In Aunty’s playground, the Squad runs riot

Radio National Breakfast host Fran Kelly.

To steal from a reader, there is a group of women at the ABC that helps explain what’s gone wrong with the public broadcaster. The Squad, he called them. He listed Louise Milligan, Sally Neighbour, Laura Tingle, Annabel Crabb, Virginia Trioli, Fran Kelly and Sarah Ferguson. I’d remove Trioli and insert Patricia Karvelas.

The label fits because the left-wing politics of these women, as with their US congressional counterparts, are no secret. A few are charming. Some throw their weight around at the ABC more than others. But they all showcase a set of beliefs that hardly reflects the diversity of this country.

The Squad is part of why the highest-profile programs at the ABC have gone from bad to truly rotten. Kelly features a conga line of journalists on RN Breakfast who parrot the Canberra press gallery consensus. That’s not balance. And it’s so boring. Her obsession with climate change fails to stretch to scrutiny of the world’s biggest emitters: China and India. That’s not balance, either.

Annabel Crabb.

Laura Tingle.

Why should the ABC be a political playground for staff? Taxpayers should not have funded Crabb’s one-sided program about women in parliament. Karvelas’s panels are mostly conservative-free zones. And note how Tingle’s sharpness depends on who she is interviewing: the disgruntled has-been Julia Banks was given an embarrassingly easy ride.

When I was a board member, the question was what to do about Aunty. How to make it better, more entertaining, true to a good charter that requires it to be a broadcaster that reflects the country, not a sliver of inner-city obsessions. That is more imp­ort­ant today because the rot has set in at those parts that emanate from the big cities. A putrid mix of institutional arrogance and personal fiefdoms serves up a middle-finger salute to taxpayers too often.

Here’s what needs to change. First, the chairwoman needs to man up. Ita Buttrose will understand what man up means. Do not emulate the men who have sat in that corner office. Woman up, then, by fulfilling your duties as chairwoman. For goodness sake, this experienced media executive stood up to the likes of Kerry Packer yet appears to cower in the presence of ABC “stars” and executive producers who seem to really run the ABC.

Patricia Karvelas.

Sarah Ferguson.

The seduction of chairmen at the ABC became a performance art many years ago. Previous chairmen have felt the “love” of staff who invited them to shindigs, stroked their egos and provided masterclasses in how to ignore criticism. Once you’ve captured the chairman, you’re halfway home to avoiding change.

Seduce both the chief executive and the chairman and you’re home and hosed. And that’s the second biggest problem with the ABC. Weak management.

ABC managers have learned that Jonathan Shier, managing director from March 2000 until December 2001, was a make-or-break moment for the ABC. Shier had his faults, but he was the last boss who wanted to run the place in line with the charter rather than do as he was told by staff. Understanding that Shier was a threat to their hegemony, staff ran him out of town. And ever since, managing directors have run scared of staff.

In what universe, outside the ABC, would an employer stump up $200,000 to cover a defamation settlement and legal fees for an employee’s personal tweet? It was plain bonkers for David Anderson to bail out Milligan when Andrew Laming sued her for a defamatory tweet she posted not as a journalist but as citizen Milligan. No serious manager would subsidise the personal stuff-ups of an employee that damage the brand and reputation of the institution.

Louise Milligan.

Sally Neighbour.

It reeks of management being afraid of the people it is meant to manage on behalf of taxpayers who fund the joint. And what kind of message does it send to other ABC journalists that the managing director agreed that taxpayers would pay for Milligan’s Twitter mess? That Milligan is so special that normal rules don’t apply? Or if another journalist messes up like Milligan they can also expect taxpayers to bail them out?

The third problem is a powerless and ornamental board chosen to meet gender and geography targets. It’s why I stepped off the ABC board appointments panel a few years ago. It’s a mickey mouse operation that is forced to ignore merit for diversity targets. The result is that too many board members are excited to rub elbows with ABC “stars”. Some get excited about nice lunches and business-class flights, swinging through plush airline lounges for meetings. Control the Squad? Board inaction has emboldened them.

Inevitably, this lack of board and managerial oversight means the ABC doesn’t have the proper reporting lines that exist at other organisations. The ABC has always been a series of silos, some run as personal fiefdoms. Only it’s worse today. Look at the juvenile behaviour at Four Corners, the sheer indulgence of Ferguson putting together a one-sided program on Donald Trump that a first-year cadet journalist could have done at a fraction of the cost.

Four Corners operates as a power unto itself. When Milligan seemingly revealed a source for a Four Corners story, leading to a formal complaint, ABC management didn’t get involved. Not our issue, it said. Instead, Four Corners executive producer Neighbour sat in judgment of Milligan’s tweet. Nothing to see here, Neighbour said. Four Corners sets an example for other ABC staff. Not just the unbalanced reporting; Neighbour and Milligan, and maybe a few other Squad members, crack the whip at management. At a serious organisation, it is the other way around.

ABC managing director David Anderson and Chair Ita Buttrose. Picture: Ryan Osland

Here’s another problem. When journalists stuff up, timorous managers at the ABC say the fault lies with policies, not the journalist. So policies are redrafted. This has had several advantages: it has snowed some on the board, protected the recidivists from personal accountability and buried the issue at hand, usually forever.

When Anderson blamed defective ABC social media policies for ABC staff tweeting personal stuff under the ABC name, it was deja vu. But if various iterations of the ABC’s editorial policies have not fixed the bias, what will a new social media policy do? It’s not that hard to tell your employees to tweet on their own time, in their own name, not to damage the organisation and that if they mess up they will be held accountable.

At a normal outfit, performance pay and bonuses are used to hold managers to account for management failings. Not at the ABC. I saw first-hand how bonuses were paid irrespective of compliance with the charter or failing to rein in personal fiefdoms.

The ABC’s reporting structure remains nothing short of infantile. Cowardice among managers has worsened, with no apparent consequences for those managers.

If the ABC is to continue, it’s time to cut out the rot. A voluntary licence fee for these sections will test whether Australians want to fund personal fiefdoms.