The Mocker: My dream for a culturally safe working environment at the ABC

Kim Williams, John Lyons, Justin Stevens and David Anderson.

As one who was both aghast and distressed to learn the ABC fosters an oppressive and dangerous environment for people of colour and other minority employees, I was relieved to hear that management has finally taken the first step towards ameliorating their Dickensian working conditions.

The driver for this was a no-confidence motion in managing director David Anderson passed last week by ABC employees who are also members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA). One hundred and twenty-eight of them, to be precise, or around 2.6 per cent of the ABC’s workforce. Among other things, they have demanded management provide a “culturally informed process for supporting staff who face criticism and attack,” and take “urgent action on the lack of security and inequality that journalists of colour face”.

In response, ABC News director Justin Stevens emailed editorial staff, imploring employees to “stay united”. He announced he intends “holding listening sessions with culturally diverse staff in News” given they are “finding it difficult to freely express their views”. In addition, he has appointed Indigenous Affairs editor and Dja Dja Wurrung/Yorta Yorta woman Bridget Brennan to “co-ordinate an urgent piece of work” to examine “international best practice on providing support in culturally safe newsrooms and bringing ideas and recommendations to the News Executive.”

This move cannot come soon enough. According to MEAA acting chief executive Adam Portelli, “the progress that has been made in diversifying the ABC has gone backwards”. When I read that I checked ABC’s annual report for last year. To my horror there was scant reference to improving diversity. Aside that is from the ABC’s Diversity & Inclusion Standing Committee, the Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Plan, the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, the Diversity and Inclusion Report, the News Diversity Advisory Group, the Screen Diversity and Inclusion Network, and the ABC’s partnership with an Indigenous organisation to ensure “supplier diversity”.

In fact, ‘diversity’ was mentioned only 73 times in the 284-page report. We are talking blink-and-you’ll-miss-it references. My dismay was compounded when I discovered that only 12.9 per cent of the ABC’s non-casual workforce are LGBTQIA+. Then there is the dastardly patriarchy. Women fill only 55.4 per cent of executive roles and 54.9 per cent of the ABC’s workforce. Indigenous employees make up 3.3 per cent and workers with a disability 5.4 per cent. If those figures represent diversity going backwards at the ABC, Adam Portelli, what on earth were they before?

ABC fill-in presenter Antoinette Lattouf was sacked over social media posts on Gaza.

Ah, you say, but the real issue is cultural diversity and empowerment. Well, no. Over a quarter of the workforce – 25.7 per cent – are in the “culturally and linguistically diverse background” (CALD) category. These employees occupy 20.4 per cent of executive positions. And 24.2 per cent are in content-maker roles. For the last five years they have had a dedicated network group (ABC Belong). Its charter is to “increase awareness and representation of cultural and linguistic diversity” in the workforce and content and “to provide a safe space for the CALD community and its allies to meet and support one another.”

Suffice to say this is not a workplace where the staff canteen offers only steak and three veg for lunch.

Nevertheless, there could be something in this cultural safety racket for yours truly. Having an Irish background, I tend to be forthright. It is very difficult, in fact nigh impossible, for me to hold my tongue in certain situations, particularly when grifters, race opportunists and censorious ideologues presume to tell me how to think and act. In the unlikely event I ever get offered a job at the ABC, I look forward to pointing out a few home truths both on air and internally. This of course will result in numerous complaints, but I need only to invoke my cultural safety immunity. All good?

Since the Brennan review has been announced, we have already seen an example of this playing out. The employee concerned is none other than Brennan. Appearing on ABC News Breakfast during a live cross on Australia Day, she went on an activist bent.

“For First Nations people, for my people, this is a very important day to remember our ancestors and those who fought for many decades to improve the living standards for our people and remember that it always was and always will be Aboriginal land,” she said.

So much for ABC editorial policies which require that presenters “Gather and present news and information with due impartiality” and forbid them from presenting analysis and commentary as ABC editorial opinion. But when that was put to the national broadcaster on the day, a spokeswoman made it clear that managerial gumption is non-existent at the organisation.

“The ABC backs her completely,” she said. In other words, Brennan has a culturally safe get out of jail card. Any guesses as to what her review findings will be?

ABC News Director Justin Stevens recently emailed editorial staff, imploring employees to “stay united”.

In short, demands for a culturally safe workplace are sophistry. They hold that minority employees who screech oppression and victimhood have a higher calling. Culturally safe means editorial policies requiring accuracy do not apply to them, because what they say is their “truth”.

Culturally safe means they do not have to answer to the ABC complaints process. Culturally safe means they get a platform for their prejudices, whether that is by accusing Israel of genocide, or browbeating white people about their privilege, or ranting about stolen land and reparations. Culturally safe means they are a victim of racism, misogyny, or Islamophobia when their extreme views result in audience backlash, and that ABC management must take urgent measures to ‘protect’ them.

Culturally safe means that mainstream Australians, the very people these presenters despise, must fund their activism and livelihood. And the good news for their allies is they too, no matter what their seniority, can stand under the culturally safe umbrella. Witness for example the blatant declaration of ABC global affairs editor John Lyons, who reportedly said at last week’s MEAA meeting that he was “embarrassed” at the organisation’s “pro-Israel bias”.

This is what happens to public institutions where employee entitlement and management timidity define workplace culture. In a statement last week, outgoing ABC chair Ita Buttrose was outraged at the no confidence motion in Anderson, saying “It is abhorrent and incorrect that people would suggest that he has shown a lack of support for independent journalism and journalists”.

This is your legacy, Ita Buttrose, and you have left one hell of a mess for your successor, Kim Williams to clean up. If only you had spent the last five years enforcing the ABC charter instead of being a cipher for a workers’ collective. The more you try to appease the entitled and the outraged, the more they will take advantage of you. That is human nature. Always has been, always will be.