No place at ABC for chairman’s stupidity

SO, now we know that not only did ABC chairman Justin Milne try to make himself the broadcaster’s CEO-in-chief, he also played at being editor-inchief.

Bur arguably, it’s not so much that he stepped over the line – or indeed, two lines – but that he did it so very ineptly.

I thought I was joking when I wrote this week about his 20th century reference to (sacked ABC CEO) Michelle Guthrie having a “great Rolodex”.

Surely someone who was as digital savvy as Milne was supposed to be, could have come up with a slightly less moth-eaten metaphor.

Even Guthrie having a voluminous “speed dial” would have been (slightly) less cringe-inducing.

But now we discover he also did the equivalent of a teenager taking an embarrassing photo and texting it to a “friend” – and the world.

Milne sent Guthrie an email telling her to sack ABC journalist Emma Alberici; he seemingly doesn’t understand how these newfangled things work. He might just as well have sent it to the newspapers. Oh, wait, it turns out he “did”.

It all comes down to a very simple question: can someone so stupid continue to be chairman of a $1 billion-a-year corporation like the ABC? His stupidity is actually even deeper and worse.

A chairman and a board of the ABC actually do have a fundamental responsibility to “interfere” in not just the conventional management of the ABC but indeed its editorial structures, procedures and operations.

But to “interfere” in a systemic structured way; absolutely not the way he did, for a “mate” who not only appointed him chairman but was the prime minister and the leader of a political party. C HAIRMAN and board should be hauling the managing director over the coals for the failure of the ABC to discharge its legislative obligations to provide impartial and balanced coverage of news and current affairs.

They should be instructing the CEO to discharge his or her duties as CEO; they should be demanding management deliver outcomes to properly constructed metrics, not one-off “Malcolm will be mad” phone calls, messages or emails.

Further, he as chairman and the board should not be trying to interfere directly in the running of the ABC.

Milne compounded his behaviour by not only trying to be effectively an editor-in chief – trying to instruct Guthrie on dayto-day operational matters – but also as I wrote earlier in the week, as CEO-inchief.

He was pushing his own massive digitisation project called Jetstream and talking directly to executives over the head of his CEO. This is at best “idiosyncratic” and arguably completely inappropriate.

What makes his behaviour even more appalling is that he has cruelled the pitch for a replacement chairman and board to haul ABC management and even more the staff into line in a properly structured and appropriate, and indeed obligatory way.

It is impossible to see how he can continue as chairman. If he’d entertained any ideas of “doing a Hill” – David Hill, who was appointed chairman of the ABC and then almost immediately “got appointed CEO by his board” – that’s evaporated.

It’s also impossible to see how the rest of the board can survive.