Earlier this year, after hearing about ABC chair Kim Williams’ thoughts on the broadcaster’s direction, Crikey got in touch and asked if he wanted to chat with us about what exactly he envisioned.
Williams, a former News Corp chief executive known for his way with words, was announced as the new chair of the ABC in January at a critical juncture for Australian journalism, with industry competitors under strain in a difficult commercial market, as well as alongside the challenges involved in covering Israel’s ongoing occupation of Gaza.
A couple of months later, we received an invitation from Williams’ office into the C-suite of the national broadcaster for a cup of tea. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the direction of the ABC, its competitors, and whether it truly remains the mirror to the nation (much to our chagrin, however, there was no actual tea).
Owing to the length and breadth of the September 25 interview, we’ve opted to let the transcript speak for itself — you can click through to Williams’ responses to specific topics below.
Here are the ABC chair’s thoughts on:
- What the ABC should do less of
- The next federal election and the ABC’s funding
- The ABC’s transition to digital
- Radio National
- SBS
- The ABC’s relationship with News Corp
- The role of a chair
- Culture and diversity at the ABC
- Leadership and senior management at the ABC
- The ABC’s audience
- His personal consumption
- Local content quotas
On what the ABC should be doing less of
What do you think the ABC should be doing less of?
What I think the ABC should be doing more of … is being much more gainfully engaged with the spectrum of views and opinions on the part of decision-makers and policy formulas in Australia to provide a very comprehensive overview of the options that confront our country. I think that’s something that the ABC must be a vital participant in. And I think often we are in the hands of others in that process rather than driving a conversation about the process.
On the next federal election and the ABC’s funding
What concerns you most about the next federal election, regardless of the victor, in terms of the ABC and its funding?
My concerns about the next federal election are entirely focused on ensuring that the people are properly informed about the policies that are presented to them, and that they are interrogated on a fair and informed basis that enable people to make their participation in the democracy that Australia is, one that matters.
Does that necessarily include a question of the ABC’s funding?
I don’t think it is up to the ABC to cover, in a selfish way, the funding of the ABC, other than as part and parcel of a body of policy that is advanced for consideration by voters. I think it’s a fair and legitimate question in a grab bag of policy issues. I don’t think that it’s something that should be an obsessive focus on the part of the ABC, I think that’s quite inappropriate.
Proportionality is terribly important in a process as vital as a federal election, and it is not available to the ABC to be obsessively focused on itself in the course of prosecuting good journalism in an aim to inform the electorate at large.
Is there a view you have as a non-journalist member of the ABC in respect of that? In respect of the funding that it should or shouldn’t get?
There’s no secret in the fact that I am an active advocate for the ABC, and that I will continue to be an active advocate for the ABC. I believe the case for investment in the ABC and for what it represents as a core pillar of Australian democracy. And I will continue to pursue and advance policies that are very unashamedly in favour of investment in the ABC.
On the transition to digital
One of your first moves as chair was to reverse the decision to reduce the number of AM stations—
Radio and audio services is a better way of expressing it. I’ve never expressed a view on the relative merits of AM versus FM versus DAB as delivery technologies, although obviously the majority of our services are delivered via AM. AM has all sorts of complications that attach to it. It’s very vulnerable to being affected by close location to electricity generation, to railway lines, to tram lines, and there are all sorts of things that interfere with AM that don’t interfere with FM, but AM has much longer propagation distances than FM does.
I’m not an engineer. I will absolutely leave that to my engineering betters. What is important is that Australians have access to ABC services where they live.
Is there a justification in delaying a broader move to digital when there’s a question of the ABC’s regional audiences?
I think it’s terribly important that we always bring issues of economic and technology equity at play in any public policy consideration of access to ABC services. You simply cannot assume that everybody has equal access to digitally delivered services. It’s just an unsound assumption, and it is one that is clearly predicated on a false evidentiary base.
