“Never let a good crisis go to waste” they say or if you like “out of chaos comes opportunity” in which case the government should be leveraging this chaos to create the opportunity to sack the entire board of the ABC and start again.
In the current febrile and convulsive atmosphere, as I wrote earlier this week, it’s worth recalling the observation by the former ABC Managing Director, Jonathon Shier that “the ABC is beyond reform” and that similar sentiments and exasperation of reform by management, business and government, used to be regularly ventilated about the work practices on the wharves at Botany.
To this end we should pursue some lateral thinking and use this chaos to leverage and opportunity to achieve what was previously not thought possible, by marking the twentieth anniversary of the 1998 wharf dispute and drafting former Howard Government IR Minister Peter Reith and Chris Corrigan from Patricks to apply their proven template to sort out and reform the national broadcaster.
It’s quite apparent that what we’re dealing with at the ABC is nothing short of staff insurrection and a bloodless coup and perhaps with a few Bushmasters on the streets, unmanned drones overhead and a mix of SAS troops and balaclava-ed security guards roaming the corridors of Ultimo and Southbank with Alsatians, the requisite attitude adjustment could be achieved over the long weekend.
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