Before the last election the Labor party committed to restoring the position of a staff elected representative on the ABC board, a position abolished by Howard who also went on to stack the ABC board with the likes of Keith Windshuttle, Janet Albrechtsen and a host of other right wingers. Not surprisingly the board appointed a former Liberal party staffer, businessman Mark Scott to the position of CEO thereby completing the right wing takeover of the top level of the ABC.
Plenty of commentators have labelled the staff position on the ABC board as some kind of throwback to the heyday of socialism but few of these commentators actually have any real idea how disconnected management in the ABC is from the actual business of making and distributing media. Of course the politics of the management agenda since the demise of the staff position has been to attack the independent productive capacity of the ABC in radio and TV through a process of amalgamations, realignments and outsourcing while also pursuing an idealogically motivated witch hunt in search of left wing bias in news and current affairs. While the bill proposed by the government is a small step in the bringing more transparency back into the ABC it remains to be seen whether or not the bill get passed and how long it takes before the position gets filled.
In the meantime it is also worth noting that Mark Scott collected an additional $30,000 last year bringing his pay to somewhere between $645,000 and $659,999. Meanwhile, the poor non-executive board members, like Janet, collect a measly figure somewhere between $45,000 and $60,000 – hardly seems worth their while. Obviously with that sort of money on offer, the new independent Nomination Panel will have a hard time finding quality replacements for the likes of Keith and Janet, even if the only thing the board does is turn up to half a dozen meetings every year.
