Former ABC chairman Justin Milne claims emails calling for senior reporters to be sacked were ‘out of context’
IN a calamitous interview on 7.30, outgoing ABC chairman Justin Milne has claimed he was ‘taken out of context’ in an email asking Michelle Guthrie to fire two senior reporters.
OUTGOING ABC chairman Justin Milne has made the controversial claim the public broadcaster’s news and current affairs staff could not “go around irritating” the Government which provided its funding.
The former business partner of ousted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull denied he had urged now sacked managing director Michelle Guthrie to fire economics correspondent Emma Alberici and political editor, Andrew Probyn after complaints by the PM and his ministers.
In damning admissions likely to further enrage ABC staffers already in turmoil after its management’s implosion this week, Mr Milne told 7.30 host Leigh Sales he saw his role as a “conduit” between the corporation and Government, rather than a “wall” protecting reporters from politicians wanting to influence ABC coverage.
“Nobody told me I was supposed to be a wall. More what I’m likely to be is a conduit. The Government is a fundamentally important stakeholder in the ABC and if it’s necessary I needed to be a conduit for the Board … so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and we understand how people are feeling about things.”
He said his critics should not leap to the conclusion that breached editorial independence but “I believe it is unthinkable that a chair would not be involved.”
His statement goes to the heart of Guthrie camp claims that the chairman had undermined her role by lobbying the Government directly and inserting himself in staffing issues, at the urging of then PM Turnbull.
He said he “didn’t remember” calling for Ms Guthrie to “shoot” Probyn, who had been critical of government policy in his TV reports, but Mr Milne agreed he “most certainly would have had a conversation with Michelle and the leadership team about what I’ll call the Probyn issue.”
“Andrew Probyn also found himself in hot water with the Government and we investigated that and the ABC got to certain positions on that but again, it’s just not possible to imagine a world in which the chair or a board member is not involved in matters which go to the heart of their obligations under the legislation. They have to.”
Questioned over whether that was his role or Ms Guthrie’s, he said: “in an environment where the Board was losing its confidence in [Guthrie] it made it even more necessary for me to be involved.”
“On the one hand the Government provides the funding, on the other hand the ABC is supposed to be independent of the guy who is providing the funding. But you can’t be … you can’t go around irritating the person who is going to give you funding over matters of accuracy and impartiality. And in fact, what happened in those particular incidents was that we, the ABC, were not accurate or impartial.”
He said he was “disinclined” to provide the Australian taxpayer with “specifics” about the reasoning which led to her brutal ABC assassination, two years into her five-year contract, that is now expected to involve a costly settlement with or damaging litigation by the public broadcaster’s first female MD.
The explosive interview, summarised under the headline ‘A Bloody Crisis,’ was filmed at 11am Thursday at the ABC’s Ultimo studios, “and within seconds” Mr Milne “had resigned.”
He apparently jumped before any potential push, after the Board had earlier today asked him to step aside while an internal inquiry investigated a series of claims questioning his defence of the ABC’s journalists against Government attacks.
“It’s clearly not a good thing for everyone to be trying to do their job while there’s this kind of firestorm going on, so I wanted to provide a release valve.”
But he rejected Sales suggestion his resignation was an admission he failed to safeguard the editorial independence of the ABC.
“Absolutely, 100 per cent not. In fact, I feel that the interests of the ABC have always been uppermost in my mind and just to get it on the record for you … there as absolutely no interference in the ABC by the Government. Nobody from the Government has ever rung me and told me what to do in relation to the ABC. Nobody ever told me to hire anybody, fire anybody or do anything else.”
He said “I know that’s the sort of narrative that’s been running in the papers but that absolutely never happened.”
Forced to defend specific allegations made in The Daily Telegraph this week, Mr Milne
claimed to have been “taken out of context” over reports he had emailed Ms Guthrie to state economics correspondent Emma Alberici should be sacked “because the Government hates her.”
Instead, he stated: “I never sent an email to Michelle Guthrie or anybody else which said ‘you must sack Emma Alberici or [chief political editor] Andrew Probyn, or anybody else.’ This is a piece of an email which I haven’t even seen, but nevertheless, it’s a piece of an email that’s taken out of a context of a conversation which was a confidential conversation and a conversation which you should expect be had … ‘what do we do about this?’ That’s what that conversation was, but I have never provided instructions that anybody should be sacked.”
Originally published as Former ABC chairman Justin Milne claims emails calling for senior reporters to be sacked were ‘out of context’