Words of advice for the new ABC boss: Leave your door open and ignore the monkeys

Of all the people in all of the world, the ABC board landed on a local candidate when it went looking for a replacement for David Anderson, outgoing managing director. And who did it pick?

Hugh Marks, former chief executive of Nine, who left the company unexpectedly in 2021. Completely out of the blue. Then revealed he was in a relationship with a member of his leadership team. And just now, he’s revealed that he had no idea that Nine had cultural problems during his tenure.

The ABC’s new MD and former Nine boss Hugh Marks.Credit: Graphic illustration: Nathan Perri

To be honest, I’m totally on board with the decision. After all, the board must have done a really thorough search with a reputable headhunting firm. God bless them all, and good luck to all who sail in her.

SBS MD James Taylor wasn’t interested in the gig. He had the good sense to know that even though the ABC is a bigger fish – more responsibility and more status – it would also be nothing but trouble. Hours, days and weeks in Senate estimates. Scrutiny from the entire universe. Although maybe not so much flak from the conservative side of politics. Let’s not forget Marks and Peter Costello got on very well during their time working together at Nine. Marks even hosted a Liberal Party fundraiser at Nine’s old digs in Willoughby. He later said it was a mistake.

Now, the Albanese government – which ought to know which side its bread is buttered – has announced additional funding of $83 million for the ABC and a commitment to legislate five-year funding terms for the ABC and SBS.

But back to Marks. To summarise the ABC briefly, recent history of just the past few months will reveal plummeting radio ratings, staff unease about recent management recruits, refusal to renew the contracts of much-loved presenters (love you, Sarah and Simon), Antoinette Lattouf, wholesale snipping, nipping and cutting and a chair who turns out to be more interventionist than you might imagine. Accusations of racism. Sexism. And ageism. A partial abandonment of its 50/50 project. Have I left anything out? I mean, it’s the full catastrophe.

Hugh Marks pictured in 2019 with former Nine executive Clare Gill and the man he would ultimately replace at as ABC managing director, David Anderson.Credit: Peter Rae

All of this is about to be overseen by a man who says that when he was chief executive of Nine, he had no idea about the company’s cultural problems, about sexual harassment and sexual assault at work, about routine bullying. OK, then.

So I asked Anna Cody, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner what advice she might offer Marks in his new gig. She was straightforward.

Leadership, she says, is demonstrated through consulting and listening to your workforce. It’s about modelling good behaviour. It’s about having robust measures for reporting and responding to sex-based harassment and gender discrimination. She wants to remind him that all employers now have a positive duty to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and sex-based harassment from their workplaces.

We didn’t have a positive duty to protect us back in the day when Darren Wick was allowed to roam free at Channel Nine. But everyone should have been able to trust their bosses to protect them from the kind of behaviour of which Wick – and others – stand accused.

I asked Leanne Cutcher, professor of management and organisational studies at the University of Sydney, about why so many chief executives and others adopt the stance of those three (unwise) monkeys. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

She says it’s an evasion tactic. And no, I’m not accusing Marks particularly of this. I have no reason to believe he is not telling the truth that he knew nothing, saw nothing. But how does this happen time and time again?

Cutcher says companies too often treat complaints on an individual basis instead of recognising them as structural, endemic. A culture that is misogynistic enables this behaviour and also enables the person in charge to say: “I didn’t know that was going on”.

But I also run past her this idea I have, from personal experience, that some managers don’t want to know trouble.

She knows instantly what I’m talking about: “There is a kind of manager who it’s not actually possible to tell anything. They don’t want problems, they want solutions.”

Love that for them. Love those solutions, people! But seriously, sometimes there are genuine problems and employers need to understand that and deal with it. I mean on an organisational level. Don’t let victims feel so alone and so isolated.

So Cutcher also has advice for Marks. She says that the usual cliche when a new boss arrives is that they send an email to all staff that says: “My door is always open.”

“He’s got to mean it. He’s got to know as much about the workplace culture as he does about the television and radio ratings and which journalist has the most clicks. They need to care about this stuff at a strategic and organisational level. What is it about our organisation that makes it unsafe for these people?”

It is, as Cutcher says, not enough to say to individuals, “There, there, it will be OK after you’ve had a bit of a cry and a pat on the head”.

Just a reminder that I am confident Marks is not a patting-on-the-head kind of guy. But it’s difficult to fix a culture that’s so entrenched.

I wish him the best. I wish him a career with no chaos and I wish all of us a broadcaster that reflects a broader, bigger Australia and a government which funds that.

Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.