Michelle Guthrie fires up in anticipated defence of ABC

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie will seek to head off a potential staff revolt and strongly defend the national broadcaster.

Managing Director of the ABC, Michelle Guthrie, is under pressure to defend the institution. Picture: AAP

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie will tomorrow seek to head off a potential staff revolt and strongly defend the national broadcaster from its political and commercial critics.

Guthrie will deliver an “eight-punch combo”, according to one observer, in a speech titled “Standing Up for the ABC” at the Melbourne Press Club.

Guthrie is expected to address the value of public broadcasting — and the “added value” the ABC provides the community ­beyond its programs and networks.

The managing director is ­expected to eclipse her previous most-forthright comments, made at a dinner gathering of the ABC Friends last October, when she stated policies were being ­driven by a “political vendetta”.

But Guthrie and her executives have been criticised for “staying ­silent” and failing to adequately defend the broadcaster during her two years in the top job. ABC Melbourne radio host Jon Faine ­devoted 10 minutes of his program last Thursday to the broadcaster’s battle for survival, excoriating his bosses for allowing it to be “done over” while they stuck to ­behind-the-scenes advocacy.

“I’ve been here since 1989 busting my guts for a vision and a set of values and, quite frankly, I’m sick of getting it ripped apart because of the failure of our managers,” Faine said, calling on Guthrie and ABC chairman Justin Milne to do a better job of telling the ABC’s “story”.

Co-host Corrie Perkin publicised the ABC Friends’ crowd-funding campaign, which launched the same day and has raised more than $35,000.

Events at the weekend have served to heighten ABC staff members’ sense of being under ­attack. The future of the ABC is shaping up as an election issue after the Liberal Party federal council voted to privatise the ­national broadcaster.

The government immediately insisted it has “no plans” to do so but Labor seized upon the rank-and-file vote to strengthen its claim that the ABC is not safe under the Coalition. “If you love the ABC, you’d be wise not to trust Mr Turnbull,” Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said yesterday. “The Labor Party doesn’t want to privatise the ABC.”

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said it was “not the position of the government to alter the ownership arrangements of the public broadcasters”.

And Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters in Sydney on Saturday: “The government has no plans to privatise the ABC.”

Mr Fifield said the Turnbull government had “a range of measures that we’re seeking to ­imple­ment to enhance the effici­ency, the accountability and the transparency of ABC operations”. He named the efficiency ­review and the pausing of indexation of the broadcaster’s annual $1.1 billion ­budget over the next three years.

Lobby group ABC Friends said it would hold a series of nationwide rallies next month and called on Liberal Party members who valued the public broadcaster to break ranks and join its campaign.

“Only a revolt by many loyal Liberal Party members and supporters can now protect the ABC from the ideological assault of the right wing of this party,” ABC Friends national president Margaret Reynolds, a former ALP ­senator, said.

More than 80 per cent of the community supported public broad­casting, she said. “It is not a plaything of the extremists who have dismissed public opinion in pursuit of their preoccupation with private profits,” she said.

Guthrie’s speech tomorrow follows the announcement of the $84m funding freeze and efficiency review in the May budget, and a string of official complaints about the ABC’s political and economics coverage.

Mr Shorten has vowed to ­reinstate the lost ABC funding if Labor wins the next election. A Labor petition calling on the public to send “a clear message of support” for the ABC’s continued taxpayer funding had more than 41,880 signatures yesterday.

“The only way to save the ABC is to change the government,” Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said at the weekend. “The out-of-touch Liberals want to dismantle a vital institution in our democracy and silence the independent voice that has spoken to and of our nation for over 85 years.”

Ms Rowland said privatising the ABC could mean “commercial influences” infiltrating its news and current affairs, the introduction of advertising during children’s programming and local drama and documentaries placed behind a paywall.

However, executives at the ­top commercial television networks are understood to be doubtful whether the Australian market has room for ­another for-profit operator.

A privatised ABC would have to compete for advertising dollars in a $3.76bn television market that is buffeted by changing ­viewer habits — while also doing battle with commercial radio and streaming providers, plus SBS, the other public broadcaster, which is funded by both taxpayers and ­advertising. One commercial television ­insider noted the ­struggles of third-ranked Ten, which was bought by US giant CBS last year, following a spell in administration.

The ABC declined to comment on the Liberal Party motion.

At the ABC Friends dinner last year, Guthrie addressed the government’s competitive neutrality inquiry, which is examining whether the ABC and SBS use government funding to unfairly disadvantage rival commercial media, and to which submissions close this Friday.

“Legislation designed to further a political vendetta by one party uncomfortable with being scrutinised by our investigative programs is not good policymaking,” Guthrie said at the time, ­indirectly referencing a Four Corners investigation into Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party, which had secured the ­inquiry and a government pledge to reveal the salaries of the ABC’s highest-paid staff as part of a political deal.

ABC executives see the ­inquiry as a charter review by default, ­inquiring into the ABC’s purpose.