Positions vacant at our ABC: star correspondents face the axe including Emma Alberici

In documents emailed to staff by ABC director of news, Emma Alberici’s position­ was named as a potenti­al redundancy.

Emma Alberici could be offered a presenting job.

Emma Alberici’s position as the ABC’s chief economics corres­pondent appears to be the highest­-profile casualty of cuts announced on Wednesday at the public broadcaster.

In documents emailed to staff by Gaven Morris, the ABC’s director of news, analysis and investigations, Alberici’s position­ was announced as a potenti­al redundancy.

However, it is not yet certain that Alberici will leave the ABC. It is understood she could remain at the public broadcaster in another capacity. In the next few weeks the ABC will undertake a “process of consultation”, in which it will consult Alberici on positions that fit with her skills set.

While there are unlikely to be positions for Alberici on major current affairs programs, she could be offered a presenting job, with suggestions that she may move to another area, such as the ABC news channel.

Alberici did not return calls from The Australian’s Media Diary

As well as Alberici, two out of four senior business and econo­mic reporting positions from the ABC’s business unit might be made redundant, but names have not yet been determined.

With between 60 and 70 jobs to go in news, other roles made redund­ant include­ the position of Brisbane-based rural and regional reporter Dominique Schwartz — although, like Alberici, she may still be redeployed. Two positions in the ABC’s investigative unit might also go, and another in the arts. However, the ABC’s 7.30 has largely escaped unscathed.

The ABC has also asked for express­ions of interest in redund­ancies.

ABC business reporters Peter Ryan and Emma Alberici in Sydney in 2018. Picture: Hollie Adams

The decision to make the chief economics correspondent role redunda­nt is set to end a dramatic and controversial three-year tenure­ for Alberici in the position.

At one point she even became a pivotal flashpoint in tensions between­ then ABC managing directo­r Michelle Guthrie and ex-chairman Justin Milne, just before both departed the ABC, in a spat that went all the way up to the PM’s office.

At one point, Milne instructed Guthrie to fire Alberici, after a furious then PM Malcolm Turnbull personally complained about perceived “bias” in a story she wrote about corporate taxpaying.

The ABC ultimately admitted that two Alberici stories, including an analysis piece, contained several errors. The analysis piece was taken down and subsequently rewritten­ before eventually being reinstated on the site. It was subsequently reported that 60 per cent of that piece was rewritten. The ABC found the piece to be opinion rather than analysis.

But Milne’s instruction to sack Alberici ultimately played a key role in his abrupt departure as ABC chairman, while Alberici survived­.

 

There was also a second controversi­al story that year from Alberici, which again attracted the ire of Turnbull, about innovation tax credits. Once more, the prime minister made an official complaint to Guthrie, alleging multiple errors in the story. But the ABC ultimately found there was only one error in the story.

More recently, there were interna­l grumbles at the ABC about Alberici involving the fact that she had filed very few stories that filled her brief as the ABC’s chief economics correspondent, particularly this year, at the time of Australia’s biggest economic crisis in decades.

Most of her reporting in recent times has involved a series of stories­ about Italy for Foreign Correspondent, often involving travel to Europe to cover them.