Indigenous voice to parliament: ABC apologises for ‘regrettable’ Yes contribution
The ABC has been forced to apologise for providing video and audio for the Yes campaign’s John Farnham ‘You’re the Voice’ television advertisement.
The ABC has been forced to apologise for providing video and audio for the Yes campaign’s John Farnham “You’re the Voice” television advertisement.
The national broadcaster admitted on Thursday that it had made a “regrettable” error in allowing the Yes campaign to use the archival material.
Farnham gifted the Yes campaign his famous song last week, saying he hoped it would “change the lives of our First Nations people for the better”, and provide a boost for the bid to alter the constitution.
The ABC admitted to providing the Yes campaign 26 seconds of video and 5 seconds of audio in breach of the broadcaster’s policy covering the use of archival material.
“This was done in error as it does not meet our policy on the use of ABC archival footage and is regrettable,” an ABC spokesman said.
“We are updating our licensing processes to avoid this situation in the future.”
No campaign leader Warren Mundine said the mistake was “a joke”. “I just find it bizarre that (someone) in the ABC actually did it … there should be a very, very serious investigation into this,” Mr Mundine told The Australian.
“The ABC is the national broadcaster and they should be bipartisan on this whole approach – let people make up their own minds.”
Mr Mundine said the Yes campaign should delete the ABC’s material.
“They should (delete it) because they were not supposed to be given that stuff,” he said.
“If the Yes campaign is going to be honest about it, then they’ve got to remove it and hand it back.”
The ABC failed to respond to a question from The Australian as to whether the broadcaster would ask the Yes campaign to delete the material.
Mr Mundine said that the error followed a trend of poor performances by the broadcaster.
“The ABC needs to really, seriously look at some of its procedures and accountability within them, because they’ve had a number of things happen now,” he said.
“This is an organisation paid for by the taxpayers to give news and a whole wide range of (other services), and this idea that they just give things out there is bizarre.”
The Yes campaign was approached for comment.
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