ABC asked: did you have ministers tailed for Four Corners report?

Four Corners is facing questions over whether a private investigator conducted covert surveillance on senior ministers.

The ABC’s flagship current affairs program is facing questions from the Morrison government over whether a private investigator conducted covert surveillance on senior ministers at taxpayer ­expense during the compilation of its report exposing the private lives of politicians.

The government has escalated its row with the ABC over its controversial Four Corners program by asking ABC managing director David Anderson to investigate if the Attorney-General Christian Porter or Immigration Minister Alan Tudge were subject to surveillance – or any other form of private investigation – solicited by a third party who was employed by the ABC.

Executive producer Sally Neighbour told The Australian, “Four Corners does not use private investigators”, and said neither of the ministers had been under any surveillance.

The Four Corners report at the centre of the feud between the ABC and the federal government exposed a consensual affair between Mr Tudge, then human services minister, and his former media adviser Rachelle Miller.

It also broadcast unfounded allegations that Mr Porter is sexist and had kissed a woman in a Canberra bar. Mr Porter has strongly denied the allegations.

The Australian can reveal Mr Porter was alerted to the possibility he was being tailed prior to the time Four Corners first began contacting his former and current staff.

Sources told The Australian the warning came from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton who had been tipped off by a contact that the Attorney-General was under surveillance.

At the time, Mr Porter is understood to have dismissed the idea as absurd that there would be any reason for anyone to follow him.

Since the ABC program aired, several whistleblowers have come forward to inform senior figures in the Morrison government that a freelance investigator was used for the Four Corners program.

One source, who claimed to be in direct contact with the person hired to tail Mr Porter, told senior figures in the Morrison government a third-party hired by the ABC had paid for the surveillance to be conducted by a Sydney-based private investigator. They said it was done “at arm’s length”.

Senior sources told The Australian a job description had been cited.

The government has sent a “please explain’’ letter to the ABC over it Four Corners program looking at Alan Tudge and Christian Porter.

The “Inside the Canberra Bubble” report was controversial within the ABC, with numerous employees of the public broadcaster privately expressing the view the program was not in the public interest.

ABC chair Ita Buttrose, who criticised News Corp’s publication of the Barnaby Joyce scandal, has defended the Four Corners report.

In back-channel conversations over the last month, the ABC is understood to have denied any private investigators were used in preparation for the Four Corners report.

But the confidential information provided by the whistleblowers was so compelling that it has prompted formal questions to be put to the ABC.

The questions were lodged last night as additional questions on notice to the Senate Committee for Communications by Liberal senator Sarah Henderson, who interrogated Mr Anderson about the program during estimates on 9 November, 2020.

Mr Anderson has been asked whether the ABC was “provided with any information, reports or recordings arising from any covert surveillance of either of the ministers by any third party”.

The managing director will also have to respond to questions about whether there were “any payments of taxpayer funds made by the ABC to a third party (whether directly or indirectly), including but not limited to a private investigator, to undertake or facilitate covert surveillance of either of the ministers”.

The show featured Sarah Hanson-Young.

And also Kristina Keneally.

Another question to Mr Anderson asks: “Given the significant use of taxpayer funds that went in to producing the program, can the ABC confirm that neither minister featured in the program was monitored, secretly recorded or the subject of any other form of surveillance (covert surveillance) as part of any investigations, research or preparation for the program or as part of any other investigations, research or preparation involving an ABC employee?”

A senior minister told The Australian that if it is true that private investigators were used covertly to scrutinise the private life of the Attorney-General or Immigration Minister then there should not be a “slap on the wrist” but “heads should roll”.

“If Four Corners has used taxpayers’ money to have a private investigator following or investigating the Attorney-General or Immigration Minister then anybody who authorised it or knew about it at the ABC, their position is untenable,” he said.

“The use of taxpayer funds for a private investigator to trawl through the life of an Attorney-General, with all the dangers that represents, is so extreme that if this is true heads will roll. They should be gone from the ABC.”

Ms Neighbour, an experienced executive producer, said no surveillance had been conducted on either Mr Tudge or Mr Porter.

She said Four Corners commenced work on the story in mid-2020 and that the program “does not use private investigators”.

The questions over the use of investigators follows a terse letter from Communications Minister Paul Fletcher that accused the ABC board of failing to meet its duty to ensure the broadcast of “accurate and impartial” news and information according to “recognised standards of objective journalism”.