Ex-ABC chair Justin Milne strongly denies giving sacked chief Michelle Guthrie an ‘icky’ back rub
FORMER ABC chair Justin Milne last night denied sensational claims of “inappropriate” and “icky” behaviour at a board dinner late last year from the station’s ex-managing director Michelle Guthrie.
SACKED ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie sensationally accused dumped chairman Justin Milne of “inappropriate” and “icky” behaviour at a board dinner late last year.
The explosive allegation — which included a claim the ousted chair rubbed Ms Guthrie’s back at a Potts Point restaurant — were strongly denied by Mr Milne.
“Definitely not … I think she meant that to have a sexual innuendo about it, which I can’t possibly for the life of me understand why she would say that,” Mr Milne said in a Four Corners investigation last night where the ABC investigated itself over the internal sacking dramas.
“You know, I’ve had no physical relationship with Michelle at all. And I never, ever acted inappropriately with Michelle, or indeed with any other woman in the workforce, or any other woman at all.”
Ms Guthrie would not elaborate on the incident describing it only as “inappropriate touching”.
“I felt icky. You know, it was … it was inappropriate,” she said.
“It was … it was unprofessional and inappropriate.”
Four Corners also aired allegations that ABC Board member Joe Gersh, a Melbourne lawyer, attempted to gloss over the inappropriate touching allegations by forcing Ms Guthrie to resign. “(Mr Gersh) said to me … ‘You know, Justin denies it. You have to work … you should work it out with him.’ And I said, ‘That’s absurd’,” she said.
“The purpose of that meeting became very clear, that he was trying to force me to resign. It was very, very clear that it wasn’t to take forward those allegations, which was the purported … you know, conversation.”
Ms Guthrie alleged the inappropriate touching incident happened in November last year at Billy Kwong’s Chinese restaurant during a board member dinner.
It was the biggest bombshell in a program that was largely made up of petty mudslinging between the two former ABC head honchos over who was really to blame for the broadcaster’s run of journalistic errors, feuds with the government and low staff morale. Four Corners interviewer Adele Ferguson asked Ms Guthrie if she regretted airing the allegations “in this era of the MeToo movement” where “once it’s been said, it cannot be unsaid.” “No,” Ms Guthrie responded.
“It was … it was unacceptable”.
Ms Guthrie did not make a formal complaint to the board about her claim despite an alleged invitation to do so by Mr Gersh.
The program also probed the deterioration of the pair’s relationship which resulted in both parties losing their jobs and Ms Guthrie lodging a claim with the Fair Work Commission.
Mr Milne spoke candidly about how he was drinking red wine after work when he sent Ms Guthrie an email saying ABC Journalist Emma Alberici had a “clear bias” and “they (the government) fricken hate her”, after she made several mistakes in her stories about government policy.
“This was maybe eight or nine o’clock at night, and I’d come home and had a couple glasses of red,” Mr Milne said.
“That wasn’t a direction, though.
“I was not saying ‘I hereby command that you sack Alberici’.
“Really what I’m saying is ‘Come on, let’s do something here. Let’s resolve this’.’’
The pair also argued about an email exchange where Ms Guthrie agreed to look at “external career development’’ opportunities for Ms Alberici in response to her alleged frequent errors.
Mr Milne told Four Corners the phrase was “a silly corporate euphemism” for “firing her” and alleged it was proof Ms Guthrie had agreed to sack Ms Alberici.
Ms Guthrie said: “No, it wasn’t. There was never a conversation about … firing Emma”.
A major blow to their relationship came over Mr Milne’s plans to ask the federal government for $500 million to finance his pet project Jetstream.
Ms Guthrie alleged that Mr Milne almost reduced her to tears in a phone call after he met with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“He called at 4pm and he just started yelling at me,” she said.
“Oh, my gosh. I mean, it was terrible. And it takes a lot for me to cry but I got very, very close and I was shaking. I mean, I wanted to get him off the phone.”
Mr Milne said Ms Guthrie could have kept her job if she had shown humility.
“There was the possibility of salvaging it,” he said.
“I think it would have required a great deal of humility, it would have required a genuine desire to recognise the gaps in her leadership and to change them.”
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