Joe Hockey warns Mark Scott not to use cuts as ‘excuse for overdue reform’

JOE Hockey has warned the ABC not to use government-imposed savings to carry out reforms that should have been made years ago.

JOE Hockey has warned the ABC’s leadership team to focus on what is right for the public broadcaster rather than using government-imposed savings as “political cover” to carry out reforms that should have been under­taken years ago.

Liberal backbencher Andrew Nikolic also yesterday labelled the ABC’s cutbacks in regional and rural Australia as unnecessary, misguided and inconsistent with its charter obligations.

He said there had been “breathtaking failure of leadership’’ by the ABC board and managing director Mark Scott.

The ABC has to find $250 million in savings across five years. Mr Scott has announced up to 400 redundancies, the axing of Radio National’s popular Bush Telegraph program and the closure of five regional sites. Asked if he was concerned at the paring back of regional services, which has angered some Coalition MPs, the Treasurer said: “I hope that Mr Scott isn’t using the savings plan as an excuse to undertake the sort of reform that he should have under­taken over the past few years.”

In parliament, Mr Nikolic, the member for the Tasmanian seat of Bass, took the taxpayer-funded broadcaster to task and said its board and Mr Scott had “failed dismally’’. He said more than 50 per cent of its staff was based in NSW, centralised in Sydney, and nearly half of the ABC’s reporters “live in mutually left-leaning supporting enclaves in either NSW or the ACT’’. “What this centralisation of resources in Sydney shows is how far the ABC board and its managing director have drifted from their most important purpose,’’ he said.

An ABC spokesman said the broadcaster “remains committed to its audiences in rural and regional Australia despite the cuts imposed on it by the federal government’’. “The ABC has announced a new ABC regional division with administration outside of Sydney and Melbourne to continue this tradition of engaging with regional audiences and telling their stories,’’ he said.

ABC staff may be spared pre-Christmas redundancies after the first meeting between ABC management and staff unions ended in a stalemate. In a radio interview just after the meeting, Mr Scott described staff as “stoic” as they faced a “grim reality”.

A meeting between the ABC and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance ended with a commitment to meet three times next week.

The ABC confirmed it would push ahead with its job cuts.

Additional Reporting: Michael Bodey