently that every month his mission 
to force change on the ABC "will become clearer, and people will say this 
is unrelenting".

Adding to the weird impression of a manager making megalomaniac war on his 
own organisation, he added that "When bombs go off your well-trained and 
professional colleagues deal with them so that you, as the boss, keep 
moving forward and say: 'I saw a bomb but it doesn't alter what we're doing 
here'."

So just how widespread is Shier's stated perception of bias in the ABC?

A recent survey showed that the vast majority of the Australian people 
believe the ABC is not biased, and that among those surveyed, 80 percent of 
Coalition supporters were either undecided or believed the ABC had no such 
bias.

Former ABC Director Brian Johns recently commented that the stated 
intention of newly hired executives to attack what they described as the 
biased and pedantic culture of the ABC were euphemisms for "getting into 
its independence, ... its news and current affairs."

It appears that if Shier has his way the national broadcaster, whose role 
includes the investigation of corruption and mismanagement by government 
and private industry, is not to be allowed to investigate these phenomena 
when they appear within the organisation itself.

The irony of this situation has not been lost on many media commentators, 
some of whom have suggested that the matter would make a great subject for 
the ABC's incisive "Four Corners" program.