THEIR ABC'S HATE Australia agenda finally been called to account.

Aunty's tactical mistakes haunt it with a vengeance

Dennis Shannahan
Political Editor,The Australian.
February 1,2014

THE ABC is currently in a war with the Abbott Coalition government that goes beyond the traditional antipathy towards the national broadcaster from a Liberal government.

The politics of the current furore are undoubtedly fuelled by the Coalition, particularly Liberal MPs and ministers, wanting to embark on cultural retribution against the ABC; but also by the government's intent to lay the groundwork for justifying cuts to the ABC through either an efficiency drive or dividend, or by permanently axing the ABC's $223 million Australia Network broadcasting service into Asia.

ABC strategic and tactical mistakes in the past two years have left the national broadcaster more exposed than ever to a political campaign justifying budget cuts and providing grounds for complaints about its service. As one of Australia's biggest media organisations, with vast political expertise and a clear preparedness of its executives to lobby ministers and opposition MPs, the ABC has failed to sensibly position itself in a hostile atmosphere through management and editorial leadership.

Right now, there can be no greater example of the ABC's apparent determination to unnecessarily cause grief with the government than to continue to stand by reports of Australian sailors systematically torturing asylum-seekers, without correction or comment.

These stories are being contradicted not just by the asylum-seekers involved but also from within the ABC.

Despite plain contradictions and evasions from some of the key complainants, and unrefuted evidence from within the ABC that there were doubts about reports that navy personnel held the hands of asylum-seekers against hot pipes, the ABC continues to underestimate the effect of the totality of its coverage of the issue, even while an internal audit is being undertaken.

Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull (the minister responsible for the ABC) and Julie Bishop, the minister responsible for the Foreign Affairs Department-funded Australia Network, have all made it clear that pre-election promises that there would be "no cuts" to the ABC or SBS do not exempt the broadcasters from across-the-board savings or the wholesale dumping of the Australia Network.

Tanya Plibersek, as Acting Opposition Leader and Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman, has defended the ABC and the Australia Network, and accused the Prime Minister of breaking "another election promise" over cuts to ABC funding.

The ABC's supporters, including many conservative listeners who rely on the national broadcaster, are rallying against potential cuts and accusing the government of censorship and vengeance.

But, as a national broadcaster committed to serve all Australians, there is a deep alienation of at least half the population who voted for the Coalition, and a deep conviction among Liberal supporters that the ABC has gone too far.

Such an atmosphere only provides impetus and strength to the Coalition critics who realise appointing conservative board members to the national broadcaster does nothing to alter a journalistic cultural bias to left-of-centre issues.

In December last year, at the National Press Club, ABC chairman Jim Spigelman put forward a series of measures designed to respond to allegations of bias, a tendency to select news items that more often concerned "gay marriage than electricity prices", and conceded the ABC's funding was never set in stone.

In Spigelman's sensible and reasonable defence there was a rejection of specific bias but a concession that the ABC needed to endeavour to engage all sections of the community and remain "important to all Australians": he announced a series of internal audits to assess the ABC's political coverage of the election campaign and asylum-seekers. Spigelman, appointed in 2012, also said the ABC board had issued a guidance note on impartiality last July, providing detailed information on how to achieve that objective.

Yet his pragmatic and politically savvy presentation came far too late to save the ABC from a furore over funding, failed charter allegations and a new storm over asylum-seeker reporting in the run-up to the Coalition's first budget in May, which could be the biggest slash and burn of government spending for decades.

For almost two years before the September election, it was clear the Gillard-Rudd government was likely to be defeated. ABC news reporters were chronicling the decline and breaking news on the Labor leadership tensions. But ABC management blithely continued to encourage ever closer relations with the Labor government, hoping to lock in long-term funding guarantees and allowing its increasingly amorphous digital and social media outlets to entrench anti-Coalition opinion and infuriate the opposition.

This internet-inspired attitude of suspending journalistic judgment and simply putting up unsubstantiated and dubious "claims" is part of the ABC's latest problem. That error is providing the strongest grounds for the general criticism of the ABC which is being used to justify budget cuts. Liberal MPs are detecting serious disaffection with the ABC in their electorates and are giving voice to the complaints.

The ABC's current difficulties began with a series of management and editorial misjudgments which were a result of a lack of clear editorial direction and attempts to exploit Labor's political favour.

When it came to the Gillard government, the ABC was less than enthusiastic about reporting on the allegations of the AWU slush fund and the missing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Subsequent police inquiries and disclosures have demonstrated a lack of good news sense at the ABC, at the very least.

With the Coalition's implacable opposition to a carbon tax, the selection of climate-change commentary supportive of carbon pricing and a relative lack of carbon sceptics was a long-running issue.

The treatment of asylum-seeker issues, since recognised by the ABC as worthy of audit, has only got worse since the election, with the airing of the doubtful torture claims. Internal ABC emails show some thought the reports were wrong and subsequent interviews of the asylum-seekers throw more doubt on the credibility of the claims. Yet the ABC still refuses to offer any correction or explanation.

There were serious managerial misjudgments, which have given the government its best arguments to strip the ABC of its Australian Network contract. That the $223m contract for Australia's "soft diplomacy" was mired in controversy, steeped in political preference, overruled good practice, involved conflicts of interest and reduced a 10-year contract deliberation to leadership politics cannot be disputed.

Then Labor cabinet minister Martin Ferguson contradicted ABC managing director Mark Scott over a phone call the minister said was inappropriate during the tender process; the Auditor-General queried the Labor government's ability to conduct a proper process and found an independent tender panel (and then foreign minister Kevin Rudd) had been overruled twice to give the ABC the contract.

"The manner and circumstances in which this high-profile tender process was conducted brought into question the government's ability to deliver such a sensitive process fairly and effectively," said Auditor-General Ian McPhee.

The ABC-Labor links went further, with the passage of legislation to "Abbott-proof" the ABC's control of overseas broadcasting, a clear recognition that the Gillard government was going to lose the election.

Little wonder, then, that Abbott and Bishop are citing the "dodgy" process and reviewing the whole contract, with the view of shutting down the Asian broadcasting arm of the ABC and depriving it of the opportunity to fund its operations through a back-door deal.

Bishop confirmed yesterday that she was reviewing the contract and said: " I am concerned, given the number of complaints I've received, that while the content and program selection is obviously up to the ABC, it's not actually meeting its charter and codes of practice."

Abbott said the Coalition had "enormous concerns" about the probity of the tender process and lashed out at the "glee" with which the ABC reported negative developments in Australia.

His criticism of the decision to broadcast The Guardian's stories based on the leaked spy files of Australia bugging the phone of the Indonesian President and his wife demonstrated he was as much concerned with the ABC's attitude as with the substance of the reports.

Abbott accused the ABC of not just sharing journalistically with a commercial news outlet, as it has with both Fairfax Media and The Australian on occasions, but simply seeking to "advertise" and amplify the impact of the story.

"I was very worried and concerned a few months back when the ABC seemed to delight in broadcasting allegations by a traitor," Abbot said this week.

"If there's credible evidence, the ABC, like all other news organisations, is entitled to report it, but you shouldn't leap to be critical of your own country and you certainly ought to be prepared to give the Australian navy and its hardworking personnel the benefit of the doubt."

There is a recognition within the government that previous attempts to change the culture of the ABC have failed. But there is also a recognition and frustration that through a lack of normal and proper editorial and management processes, the ABC seemed determined to ignore the reality of a change of government and has not taken real steps to ensure its guidelines on impartiality and accuracy were enforced.