The ABC is facing criticism over its decision to fly 26 members of the ABC board, senior executive and advisory council to Alice Springs for a community forum next week at a time when the broadcaster is cutting jobs and reining in budgets.
The managing director, Michelle Guthrie, and the ABC board members will fly business class, and some of the group will attend the live broadcast of Q&A in Alice Springs on Monday night to coincide with Naidoc week.
The secretary of the ABC section of the Community and Public Sector Union, Sinddy Ealy, said the trip was nothing more than a junket at a time when 200 ABC staffers were losing their jobs due to budget cuts.
In March, Guthrie announced 200 jobs would go by the end of the month as part of her 12-month transformation plan. There will be major changes to content areas later this year.
“This is a ridiculously excessive use of the ABC’s already stretched resources,” Ealy said. “We are all for the ABC board consulting with the community all around Australia, but flying business class to just one location is an incredibly expensive and wasteful way to do it.”
An ABC spokesman said the event is one of three forums that will be held in regional Australia this year “and is designed to bring the community together to share ideas about the future direction of the ABC”.
“The forums were announced at the end of last year in response to a government request for greater community engagement,” he said. “Both the Q&A broadcast and the community forum help ensure the ABC is meeting its commitment to audiences living in rural and regional Australia.
“ABC Regional will also present a series of in-language station IDs as part of Naidoc’s theme this year, Our Languages Matter.”
The Alice Springs community forum is the first of the forums to be held in regional areas this year under a government deal with Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm in return for his support of the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Two more will be held, one in Wagga Wagga and one in Port Pirie.
Under the deal, agreed to by the ABC and SBS, the public broadcasters will hold half their board meetings each year with open community forums.
When pushing for the deal last year, Leyonhjelm said the ABC board needed to hear from ordinary Australians who live outside the “goat’s cheese curtain” of Sydney and Melbourne.
Guthrie said the location for the first community forum had been planned to coincide with Naidoc week.
“We wanted to ensure that the first community forum was held in regional Australia,” Guthrie said. “It’s no accident that the forum coincides with Naidoc Week and the ABC’s 85th birthday. The ABC tells Australian stories so it’s fitting that we are heading to the heart of Australia for our first community forum.”
For the Alice Springs forum the ABC is taking not only the eight board members but senior executives and members of its advisory council as well.
Although the forums were designed around board meetings, the board will not hold its meeting in Alice Springs this time because they held one in Sydney two weeks ago, a spokesman said.
“The community forum is an opportunity for members of the ABC board, the ABC leadership team and the advisory council to hear from regional audiences and directly discuss issues relating to the ABC,” he said.
But Ealy said there was no reason for the ABC executives and the advisory council to attend.
“The ABC’s eight board members should be travelling around the country seeking to better understand what the community needs from the ABC,” she said. “Instead they’re spending a small fortune sending dozens of people on a single trip.”
“Right now the ABC is sacking 200 dedicated and hard-working people, most of whom are directly involved in making content for all Australians. ABC management has tried to justify these harsh cuts by saying it needs to free up funding for content. Staff will be horrified to see some of the money instead spent on business-class flights.”
A spokesman for the ABC said the travel guidelines for members of the board were set by the remuneration tribunal and all other staff members and members of the advisory council are travelling economy class.