It’s terribly important that the ABC always has regard to the rights of Australians to receive its services, and that means that you need to be aware of issues of economic disadvantage. Doesn’t mean that people are denied knowledge, doesn’t mean that they’re denied information, doesn’t mean that they should be denied analysis to participate in their society.
And in a similar way, there are those who, for a variety of reasons not exclusively relating to age, are not digitally sophisticated. And there are many reasons why people may not be digitally sophisticated. It’s not up to us to interrogate those reasons, other than where we need to educate people in how to access digital services. But if people don’t have those digital devices, if they don’t have that capacity to access our services in that way, they still have a right to receive.
On Radio National
What do you feel a revitalised Radio National looks like?
That’s not up to me. That’s up to the people who are charged with the responsibility for running the Radio National service. I’m glad to hear you refer to it as Radio National, incidentally, and not RN, which makes it sound like a secret aspect of some defence force. It’s important that we refer to it in terms of what it is.
We are receiving a management presentation in the near future in relation to a range of proposals dealing with Radio National. I know I and my colleagues are all very much looking forward to that presentation. We are looking forward to having a real, considered approach as to a revitalisation of that service as a very, very important gateway for Australians into all the rich tapestry of intellectual and creative life in Australia.
Is there an element of Radio National or elements you’d like to see introduced to it as part of — I’m making presumptions here — some degree of restructure or redirection?
As I said, we’re about to receive a substantial body of material that looks to a range of constructive options that are available for the revitalisation of that service, and I’m very eager to see it and to participate in that discussion. As with all ABC services, there’s room for improvement. And I think we all need to be very alert to the fact that, as custodians, we need to be very closely attuned to the necessity of consistent improvement in what we do and how we do it, and that we reexamine the way in which we deliver material, editorially and via technology, in order to maximise the benefit in the hands of the Australian people. I think it’s terribly important.
I don’t see this as a single step in a way of doing a reset for Radio National. I see it as being part of a natural process of curation and custodianship.
Is there an ongoing challenge to the ABC in terms of what the audio-only space looks like?
The audio space is clearly a remarkably energetic space that has a vast array of possibilities for Australians from here and elsewhere. And Australians are grazing the world, as the world grazes Australian services.
Many of the ABC’s own services are very actively used by consumers in other countries. We have a huge visitation rate for many ABC programs from people who access them from North America, from the United Kingdom, from Europe and from Asia, and that’s a thing to be encouraged. But we would be completely foolhardy if we didn’t recognise that this operates in reverse, where Australians are actively accessing all manner of services from other English-speaking jurisdictions, and also from non-English-speaking jurisdictions, in getting a huge range of spoken word and other music and other material internationally. So it’s a very hotly contested space, and therefore the requirement to be distinctive, to be relevant, to be of a very high standard, has never been more acute.
On SBS
Does it still make sense to have a separate multicultural broadcaster?
Those are things for political determination, and they’re not things in which I will be offering any kind of opinion. I don’t think that is my role. I’m responsible as the chair of the ABC to work under the ABC Act and under the prescriptions that are contained within the ABC Act.
The ABC is very much a creature of the Parliament, in the same way that the SBS is a creature of the Parliament. We are both respondents to the Parliament, and if the Parliament changes its priorities in terms of the way that it wants to go, it will let us know in the course of debate and consideration and resolution. That’s not a debate that in any way I’m endeavouring to drive, encourage, support. I see that as being entirely in a public policy/political domain.
On News Corp
What do you make of News Corp’s coverage? Do you feel the ABC should be reactive to News Corp coverage?
I think the ABC must always be alert to the inevitability of scrutiny and review by others in the landscape of Australia as a publicly funded institution, and as a publicly funded statutory authority that is accountable to the Australian Parliament, and to have any other view is to deny the reality of being a respondent to the Parliament and to subscribing to all of the responsibilities of being an instrument of the Parliament.
