New ABC chair reveals his ‘tough side’, promises he ‘will not be pushed around by politicians’

Freshly minted ABC chairman Justin Milne won the job through an independent appointment process over two short-listed rivals. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield made the call, and gained immediate sign-off from the PM.

In an interview with Crikey last Friday, after he met with ABC chief executive Michelle Guthrie for the first time, internet industry veteran and multimedia pioneer at Telstra BigPond and Telstra Media Milne made it clear he would protect the ABC’s independence fiercely.

“Politicians of all stripes see themselves as ABC stakeholders because they represent ordinary Australians,” he said.

“Now I will take calls from politicians and absorb what they have to say but I want to make it clear that I will not be pushed around by any politicians. The ABC is an independent organisation. I report to the Minister for Communication who is the shareholder on behalf of the taxpayer.”

As one of Milne’s former executive reports at Telstra BigPond noted: “You have to remember Justin has a tough side and it can be a rough side, he’s very earthy and quite prepared to have full throttle arguments, but I don’t think he will be calling people **** ***** at the Aunty board table.”

The general consensus of people who have worked with and known Milne over the years is that he is very considered when he is weighing his view on a topic, but once he has made his mind up he will prosecute that view very strongly.

“Justin figures things out by himself, he is not really an advice-taker, he doesn’t have bag carriers and advisers, and he is really a bit of a lone wolf.” 

Indeed, Milne is fielding his own calls and Facebook messages.

During his time running Australia’s biggest internet business, his only regular sidekick was his head of communication, but he would just as happily take media interviews by himself. With a complete grasp of his business to an impressive headline level of detail, one always got the sense that Milne put in the long hours understanding the drivers of his businesses, and the opportunities that lay ahead, by leveraging technology.

“Justin set up some remarkably bleeding edge digital media innovation at BigPond when we got online rights to AFL, NRL and V8 Supercars,” Sandy Davey, former Telstra Sports boss said. “He was happy to fund as and let us go as long as we were creating a new way of engaging. Telstra was doing things there and was a few years ahead of anywhere, including America,” she said. “So don’t listen to this line about a lack of content experience in filmmaking. He has more than most media executives. And a lot of the talent, people like Brad Fittler, who got his start at BigPond, and many others, are now top of the main broadcast stream.”

But Telstra original content was always under the threat of an attack from Foxtel, which understood Telstra had a cheap, ubiquitous platform already paid for by telephony, rather than the expensive, ageing proprietary technology used for the Foxtel HFC cable network, which lost money for more than a decade after it was built.

News saw the win as part of the cut and thrust of business, and the advantage of having management to control, and a decade of institutional industry knowledge — an advantage over the Telstra near-monopoly cash machine using monopoly profits for unfair advantage in an already corded media sector and News has no intention of moving into Telstra’s telco patch.

Milne is carefully diplomatic about News — The Australian’s interview with Milne led with the wearyingly predictable “news” that the new ABC chairman didn’t seek a job at a biased media company, and he disagrees with the relentlessly over-balanced editorial copy at the national broadsheet. In short, Milne says there’s no bias at the ABC — oh and he’s backed by a controversial and stringent bias-checking process instated by former managing director Mark Scott.It was a quixotic attempt to hand critics some hard facts to counter woolly opinion-cum-unanalytical analysis of bias designed to weaken the organisation’s resolve to pursue stories in the public interest.

In his broad analysis of the media sector, Milne quietly nails News’ motivations without seeming to touch on the subject.

“In the movement of millennials from what used to be mainstream media, the advantage the ABC has is that it doesn’t have a rapidly deteriorating revenue line to deal with at the same time; that is very chilling for them.”

“I have three millennials in the house and none of them watch the ABC. They tell me they come across the ABC on social media, so it is these platforms that are increasingly important for that audience.’’ 

“The traditional media is like the apocryphal frog in hot water: they are trying things but I don’t know the answer. And they don’t have the answers yet. But traditional media will survive; I think newspapers are ‘safe’ for instance, but they will have, say, 10% of the readership they used to have.”

“The value of those brands and mastheads will go down,” Milne said.

And Milne also made it clear that he will stand up for the ABC and its employees against serial campaigns, bereft of any self-awareness or of the ironic elephant perched in the corner, alleging bias at the ABC.

“There is no argument that Australians like the ABC; they like it telling Australian stories,” he says. “Regional Australia is well-serviced by the ABC and they like it. People understand that the ABC tries, at all times, to play down the centre of the line.”

He also seems keen to shut down the constantly resurfacing whinge by the warriors of the right, by The Australian and ABC-hating politicians like the unlamented former Queensland Liberal Senator Santo Santoro, and the Wollongong Liberal who has taken up his cudgels, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.

“I do not think the ABC is biased,” Milne stated with some finality. “People know that Fairfax has a more left-wing line and News has a more right-wing line and they trust the ABC to play the issues straight down the middle. If you talk to some people they think the ABC is biased left, and others that it is biased right, so they seem to be doing their job.”

Milne also mused on the prospect of some restoration of the Australia Network widely mourned in Asia by thousands of Australians and lovers of Aussie rules.

“I always thought the Australia Network had shed loads of great stories and content. It was great soft power, an opportunity to tell Australian stories to our neighbors. But I am still new to this, so need to get a grasp of where things are at, and obviously it depends on resources.”

Despite his far longer and deeper operational experience in the media and technology sectors substantially outweighing Guthrie’s, Milne said: “it is not the chairman’s role to be very hands on, but I do have broad experience in media, so I will always make myself available to Michelle as a sounding board. We have a similar view on where technology is taking media; we both have old and new media experience, so we speak the same language and I sense kindred spirit.”

“I met her for the first time Friday and I was impressed. She is smart and eloquent and has a good grasp of the business. I think she will be pleased to see it’s not easy being new in a job and having your chairman leave.”

Milne says he has no intention of “calling Michelle after I have a brainwave about content in the middle of the night” but noted, after meeting her for the first time only last Friday, that they are “fellow travelers” across the old and new media sectors and they agree on reshaping the ABC for a diverse media environment.