There’s been a fair bit of discussion around here from time to time about the Rudd government’s proposals for ensuring merit based appointments to the boards of ABC and SBS, a matter of quite a deal of interest because of John Howard’s habit of appointing the most ludicrously provocative culture warriors possible. Even from the point of view of the right’s own pseudo-Gramscian (counter) march through the institutions thing, these appointments were completely counterproductive – the lack of any broadcasting experience on the part of the appointees negated their ability to scrutinise or shape management proposals. Howard, I suspect, was playing something of a double game, appointing chairs such as Donald McDonald and Maurice Newman on one hand and keeping up the “balance” pressure with appointments such as those of Ron Brunton, Janet Albrechtsen and Keith Windschuttle. The resulting ire also helped maintain Howard’s cred with the culture wars commentariat.
Labor promised last year to eschew political appointments, and introduce a selection panel at arms length from the Communications Minister. The final appointment would still be ministerial, but any appointment not recommended by the panel would have to be justified and the justification tabled in parliament. The procedure is outlined here. Ex pollies and senior political advisors are banned from appointment.
There are now two vacancies on the boards of both ABC and SBS, and the panel has been announced (note that it hasn’t been appointed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy but by PMC Secretary Terry Moran). By the way, you’re reading about this first on LP – it hasn’t been picked up in the media yet. The panel is:
Mr Ric Smith AO PSM has been appointed to chair the Nomination Panel for a period of three years. Mr Smith was Secretary of the Department of Defence from 2002 to 2006 and had previously served as Australia’s Ambassador to Indonesia and to the People’s Republic of China.
Professor Allan Fels AO has been appointed as a member for a period of three years. Professor Fels is currently Dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government. He was Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission from 1995 until 30 June 2003.
Ms Leneen Forde AC has been appointed as a member for a period of two years. Ms Forde has been Chancellor of Griffith University since 2000 and was Governor of Queensland from 1992 to 1997.
Mr David Gonski AC has been appointed as a member for a period of two years. Mr Gonski has been Chancellor of the University of New South Wales since 2005 and is chairman and director of a number of major companies. He was Chairman of the Australia Council from 2002 to 2005.
Stephen Conroy has also announced that the position of staff elected Director will be restored to the ABC Board.
Concurrently with this process, there’s also a discussion paper on the future of the two public broadcasters – available here. When I have a little more time, I’ll take a look at it and write something. In the meantime, it’s very good to see a merit based process for board appointments put in place.
Re Conroy’s common-touch
I’m reminded of Thadeus, the wise old chief-of-CONTROL
‘ This makes sense Max…and that worries me ‘
I hope Conroy goes straight back where he operates best…under the cone-of-silence.
Thanks for that Mark. I’ve circulated it widely to people I know who might be interested.
Will this mean an end to commercials and endless lengthy repeat news bulletins on SBS? I can’t believe it might improve.
Conroy did take legal advice, Paul, on whether the SBS board had breached their charter by going with in program ads. I’m not sure what happened with that – I’ll try to follow it up.
Does this mean that instead of stacking the board in future political parties will just stack the selection panel instead? (Not a comment on this selection panel).
Presumably not, since the panel itself isn’t appointed by the Minister but by the Secretary of the Department of PMC.
I believe that this reform are long overdue. For too long appointments on the Boards of these broadcasters were made by different governments from both parties to influence them politically.
I also welcome the release of a discussion paper where the public can provide submissions. I will certainly do one about SBS. I think that it lost its aim recently. RockWiz is my favourite TV program at the moment, and I also love Top Gear and Mythbusters, but whats so ‘Special’ about then? SBS is basically an ABC3. Yes it does provide interesting foreign language films late at night, Inspector Rex and great docos such the one currenly about the first Australians, but the station has drifted from being a place were viewers could watch quality programs from the world to a predominantly a station for well educated English speaking viewers.
Of course the Liberals don’t like it at all.
