From Monday to Wednesday, the papers picked over the Mark Scott story, grew bored, and moved on.

No journalists went back into the files of their newspaper for the details of the NSW education department imbroglio.

Once more our amnesiac media covered the issue in the grey Blanket of Forgetting. But we are talking about more than the rise of one managerialist technocrat – this defines the major issues facing the ABC today. The decision may affect the future of our media.

Before we enter the swamp of these weighty issues, let’s splash about with Paddy McGuinness, since he does represent the mad Right which has caused the ABC such consistent grief.

Given an op-ed slot on this vital space, Paddy McGuinness was vindictive, and probably imagines he used a real argument. He believes that Scott is “very much like a younger and taller clone of McDonald”, who has somehow had his brain turned by the evil socialists at the ABC. The True Blue Tories on the board can’t stop him, even though they are a clear majority, and the clarity of their minds is unimpeded by complexity.

Scott, with “one of Harvard’s meaningless degrees in management” will support the “imperialism” of the ABC, which is an odd way of describing the evolution of ABC Online. Have they stolen the internet from roving bands of digital Aborigines?

Even weirder, Paddy McG has A Theory to explain why the government tolerates the chardonnay socialists in the ABC, even though they drive decent right-wingers wild with rage.

‘Why the tolerance of the Howard haters? Why does McDonald, one of the PM’s closest friends, not get upset by this? Simply because he knows, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen knew in his day, that every hyperbolic outpouring of hate and prejudice by the ABC is votes in the ballot box for the Coalition side”.

So, providing the evidence that Iraq was a terrible mistake is going to increase Howard’s vote? Criticising DIMIA is making ABC listeners lurch to the Right?

“Shitay, that ABC is so fuckun rude to our John Howard that I might just change my vote and support him.”

However, the main topic here is not McGuinness’s strange approach to human motivation. We are chewing over Mark Scott’s reputation.

Stephen Mayne is himself an old Liberal who turned independent, and now runs wild, fanging the greedy boneless hands of his former Lords. In Crikey, he has told us that all is right with Mark Scott and the world. Various people who should know have popped up from Fairfax to say that he never interfered with content or angle. The allegation that he pushed The Age to back the coalition editorially before the last election is false. The people who absolve him are the very same people who actually did have the massive brainfart which made them do it, so I believe them.

Appropriately, the last word came on ABC radio, in a broadcast which I picked over on Screen Hub.

“Today, the ABC disseminated the transcript of yesterday’s The Media Report, which interviewed Mark fairly extensively. The audio reveals that he is on the sporific end of charismatic, and should never be allowed to front anything. He has put together a defensive version of his career that reads more like crisis management than a public job inhabited with pleasure.

He says he gets advice from his father, criticised in the education department days in NSW. Says that his father mixed public and private employment. Says he helped to sack the acerbic Paddy McGuinness. Says he is about outcomes rather than ego. Are you still awake?

Personally, I was saddened by a section in the middle, in which Gerald Tooth, gumming away like a genial dog on an old shoe, tried to provoke a bit of energy by playing a piece of the Senate Estimates attack on the ABC. In private enterprise, it would stand as evidence of bullying and pay for a victim’s retirement. In parliament, it is just the democratic right of a senator to smear a public servant.

But Mark did not in any way acknowledge the emotional content of this. That surviving this kind of thing – “I find your reply paltry, unacceptable, and we’ll be referring this matter further. I thought your reply was absolutely appalling.” – is personally repulsive.

It is a drizzle of nasty minded, venomous carping which is designed to wear down independence.

Mark Scott, unfortunately, gave no indication he was aware of its effect.

“And look, I think the ABC is owned by the Australian public; the government and the parliament are the people’s representatives, and it struck me that on that committee there were a wide spectrum of views and those views probably each of them had their constituency. And so what I’ll want to do, is I’ll want to talk with the Senators, find out the issues that are of concern for them, and make sure, as I think has been the case in the past, that the ABC has taken those issues seriously, and attempted to deal with them.”

Time to put the brimstone tablets in his tea.”

Time perhaps to read him the psych dictionary definition of “identifying with the oppressor”.

I remain worried about the future of the ABC. Scott’s management career has been built out of cutting and rending, the “change management” which has devastated so many organisations, ruined brands, and stifled creativity.

Neither Mark Scott or Head of Television Kim Dalton have any attachment to the historical culture of the ABC, and we don’t know how Scott secretly felt about the (alleged) mess at Fairfax. He may come into the ABC with a “reforming” zeal he hid as he trotted in Fred Hilmer’s shadow.

The industry generally believes that the ABC conceals significant waste behind accounting practices which a generous observer of bureaucracies might describe as brave, unique and technically surprising. Shier certainly upped the cost of management, appointing more layers and bribing them munificently. They still turned on him, of course.

So we were fascinated by the recent KPMG review into the “adequacy and efficiency” of the ABC. At last the ferrets would clamber into the hollow logs, and cynical investigators would apply blowtorches to help managers find a logical explanation for the money trails. There would be screaming and wailing.

Of course the report is completely confidential, and we who had waited for so long were denied the pleasure of reading it. Even the conclusions were kept in a lead box, protected by hydra-headed demons. Or public servants who wanted to keep their jobs, which is the same thing.

