Aunty should apologise for Chaser slur: Newman

FORMER ABC chairman Maurice Newman has questioned what action the ABC board took over several recent controversies.

Former ABC chairman Maurice Newman says the Chris Kenny skit was ‘extraordinary’ and warr

FORMER ABC chairman Maurice Newman has questioned what action the ABC board took over several recent controversies, including The Hamster Decides’ skit depicting The Australian’s Chris Kenny as a “dog f. ker”, saying its broadcast was “astonishing” and warranted an apology.

Mr Newman, who finished his term as chairman in March 2012, to be replaced by James Spigelman, said the skit, now the subject of a court case, was tasteless and wrong and did not uphold the standards of what the community expects from a public broadcaster.

“I think, quite seriously, there are things at the margin you might what to defend, but why you would want to defend that I have no idea,’’ he said yesterday.

“Maybe because you don’t like Chris Kenny’s politics I suppose, but it’s just wrong. If you did a poll on the street and you showed people what was depicted, I think you’d find an overwhelming ­majority of thinking Australians would find it offensive.”

Some ABC supporters have argued the skit, produced by the Chaser team, was satire and The Hamster Decides had every right to broadcast it, but Mr Newman, said satire or not, it was “unwarranted” and “unfounded”.

“I don’t believe that is befitting of the public broadcaster to have broadcast that,’’ he said. “I don’t care whether it’s satire or whether it is shown at midnight, it’s just wrong. It’s tasteless and it doesn’t uphold standards of what the community expects.

“I mean, seriously, it is extraordinary. It’s unwarranted and unfounded.”

His comments on Kenny’s court case came after Mr Newman was asked whether he thought the ABC board was playing an active enough role in ensuring editorial standards were being upheld.

Mr Newman, who was in China last week as chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, questioned what the ABC board’s position had been on the Edward Snowden leaks that Australia had spied on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s wife, the navy burnt-hand allegations and the Kenny case.

The former chairman of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange said he found it “astonishing” there had been no apology to Kenny and the “board must have satisfied themselves that there’s nothing to see here”.

“When we had the Snowden affair, the broadcast of The Guardian allegations of phone-tapping of the Indonesian Presidents’ wife, the board seemed to acquiesce on that,’’ he said.

“I’m not aware of what the board did in relation to the navy allegations, and the same goes with Chris Kenny’s defamation, but I find it extraordinary there has been no apology. I don’t know to what extent the board has ­acquiesced in that as well.”