Alan Jones: Senator Andrew Bragg is a Senator for New South Wales which he’s been since July last year, he served seven years at the Financial Services Council on issues like Superannuation and asset management. He was then the Director of Policy and global markets at the Financial Services Council and subsequently the Executive Director of the Business Council of Australia. He’s written a very simple text by the way on superannuation, Bad Egg - How to Fix Super. But I want to ask him a couple of simple questions tonight. He's been in Senate Estimates today on the ABC, Andrew Bragg good evening thank you for your time, did you get anywhere today with the Managing Director David Anderson on impartiality and left wing bias?
Senator Andrew Bragg: Well Alan, one of the things the ABC must do is to be impartial and be professional in their dealings, and there have been examples where journalists and ABC staff have not been doing the right thing, where they have been running a political agenda you’d have to say, and in fact tonight I asked David Anderson about some of this and he has revealed that someone who called the Prime Minister a ‘fascist’ has now left the organisation as a result of a breach of the new Code of Conduct so I think that is an important message to ABC staff that you need to be a professional at work and you need to be impartial.
Alan Jones: Julia Zamira on Twitter “Peter Dutton you continue to be a disgrace”, Laura Tingle on budget cuts “ we grieve the loss of so many of our fine colleagues to government ideological bastardry, hope you’re feeling smug Scott Morrison”, and the bloke you said who’s left, Sebastian Maury, whose job is to make sure the ABC content is fair described the Morrison government as fascist and the Prime Minister as an “awful human being”, are we getting anywhere? I mean the one thing we’ve learned over the years is that the board of the ABC is impotent …
Senator Andrew Bragg: Well I think tonight’s development that Mr Maury has left the organisation as a result of a breach of the social media Code of Conduct which is a new Code of Conduct shows that when you pursue these things through the Senate Estimates process you can actually get some movement. It’s now incumbent upon the ABC staff and this applies to the staff who are on camera and off camera to be professional and to be impartial, and if not I assume will suffer the same fate as Mr Maury, so I think you’ve got to give credit where credit is due Alan, I think David Anderson …
Alan Jones: There’s a wider issue here, a wider issue, why should the ABC, given there are hundreds of platforms from which people can get their information, why shouldn’t the ABC have to do what we have to do here? People have to subscribe to us, I mean years ago that was the case for everybody, you had to have a radio licence and you had to have a tv licence, you had to pay, I mean if people love the ABC wouldn’t they be happy to pay and the one billion plus can be spent on aged care?
Senator Andrew Bragg: Yeah we give them a billion dollars a year so the least they can do is to be impartial and professional…
Alan Jones: You’ve avoided my question…
Senator Andrew Bragg: Well the question is do you want to effectively have a privatised ABC, I don’t think the ABC should be privatised, I think there is a role for a public broadcaster but it’s got to be doing the right thing, Alan, and it’s got to be impartial and professional.
Alan Jones: Okay, good to talk to you, we’ll talk to you again on super, keep it up on super I have to say, and the other thing we will have a look at later is foreign national outfits not paying the appropriate level of tax, that was Senator Andrew Bragg and the ABC, well he seems to have got somewhere today, Senate Estimates I have to say it’s a form within the political process that does an absolutely super job.