Yea, we should trust the government to make ‘impartial appointments’ like you did when you appointed people like Keith Windschuttle and Janet Albrechtsen.
The Age has an editorial on this today
Despite the appointment of conservatives at Board level, the ABC and SBS continue to be biased leftist shills. It is unfortunate the Howard government didn’t make it a high enough priority to get to the root of the problem, rather than do a bit of easy window dressing. The ALP knows this and the sham of changing how the Boards are appointed will in no way go to fixing the serious bias problems in the ABC and SBS.
In this information age with robust private free to air radio and TV, Pay TV, the Internet and multiple forms of print media, having a government funded broadcaster is an anachronism and therefore a huge waste of money. I can think of many better ways to spend the almost $1 Billion anually. Returning the money to taxpayers to spend on their own choice of media to start with.
“Despite the appointment of conservatives at Board level, the ABC and SBS continue to be biased leftist shills.”
I suppose a little bit of evidence for your comments @8 is out of the question Razor?
From my observation both organisations fall over backwards to appease their right wing critics. Even to the point of running opposition and “Australian” talking points as if they were the truth revealed. Think Fran Kelly and her recent efforts as just one example.
True joe2, and everytime I tune in to the ABC I seem to hear the hectoring tones of the leader of the opposition. I don’t recall any Labor opposition leader receiving anything like the same airtime.
The way the ABC is going at the moment, it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the BBC. As for SBS – I gave up on it years ago,
Mark and all:
Way back in the bad old colonial days, there used to be a sign outside a
gentlemen’s club in Shanghai “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” [or words to that
effect]
Don’t try to tell me that the pompous wording of selection criteria for ABC and
SBS Board members isn’t a present-day version of that sign. “No Bogans
Allowed”. On the surface, it might seem that selection of Board members on the
basis of merit, excellence, eminence, high-level executive involvement with
the industry and so forth would be superior to appointment on the basis of
political reliability …. but I have very grave doubts indeed about that.
Selecting from either tiny stagnant, fetid pool would be equally bad – all we
would get from either would be the sorts of boofheads who gave us such
diverse wonders as the Aboriginal assimilation policy, the retention of the
Imperial flag, the defence procurement mess and all the other idiotic
decisions-by-our-betters.
We need innovative, responsive and completely new Boards for ABC and SBS. We
need Boards made up of both broadcasting and arts industry specialists AND of
ordinary intelligent Australians from throughout the entire country. Why not
select the community members of each Board by a lottery using the electoral
rolls? We couldn’t help but get a better Boards than through a
woolly-headed “selection”[wtf?] process.
….
Guido [6]:
You are right about SBS turning into ABC-3. Take news for instance: one
half-hour a week [Chile’s excellent “Esta Semana"] from the entire continent
of South America; absolutely nothing from the entire continent of Africa – not
even from our friends in the Republic of South Africa; nothing at all from our
very important neighbour, India. The usual p.w. excuse for this neglect is
to waffle-on about which news services should be dumped to make room for them
…. instead of trying more intelligent programming so that none of the present news serices are dumped. Time for a brand new Board at SBS.
Did I note a zionist lobby shill mixed up in the appointments?
Graham:
I would personally suppose moving the news programmes to a digital channel and put more general-interest foreign-language programmes and movies on in the morning. I would also go 24/7 with programming instead of closing for most of the overnight.
Tyne Tees [14}:
Good idea .... or .... go for a third/shared broadcast channel for news, current affairs, schools and "minor" sports. [The buyout of Channel Ten - should it fall victim to the financial meltdown - by the government might be the way to go].
That won’t happen unless we get a clean sweep of the ABC and SBS Boards though.
Digital? That’s fine for high-population areas …. but what about the Other Australia ….
SBS does have plans for multi-channelling in the future, as does the ABC. As David Tiley has pointed out the ABC only receives a ninth of the funding that the BBC does on a pe capita. This is why the ABC looks like BBC-lite. It’s so much cheaper to buy in programming than make it yourself.