With millions slashed from his budget and hundreds of jobs at risk, managing director comes prepared to return fire

A feisty Mark Scott fronted Senate estimates on Thursday night. With millions slashed from his budget and hundreds of staff facing the axe on Monday it was time to return fire.



The ABC managing director had several targets in his sights and he hit them one after another during a marathon session which stretched until midnight.

He had been beaten up in the press: according to the Australian, “the hapless Scott cannot by talent or performance expect to remain editor in chief”. He had been blindsided by Malcolm Turnbull’s suggestion that the role of managing director be separated from that of editor-in-chief. He was bristling with anger.

“The minister has clearly indicated that he is confused by how it operates,” Scott said before he was cautioned by the committee. But he pushed on, ridiculing Turnbull’s suggestion: “No, no, he said he wasn’t quite sure what the editor-in-chief actually means.”

Of the Australian’s editorial which said the ABC should stick to TV and radio and forget online, he said: “I’ve never read an editorial that is so imbued with an old analogue mindset.”

With Turnbull and Scott’s News Corp critics claiming the efficiency review by Peter Lewis virtually handed Scott a blueprint on which to base his cuts – without touching any programming – the ABC head was keen to set the record straight.

“If we do a tally of all the findings linked to the ABC they maximise at $59.1m,” Scott said of the Lewis review. “But it also says it will cost us more than $76m to find that $59m recurrent saving.”

The ABC has been asked to find $254m, considerably more than Lewis found, Scott said, adding that the “complexities” of the public broadcasting business had to be pointed out to Lewis, a commercial TV executive.

Behind the scenes at the ABC and SBS the original draft of the Lewis review has been labelled “lightweight”. Scott’s comments are the first to question the credibility of the report publicly. Some of the suggestions in the report were simply unworkable, sources say.

Four hours of questioning from the often hostile senators – many afraid the ABC cuts would make them unpopular in their electorates – didn’t wear him down.

Earlier in the week Scott had been lectured by News Corp chief executive Julian Clarke, who said the ABC should “stick to its knitting” instead of pursuing a digital strategy. Clarke reportedly said “emerging technologies” were “well outside the basic intentions of its charter”.

“I’ve seen some very curious references,” Scott told the Senate committee. “Yesterday the CEO of News Corp said we should stick to our knitting and not pursue a digital strategy. But I point out to him the ABC Act Section 6, Part B, a, says that the function of the ABC is to provide digital services.

“It’s a core function. It’s a newer function, but it’s as core for the ABC as it is for News Corp. I am happy to send Mr Clarke a copy of the ABC charter to inform him in this.”

With so many different figures flying about, Scott was also keen to nail down how severe the cut was, insisting it was effectively 8%, not 5%, and pointing out that the government would not fund the hundreds of redundancies which would necessarily flow – and the ABC would most likely have to sell some buildings. The government also shortchanged the ABC by $5m when it cancelled the Australia Network, he said, because the broadcaster had to fund 80 redundancies and honour contracts with suppliers.

Scott pointed to the human cost of the Coalition’s broken promise not to cut funding to the ABC or the SBS: “80 people lost their jobs – it had a significant personal impact on many of those people … 1,000 years of experience walked out the door”.

On Monday, when Scott faces his staff in a live nationwide hook-up, the task of delivering the bad news may just be harder than anything a Senate committee could hand out.