In October 2018, right after Justin Milne had resigned in disgrace as chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it emerged that Paul Fletcher’s Communications Department had appointed executive recruitment firm Korn Ferry to manage the process of appointing new directors to the public broadcaster’s board. Korn Ferry got a two-year contract without a tender.

The head of Korn Ferry’s board services practice is Robert Webster, a former Nationals minister and a current Liberal Party donor. Which, given the exposure of Milne’s attempted political interference in ABC editorial matters only the previous month, made for exceptionally poor optics.