Interim ABC boss David Anderson to take markedly different approach from sacked Michelle Guthrie

Acting MD David Anderson will take a markedly different approach to deposed managing director Michelle Guthrie.

Interim boss David Anderson has indicated he will assume a more public role in the representation and defence of the ABC compared to Michelle Guthrie.

The interim boss of the ABC has indicated he will take a markedly different approach to deposed managing director Michelle Guthrie, engaging more with Canberra, giving more media interviews and being a strong advocate of public broadcasting.

Acting Managing Director David Anderson’s comments came as former ABC chairman James Spigelman defended Ms Guthrie, saying she had faced a “tough political environment” in dealing with the Turnbull government.

Mr Anderson wasted no time on his first full day day in the role this morning by walking the floor of the broadcaster’s Sydney newsroom talking to staff.

The Australian understands he was accompanied by Gaven Morris, the director of ABC News.

“We saw Michelle Guthrie on the floor but she never spoke to anyone,’’ said a newsroom source.

Ms Guthrie has indicated she is considering all legal options, maintaining the ABC board has not told her what she did to prompt her termination, and ABC chairman Justin Milne has refused to publicly detail the board’s reasoning.

Mr Anderson, who was appointed as Director of Entertainment & Specialist Broadcasting at the ABC in February, said he expected to be acting as managing director for at least three months, and was looking forward to it.

Asked whether Ms Guthrie’s reluctance to do media interviews had been part of the problem, Mr Anderson said he wasn’t about to start criticising her.

Acting ABC MD David Anderson.

“The board has made their decision,” Mr Anderson told ABC radio.

“I do think it’s important to speak to staff, to speak to the media, to make sure that you do have a relationship with Canberra.

“I use Canberra in general, noting that the ABC will always remain fiercely independent. I think it’s good to have a good dialogue with all sides of politics.

“I’m mindful of the fact that I am only acting in that I’m here for probably a minimum of three months, and I treat that as not a campaign for me to get the job longer term, but I will make sure that, as I am doing now, I’m doing a media interview, and highlight the importance of the ABC, how important it is to the Australian people, and I’ll be doing that in Canberra as well.”

Mr Anderson said he was surprised by Ms Guthrie’s sacking.

“The board deliberations and whatever the board deliberate about is a matter for the board, and it’s not ever put into public discourse, they don’t talk about their deliberations, and this has happened certainly behind closed doors, without the knowledge of the leadership team,” he said.

“The relationship between Michelle and the board is exactly between those two parties, and so therefore it came as quite a surprise and a shock for us as a leadership team, and I think everybody at the ABC.”

Mr Anderson backed the board in keeping its deliberations confidential.

Former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie is considering legal action over her sudden sacking. Picture: AAP

“I don’t think that we start putting out in the public what the deliberations about the board were, or their concern,” he said.

“I think that’s probably as far as the ABC board are going to go by way of explanation with regard to the leadership change, and why the need for the change into the future, beyond the fact that they wanted a different style of leadership from the Managing Director of the ABC.”

Asked how his leadership style would be different, Mr Anderson said he would be inclusive.

“I’ll do my best to bring people together behind a common cause,” he said.

“I think people, the work of the ABC and the talented and committed staff that we have, who come to work every day knowing the clear purpose of the ABC and serve the Australian people and I think they do a fantastic job doing it, so with the leadership team, we will be going through.

“It will be business as usual. The strategy remains unchanged. We want to be able to keep things going and help the organisation be the best it can be.”

“My number one priority has always been about content and the audiences that we serve.”

Mr Anderson said he loved the ABC and was passionate about public broadcasting.

“I think that for many reasons that the ABC exists it’s become more important every day to have that independent, factual base upon which people, citizens can make decisions and participate in democracy, telling Australian stories, the way we host conversations that matter to the Australian people, whether that be in regional services or regional towns, or whether it be in metropolitan centres, I think that that needs to continue,” he said.