News Corp clearly takes an extremely vigorous and consistent view of the ABC that is usually negative and is usually reflecting malintent towards the ABC. I don’t think anyone by any considered, stand-back analysis could consider the review that News Corp subjects the ABC as being independently objective.
Was that the case when you were there?
I think it’s got a lot worse.
Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. I don’t speculate on it. I accept that that is the way it is. Now, do I accept that we as an organisation should respond to every one of those commentaries or lines of inquiry? No, I don’t. The ABC is not here to provide public sport for News Corp. It certainly should respond where relevant to matters that are clearly issues on which we have public accountability, but the endless editorialising that attaches to the commentary on the ABC, it seems to me that if we were to respond to all that, all we do is amplify it. And I don’t think that’s a productive use of the time or resources of the ABC.
When you were at News Corp, do you feel as though you gained any insights or were informed as to how the ABC was viewed from within Holt Street? Do you feel you have a greater insight into how News Corp’s campaigns were conducted with regard to the ABC?
I think the amplification of News Corp’s intensity of interest in the ABC has dramatically increased. I mean, it now incorporates Sky News, which was not part of that landscape when I was at News Corp. It used to be pretty much confined to The Australian newspaper, whereas now it seems to be more of an enterprise-wide devotion. Am I spending a lot of time thinking about that or worrying about that? No. They do what they do.
The response to all of those sorties, if I can describe them that way, is to do better work. I think the response to most of the commentary of that kind is to do better work, to be resilient and produce great work. I think that’s always the best response.
I don’t mean that in a Pollyanna way. I think energy is a finite resource. Deploy it well.
Is there something to be taken from how the BBC responds to partisan attack?
I think the BBC has a pretty measured response to spirited partisan representations. I think the BBC has a fairly measured and mature tonality and engagement with those kinds of things. I think that’s sensible.
I’d be guilty of understating my surprise if I didn’t offer the view that I find so much of what comes from News Corp so shrill and really quite extreme in tonality, and I don’t understand why the normal courtesies of conduct are suspended, or in fact completely disregarded, in the way that the commentary is offered. I find that very odd.
I don’t think that in reverse entitles us to respond in a similar way, I don’t think one should.
Is that a common thing in your experience? To have the common courtesies disregarded?
I think it’s important the ABC offers appropriate respect and courtesy in the way in which it deals with all respondents, whether that’s in terms of members of the public offering commentary to the ABC or whether it’s in terms of the ABC editorial and creative workforce responding to material in the normal course of their editorial and creative production.
On the role of a chair
What do you consider to be the appropriate level of intervention for the chair of the public broadcaster?
I think the chair of the public broadcaster has a responsibility to ask questions. The chair is responsible for the meetings of the ABC, for the agendas of the board of the ABC, to be satisfied as to the quality of the written materials that inform board discussions, for appropriate management of the meeting and interchange between the directors and the management, to ensure that there is a harmonised strategy in relation to the strategy of the ABC and the strategic priorities of the ABC, and then to be assured as to the performance against those priorities in the execution of the work of the ABC.
It is not the job of the board or the chair to be engaged in the day-to-day life and operation of the ABC —that is a task delegated to the managing director and the leadership team. The manner of the rules of engagement in that process are very important, to have a distinct definition of that which constitutes governance responsibility and the accountability that attaches to that and that which attaches to operational execution and operational delivery.
Do you think that separation of powers entitles you to a degree of freedom in terms of comment?
I think an organisation like the ABC is inevitably built on a whole world of words and commentary, and that is part and parcel of living with this vital, creative organisation that is a respondent, and in many ways is the microphone, the camera and the mirror to Australia — and that’s a phrase that I’m very devoted to, because I think it accurately describes what the ABC is.
And if my responding to people openly, honestly, in good faith, with a view about some aspect of the ABC — I plead guilty as charged. Yes, I’m absolutely — I don’t use the word entitled — but I would say I’m obligated as the chair of the ABC to offer those views in a constructive spirit and in the spirit of transparency, and I make no apology for it.