To the surprise of the ABC cynics, KPMG did not savage the ABC at all. Instead, a leaked draft apparently said Auntie needs an additional $125 million over the next triennium just to maintain existing services.

“A secret consultants’ report into ABC operations has found the national broadcaster delivers good value for money but needs a significant increase in funding to maintain services… extracts of the draft executive summary, which warn of cuts to services if the ABC does not receive an extra $125million over the next three years above inflation …. Even with indexation we do not believe the ABC could sustain its present range, quality and mix of outputs at its present level of funding,” the draft says.”

The recommendation asked for a 7 per cent increase, still far less than the cumulative losses since Howard took power in 1996. Instead, the budget provided a total of $88.2million, for additional projects, all of which were specifically laid out, thereby reducing the autonomy of the ABC. A poisoned chalice at the grimmest of wakes.

I know the ABC’s financial tracking systems are slack. Anyone who tries to negotiate an in-kind deal walks into a kind of weird netherland. Where is the money actually going to come from? How are ABC resources to be costed? Why do so many people have to sign off on any documents?

From the outside, it looks like the place exists in a state of permanent tension between good people trying to manipulate the system to do good work, and pompous, small minded pricks defending completely useless jobs.

However, I think a combination of common sense and the recent review suggests that any accounting chaos, and inflated management costs, is a minor issue compared to the huge funding shortfall. As one of the “two Rogers” – from the veteran and now quiescent production company of Simpson and LeMesurier – said, the increase in drama budget is about one decent sized miniseries. (Not at Australian prices – they are really thinking of our international competitors.)

It doesn’t look good. Mark Scott is by inclination a cutter and a reducer. The organisation is under tremendous financial strain. Production is crippled. Its 400 journalist must cover a massive brief, from Wagga to the Wailing Wall, the Murray-Darling to the Greenland glaciers. The internet shows us the great holes in the ABC coverage.

At the same time, newspapers are being cut back, a “deregulated” media will whack diversity, leaving the ABC to take up the burden.

To make the scenario even more apocalyptic, just look at the timing. A generation of journalists and program makers is plodding through or towards its fifties. The crisis attacks the intergenerational transfer; the newer cohorts are less well trained and much less experienced. The always tatty ABC training system has disintegrated completely.

However, that is not as serious as you, and the Unions, might think. The drama and entertainment side under Kim Dalton is easy to invigorate from the independent sector. I have no fears on that score.

But ABC news and current affairs is unique. I wish I had the skills of those 400 journalists, and I know I don’t.

The career of the late Richard Carleton is a good example. After 25 years in the ABC, he was in his prime, a force for political honesty, a danger to cant and lies. I have been told he only left because the ABC repeatedly forgot to renew his contract. When Gerald Stone at Sixty Minutes found out, he offered Carleton freedom, a larger audience, the chance to dominate. Instead, he never regained his former élan. The context was wrong. In news and current affairs, there is only the ABC.

The cultural sector desperately needs a properly functioning ABC. Imagine if Radio National had enough money. If late night talk shows were the norm. If ABC2 was alive with cutting edge comedy and music. If ABC online transcribed everything, podcasted all of RN. If ABC enterprises made enough CDs, ran the best DVD sales library in Australia. If the whole thing was advertised and promoted properly on other media. Do you understand the shrivelling effect of the opportunity lost, never missed because it never developed?

There’s another clawed and tusky creature lurking in the fog which the print media has not paid much attention to. The outsourcing demon. I imagine the press misses it because the issue is simple in print, although even here I suspect the relationship between staff, contract and freelance piece workers is evolving.

In the Moses/Duckmanton past, ABC production was carried out by staff, in owned studios, with equipment bought and maintained by ABC experts. It led to parallel universes, in which the ABC and the independent production companies have very little to do with each other. In the comparable situation in the UK, they even had separate unions, and completely unrelated pay, conditions and job descriptions.

In a much smaller industry, the situation is insupportable. You can’t have a lifetime job in an institution as a sitcom director. You just don’t stay funny without challenge and variety. Besides which, the independent sector wants work, to help stabilise incomes and production companies.

Year after year, the independents have chipped their way into Fortress ABC, aided and abetted by the government, inspired partly by the example of SBS. Now we have reached the stage where the additional money for drama in the federal budget has to be spent with the independents. The arrangement is known colloquially as “ABCi”, to reflect SBSi, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the broadcaster. Ironically, SBSi is slowly folding itself into SBS, as it takes over television production functions.

This too is a potential flashpoint. And one in which the independent sector will have very little solidarity with the Friends of the ABC, MEAA, or the staff association. The independent sector sees internal ABC production as a bastion of privilege, and we don’t like it at all.

I shudder to think of the implications if the independents and ABC staff end up at each others’ throats.

The ABC Board is no bastion of sanity. Deprived of anyone who knows anything about broadcasting, infested by ideological lunatics tempted to cut and hack, with a retiring chair, it is more likely to relish industrial confrontations.

And, possibly, it may actually enjoy the spectacle of an organisation responding to crisis by chewing its own stomach out.

Don’t forget – the Fairfax Unionists once called Mark Scott “Picket Schmicket”. It is a cheap crack, but we may all pay a high price.

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Some of the facts cited here come from The Australian and Crikey, and Screen Hub.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 1:02 am and is filed under Austrapolitics, journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.