ABC board chairman Justin Milne has said the transition to a new leader could be disruptive but discussions had been under way for several months. Picture: AAP

“I think our investing in audiences strategy needs to push on, and that means that we’ll both invest in content as well as continuing to invest in the development of our services for digital so that in the future we are serving the Australian people on digital platforms as well as we are serving them on broadcast platforms.”

Mr Anderson said the size of Ms Guthrie’s payout was a matter for her and the ABC board.

‘Guthrie faced a tough political environment’

Mr Spigelman, who as former ABC chair appointed Ms Guthrie, said she faced a tough political environment.

“I mean the Abbott government was obviously hostile, and after that last election the Turnbull government was really not able to show any sympathy to the ABC, even if it wanted to,” Mr Spigelman told ABC radio.

Mr Spigelman defended his selection of Ms Guthrie.

“She had a great deal of highly relevant experience,” he said.

“She’d actually run an organisation in broadcasting of very similar size overseas, and it was not irrelevant that she was a woman, in the sense of being the first woman CEO of the ABC, but she obviously impressed in her interviews.”

Mr Spigelman said the next managing director would need to be able to stand their ground in Canberra.

“It’s very much a question of how do you deal with aggressive journalism in a fraught political environment,” he said.

“The rest, the music, the regional broadcasting, a lot of other things, are just not of any significance in Canberra at a time like this.”

ABC journalist and former Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes said Mr Milne and the board needed to explain why such drastic action was taken.

“Something must have gone badly wrong in their eyes,” Mr Holmes told ABC radio.

“I do think we desperately need to know more about exactly what did go wrong, or was the board justified?

“I mean Michelle Guthrie’s claims that no one ever complained to her or that this came completely out of the blue, which seems extraordinary to me.”

Mr Holmes said he understood that it was difficult for Mr Milne to give a public explanation.

“He doesn’t want to get into the position of making things any worse for Michelle Guthrie than they already are, but if the board is going to take a step as extreme as this it probably does need to set out in more concrete terms what in its view was going wrong, what the failures were that justified this step,” he said.

“I just think they’ve got to do that, and I’m surprised that they didn’t come up with that straight away to be honest.”

Mr Holmes agreed the new ABC boss would need to publicly defend the broadcaster.

“I think it’s always been important for the ABC to have a real public spokesman in its Managing Director or its CEO, and the more successful ones, sometimes very competent ones like David Hill, famously, but he took on Canberra, I’m talking with his eight cents a day campaign, and on the whole I think he probably did more good than harm in doing that,” he said.

‘Australians will be curious’: Labor

Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said Australians would be curious about Ms Guthrie’s sudden sacking.

“There’s a couple of reasons that have been given in a statement that’s been provided by the ABC, and leadership style has been cited as a factor, and as you say the chairman has said he’s not going into the ins and outs of the decision out of respect for Michelle Guthrie and all of the people that are involved, and I can understand that, and I note that Michelle Guthrie herself says that her contract permits the board to terminate her appointment without cause and with immediate effect,” Ms Rowland told Sky News.
“But that said I think Australians will be curious as to what has transpired.

“Ultimately this is about who leads a taxpayer-funded institution, a very important institution in Australia’s democracy, and it’s also taxpayer funds that will be used to pay out the Managing Director’s contract at the end of the day.”

Ms Rowland said there would be opportunities for greater transparency on the decision at Senate Estimates next month.

“It took me completely by surprise. It’s a very big decision of the board. I found out when most of Australia found out as well, through the media, and the only direct contact I received was after the event, by the ABC chairman who contacted me directly, and that was after the ABC had released a statement, and that didn’t particularly add much to what was in the statement.

“I wasn’t aware of tensions. I was aware that there were some views about technology and content and a general idea of direction in which the ABC would be going, but I certainly wasn’t aware that that was apparently such a source of conflict as we’ve been reading in the last 24 hours.”

Ms Rowland said she had always found Ms Guthrie to be very professional.

“Labor and Ms Guthrie didn’t always see eye to eye on some particular policy issues, including around the closure of short wave radio and cuts to transcription services, for example, but I found she was open and responsive, and even though we didn’t always agree she was always very pleasant to deal with and I’m not aware of any of my peers who raised any particular issues with her that could have been unresolvable, but having said that, of course that’s in my capacity as an MP and as a shadow minister and I can appreciate that other people, particularly those within the ABC may well have had a different relationship,” she said.

