The ABC’s chief executive, Michelle Guthrie, has labelled a push to publish the names and salaries of ABC presenters as “completely unprecedented” and “massively unfair”, and warned it would constitute a breach of the Privacy Act.
Guthrie made the comments to Senate estimates on Tuesday, fiercely defending the ABC against “sectional claims, red tape and political vendettas” that she said threaten the public broadcaster’s independence.
The communications minister, Mitch Fifield, has written to the ABC demanding it publish a list of the names and salaries of all staff who earn more than $200,000.
The move follows a deal between the Turnbull government and One Nation to pass its media ownership bill in return for increased pay transparency and a “competitive neutrality” review about ABC and SBS’s competition with commercial rivals.
Guthrie told estimates the ABC already published corporate accounts which show that 150 of more than 4,000 people in the organisation earn more than $200,000,
“We don’t list individual names with salaries,” she said. “We were advised by the [communications] department and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet that listing individual names on the website would breach the Privacy Act.”
Guthrie questioned what additional benefit listing individuals names would achieve and said she did not understand why the ABC was asked to list names and salaries “in a more extensive way” than other publicly funded bodies.
“It’s massively unfair to our journalists and presenters given they work in a competitive media sector,” she said.
In comments to Guardian Australia, Fifield said the government had given the ABC until 13 November to respond to the “enhanced transparency policy”.
“If the ABC determines it won’t or can’t comply, the government will introduce legislation to seek to give effect to the policy,” he said.
Asked to explain which “political vendettas” needed to be guarded against in regulating the ABC, Guthrie noted that One Nation parliamentarians have said they are seeking journalists’ salaries because they want to find “dud presenters”.
“That is a level of scrutiny not appropriate for an independent public broadcaster,” she said.
Guthrie said One Nation complaints about the ABC had “absolutely not” influenced its editorial content, which has included a Four Corners special scrutinising the minor party.
Asked about the addition of ensuring “fair and balanced” reporting to the obligations of the ABC board, another One Nation demand, Guthrie said the ABC was concerned about “how those words will be read by people who choose to take an aggressive view towards achieving a false balance”.
The requirement for fair and balanced reporting “based on the weight of evidence” is already contained in the ABC’s editorial policies.
The head of news and current affairs, Alan Sunderland, said if the standards were legislated with that context stripped out, it might imply the ABC should engage in “false balance” and “he-said she-said journalism”.
In questions repeatedly referring to “your ABC”, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts asked whether its journalists suffered from “groupthink” and why they hadn’t uncovered “what we have found out about [science agency] CSIRO” and the “whole other side to the climate debate”.
Guthrie and Sunderland defended reporting by the Middle East correspondent, Sophie McNeil, that Eric Abetz claimed “impugned the reputation of Israel”.
She accused Abetz of a “line-by-line attack on a particular journalist” that she described as “offensive” and “inappropriate”.
After a New Daily report revealing emails from ABC staff complaining about an internal memo on remaining impartial on marriage equality, Sunderland said a “handful” of ABC staff had expressed concern.
Asked about the Lateline presenter Emma Alberici’s tweets about marriage equality, Sunderland said it was an “intensely personal” issue and personal social media accounts were not ABC publications.
ABC staff had to be mindful, cautious and to balance their professional responsibilities with personal opinions, but should be judged on the quality of the work on the ABC, he said.
“In relation to Emma Alberici and others, where we have felt from time to time that that activity risks having the potential to undermine her work we’ve spoken to them about it, we’ve spoken to a range of staff about it,” he said.
Sunderland took on notice a series of questions about tweets by the ABC contributor Sami Shah including one asking whether the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, “wakes up every morning with a hard on for abusing refugees”.
Does Peter Dutton wake up every morning with a hard on for abusing refugees? Each day brings some new, unnecessary cruelty.
— Sami Shah (@samishah) October 29, 2016
Sunderland also took on notice a series of questions from the Liberal senator Linda Reynolds claiming that an ABC report on Australian federal police resourcing had coincided in timing with Bill Shorten’s question on the same subject – which she suggested indicated a “coordinated attack” on the government.
Guthrie conceded the timing of an Australian Story special on the Labor senator Sam Dastyari was “a mistake” because it coincided with the launch of his book, but she defended the content of the program that did not reference the book.
She said she was concerned the competitive neutrality review could instigate a fundamental restructure of the ABC charter to force it into a “market failure role”.
The ABC’s charter “does not say that [it] is just a market failure broadcaster, doing only what the commercial sector does not want to do or cannot”, she said. “That has never been our defining role, nor should it be in the future.”
Earlier Fifield defended the government’s media changes after Nick Xenophon said the Coalition refused to agree to a deal if Guardian Australia would benefit.
Fifield said the government “makes no apology for the fact that one of the tests is it can’t be controlled by an entity that is not Australian”.
“We don’t have a test for ideology,” he said.
