ABC’s $150,000 legal costs move flawed, says Auditor-General

The ABC has no ‘policy, precedent or process in place’ to support funding of Louise Milligan’s legal defence, says the Auditor-General.

The ABC funded the legal defence of Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan after she posted multiple defamatory tweets about federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming.

The ABC had no internal “policy, precedent or process” that supported the decision to pay for the legal defence involving reporter Louise Milligan over the defamatory tweets she made about federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming that ended up costing the taxpayer more than $150,000, an ­investigation has found.

“There is no documented advice … prepared to ­support the ­appropriateness of the decision to meet the costs of an employee,” commonwealth Auditor-General Grant Hehir said.

Earlier this year, the Four Corners reporter posted multiple tweets that Dr Laming said ­“irrevocably damaged” his ­personal and professional reputation. He won the legal proceedings, which included $79,000 in damages.

Milligan wrote “Laming upskirts”, which was found to be ­untrue.

She deleted the posts but failed to apologise, prompting Dr Laming to take legal action.

The findings come as problems continue to rock the national broadcaster.

On Monday, the ABC board, led by chair Ita Buttrose, called for an independent external review to look into the operation of the complaints unit, Audience and Consumer Affairs, which has a team of 4.5 full-time employees and is led by ­Kirstin McLiesh.

Media experts have described the complaints unit as “deeply flawed” and said it needed to be urgently reviewed to restore the public broadcaster’s credibility.

The review comes after months of intense criticism including over the handling of editorial failings in Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire series.

Former ABC chair and managing director David Hill, who has been among the critics of the complaints handling process, said the review was “essential” because the “process that followed Ghost Train was deeply flawed”.

“There is now widespread lack of confidence in the integrity of the ABC scrutinising itself when there are complaints – a look at the process is a good idea,” he said.

“The entire political spectrum from the left to the right are dis­affected with how the processes have been dealt with to date.”

Complaints were made to the Audience and Consumers Affairs unit and the program faced accusations of sloppy journalism and lazy research, but they were ­dismissed.

An external review later found the series wrongly implied that former NSW premier Neville Wran was linked to corrupt ­activity.

Despite this, outgoing ABC news boss Gaven Morris said he was “proud of the achievement of the Exposed team”.

The review into the complaints unit will be led by former commonwealth and NSW ombudsman John McMillan and former SBS news and current affairs director Jim Carroll, who was previously Ten Network head of news and public affairs.

Former Sydney Morning Herald editor Milton Cockburn said the ABC’s complaints process was in “disrepair”, adding the external review was “long overdue”.

Despite this, he said he didn’t think an independent complaints body was necessary or that it worked, adding that the ABC had many other issues to address around content failings.

These included “editorial oversight with a number of programs”, including the two-part TV series Juanita Nielsen: A ­Family Mystery, which aired erroneous claims by former lawyer John Innes regarding the 1975 ­disappearance of the murdered journalist and activist.