ABC broke its own rules by providing Yes with ‘You’re the Voice’ ad footage

The ABC has admitted it broke its own policies by providing footage used by the Yes camp’s “You’re the Voice” referendum advertisement.

On Thursday, an ABC spokesperson confirmed that the public broadcaster’s commercial arm was responsible for licensing 26 seconds of visual footage and five seconds of audio used in the Uluru Dialogue’s advertisement released over the weekend.

“This was done in error as it does not meet our policy on the use of ABC archival footage and is regrettable,” they said.

Two years ago, the ABC published a webpage “Can ABC content be used in Political Advertising and Political Messaging?”, which states that ABC content, logos or any other intellectual property should not be used in political advertising or political messaging.

The spokesperson said the ABC will be updating licensing processes to avoid this situation in the future. 

The footage comes at the start of the two-minute John Farnham-backed video that’s part of a nationwide advertising blitz to help the ailing Yes campaign.

The opening moments of the video feature a vintage television set showing archival footage from the 1967 referendum.

Earlier this week, Oliver Lawrence, the managing director of the advertisement’s production company, Photoplay, told Crikey that footage in the advertisement had been obtained through the ABC’s commercial licensing arm, Library Sales. The ABC was contacted for comment on Wednesday morning but did not provide a response until Thursday afternoon.

Lisa Savage, the owner of Savage Media, which is listed as procuring the archival footage, said she was unable to comment due to a non-disclosure agreement.

A logo belonging to digitising business Australian Television Archive was visible on the archival footage in the advertisements. However, the advertising firm behind the campaign, The Monkeys, said that this logo was erroneously placed on the footage but did not answer questions about why the mistake occurred.

Australian Television Archive owner James Paterson (not the Liberal senator) said he had no idea why his logo was used and had nothing to do with the footage.