More than 300 ABC staff to head to Parramatta to keep ‘relevant’

More than 300 ABC staff to wave goodbye to public broadcaster’s inner-Sydney newsroom in radical ­departure from its past.

ABC managing director David Anderson and chair Ita Buttrose in the Parramatta CBD in western Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: Ryan Osland

Two years ago, Ita Buttrose looked around the ABC’s inner-Sydney headquarters and decided the public broadcaster needed to escape its “little ghetto”.

“We (Ms Buttrose and ABC managing director David Anderson) were talking one day and I said, ‘I’m thinking we should move some staff out of Ultimo’. We need to get out of here — we’re a little ghetto, we need to explore’,” the ABC chairwoman told a business luncheon in western Sydney on Wednesday.”

In a move that will counter one of the fiercest and most often-­repeated criticisms of the national broadcaster — that it primarily caters to an inner-city audience, at the ­expense of those in the outer ­suburbs and the regions — the ABC announced on Wednesday it would relocate 300 staff from its Ultimo headquarters to a yet-to-be-built facility in Parramatta, in western Sydney, by the beginning of 2025.

Ms Buttrose and Mr Anderson were later photographed by The Australian in Parramatta’s central business district, just metres away from the favoured site for the media organisation’s proposed new facility.

ABC Headquarters in inner-city Sydney. Picture: David Swift

The picture of the ABC’s most powerful duo in western Sydney tells the story: the public broadcaster’s future will be a radical ­departure from its past.

ABC staff were informed of the move — which was first publicly mooted in a government-funded efficiency review last June — in an email from Mr Anderson.

“It will help us to be more ­connected, relevant, and engaged with communities in the ­demographic heart of Sydney,” the note read.

As part of the big sell, Ms Buttrose and Mr Anderson took their message to the a business forum on Wednesday afternoon.

Ms Buttrose acknowledged that moving about 20 per cent of the staff in Ultimo marked “the biggest ­decentralisation in the ABC’s ­history”.

But she also said she hoped that the migration of staff to the centre of the Sydney basin would overturn some of the public’s negative perceptions of the ­taxpayer-funded behemoth.

“Let’s be honest,” Ms Buttrose said. “For far too long, life in ­western Sydney has been under-reported, or misrepresented, in mainstream Australian media. With the ABC’s headquarters ­formerly at Gore Hill on the north shore of Sydney, and now at ­Ultimo in Sydney’s Pyrmont area, the ABC has also been regarded — with fair reason — as too inner-city focused.”

It’s understood about 200 staff from the ABC’s content divisions — including its news, entertainment and specialist branches — are slated to be shifted to the proposed facility at Parramatta, 24km west of Sydney’s CBD. The remaining 100 or so will be from support teams.

The ABC needs to serve all Australians.

That's why today's announcement that the ABC will move about 300 staff to Parramatta is a good first step.

Read my full statement: https://t.co/R3BAOUH5eD#auspolpic.twitter.com/nCMmDpmXjD

— Paul Fletcher (@PaulFletcherMP) June 16, 2021

“Parramatta will also be an ideal location for journalists and producers heading to cover stories throughout western Sydney,” Ms Buttrose told the business forum.

“It is certainly more convenient and central than Ultimo given the changing shape of modern Sydney.”

Between 1500 and 1700 staff are currently working at Ultimo.

The 2019-20 annual report says the ABC had 4051 full-time employees and 52.3 per cent were based in NSW, followed by 16.1 per cent in Victoria and 10.4 per cent in Queensland.

Ms Buttrose said the move would also assist with the organisation’s push to open employment opportunities to more Australians of diverse backgrounds.

“The ABC has often been seen as a place where only certain kinds of people worked,” she said.

But the move to Sydney’s western suburbs would be “our invitation to young people from many diverse backgrounds to aspire to a media career”.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said he welcomed the ABC’s move, adding that it was one for which he had long advocated.

“More diversity of people will mean more diversity of opinion among ABC staff and journalists, and any objective observer would agree that can only be a good thing,” Mr Fletcher said.

The move is one of several major issues to be canvassed by the ABC board over the next few months, including discussions on the national broadcaster’s newsrooms in other capital cities.