She said she backed the view of jounalists’ union the MEAA that Ms Guthrie should have been a champion for public broadcasting.

“I think the ABC does need a champion in the face of what’s been ongoing sustained political attacks, both in a financial sense and an ideological sense, and I think it’s fair to say at initial estimates Michelle Guthrie was criticized, and I did also note this personally, that she didn’t see it as her role to advocate for more funding under questioning at Senate Estimates,” Ms Rowland said.

“But over time, and in particular in relation to the last budget cut of $83.7 million, Michelle Guthrie was unequivocal in stating that that cut would make it very hard for the ABC to meet its charter obligations.

“I think she was making the point very well. I think that the ABC overall was particularly good in highlighting the level of trust and the need for the ABC to remain a strong and well-funded and supported public institution, and look, I think time will tell whether or not that was effective at the end of the day.”

Asked about reports Ms Guthrie and Mr Milne had clashed over his advocacy of a new Jetstream database, Ms Rowland said she was aware of the need to modernize the ABC’s platform and develop a single repository of ABC content and archive material.

“I think that’s sound, and of course major technological investments are not new,” she said.

“For the ABC, an organization of that scale of course, it would be something that’s very significant. I’m not aware of all the ins and outs of the project, but I do appreciate that Michelle Guthrie was also very concerned about content, and I see that this is being interpreted in some sources as a technology versus content issue.

“I’ve always seen the two as quite complementary, and as I said I wasn’t aware that it was an issue of such conflict.”

‘Macca personifies the best of the ABC’: PM

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Ms Guthrie’s sacking was a matter for the ABC board, but commended the ABC’s work in regional areas, and particularly that of broadcaster Ian “Macca” MacNamara, who has presented Australia All Over on a Sunday morning since 1985.

“They’re an independent board. They employ the chief executive and I expect them to follow all the normal processes and protocols for that to occur, and no one has advised me that that hasn’t occurred through the minister,” Mr Morrison said.

“As I said yesterday I was advised of the board’s decision on Sunday night and they have taken that decision and I look forward to them getting on with the job of recruiting and recommending a new managing director for the ABC.

“I mean the ABC does important work around the country and particularly when I’ve been out in drought affected areas, I mean the work that the ABC does in rural and regional areas I think is incredibly important.

“In fact in the first few days in the job I commended Macca for the incredible job he does on Australia All Over.

“Every week, he has been doing it forever, and he has been a voice of comfort and council and encouragement to rural people all across the country, but particularly as they have gone through this tough time, so these are important services that are delivered to the Australian people and I think Macca personifies all the best of the ABC,” Mr Morrison said.

‘We have seen the guts ripped out’ of ABC regional services: McKenzie

Deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie said the ABC board was independent of government, but accused the ABC under Ms Guthrie and her predecessor Mark Scott of failing to deliver for rural and regional Australians.

“I think Ms Guthrie’s confused about why she was sacked,” Senator McKenzie told Sky News.

“I think it sounds like a lot of the ABC staff are confused about why the first woman in this role has been sacked, but I’ll leave that to the ABC board. They are independent and rightfully so.

“I think as deputy leader of the Nationals and somebody that’s had a really strong interest in this area since coming into parliament, I’m interested in the next managing director of the ABC actually having a focus on rural and regional Australia.

“We have seen the guts ripped out of our service provision not just under Ms Guthrie, she was using the $80m that we’d put in as a government to reinvest in the regions, but under the previous managing director Mark Scott there’d been a centralization to Sydney of staff and a reduction in service provision.

“We think of the short wave radio being cut right through the Northern Territory and Northern Australia, the implications for our Pacific endeavor as a result of cutting that short wave radio, so I want to make sure the next managing director of the ABC actually recognizes the key role the ABC plays in rural and regional communities and makes sure that the seven million of us that don’t live in a capital city get access to current affairs, news and entertainment that has a lot of our local content in it,” Senator McKenzie said.