I would remind you that the ABC charter is defined very precisely in section six of the ABC Act. The ABC’s editorial responsibilities are described in section eight of the ABC Act as specific responsibilities of the board. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think in drafting the legislation, the operation of news and of the information processes of the ABC were seen as so important that they needed to be specific responsibilities that were accountable to the board.
And not to managing directors.
Correct. Now, of course, in all instances, the board delegates its tasks to the managing director and the leadership team through the managing director, and that’s described in the act as well.
I am never without my act.
(Williams proceeds to retrieve a bound copy of the ABC Act from his bag.)
Everywhere I go.
How regularly are you engaging with David Anderson?
David and I have a very close working relationship, as should always be the case between a chair and a managing director. We’re not distant islands. We’re absolutely part of the same continent.
Are you regularly in disagreement with David Anderson over editorial matters?
No, I would think that David and I have a very open dialogue about matters of policy and matters of execution that is wholly engaged and constructive. And I might add that some commentary to the contrary is entirely false. And I say that with the full severity of those words.
On culture and diversity at the ABC
What’s the biggest challenge in terms of internal culture at the ABC?
I think the challenge is always not to have an obsessive interior focus and to actually ensure that the organisation is obsessively focused on Australians, on the myriad audiences in Australia. Its whole focus has to be external from the organisation. That’s where the real obligation of trust proposes between the ABC as a producer and distributor of a vast body of news and information and creative content that serves the nation, and we need to have a very vital and vibrant relationship with the Australian community.
Do you feel — specifically in respect of the “mirror” elements of its obligations, as you put it — that it is sufficiently discharging that responsibility?
I don’t think you can ever say with an organisation that deals with Australian society at large, the job is done. It’s a constant daily challenge, and that’s part of the joy and the sense of excitement in an organisation like this, that it has to deliver over and over and over to meet the needs of Australians in all of their rich diversity.
There are so many aspects to that, in terms of the responsibility to the children of Australia, in terms of the responsibility of the education fabric of Australia, and the integration with the education departments and curricula of Australia, to deal with our international obligations and the provisioning of material from Australia from outside our borders, and in a development sense, with many of the partnerships that we have through the South Pacific and New Guinea and Timor Leste, for example.
Or in terms of our obligations for bringing the rest of the world into Australia, through all of the deployed correspondence and other relationships that the ABC has — to ensure that we have adequate recourse to a huge body of information that’s relevant to Australians and their appreciation of the diversity of the world and all of the issues that are being processed around the world.
All of our obligations to sport, our obligations to the performing arts, our obligations to music, our obligations to comprehensive and objective news and current affairs. I mean, it’s a very, very vast panoply of responsibility. So it’s never a job done and dusted. It’s always a work in progress. It’s always something that is dynamic and alive. And, of course, it’s rich with a lot of feedback. And I get a parade of that feedback every single day. Each day starts with dozens of pieces of feedback from the community.
How much of that do you read?
I read all of it, but obviously I’m ably assisted by many others in processing and responding to it.
On that question of responsibility and the diversity of the community. The ABC has faced the charge that, in reporting over the past 12 months or so — at a micro level in its newsrooms in particular — it is insufficiently equipped from a diversity perspective, that change happens from a diversity and inclusion perspective too slowly, too bureaucratically. (Note: This interview took place on September 25, 2024, before the release of the ABC’s review into internal processes around racism.)
There are many comments that get made about the ABC, both internally and externally, in relation to many very important issues. Stating something doesn’t automatically make it so. The ABC has a really magnificently diverse workforce. It has a very substantial culturally and linguistically diverse component inside its workforce. It has a very vital workforce of First Nations peoples working inside the ABC. There is a process that is happening presently in relation to some aspects of the way in which our workforce processes operate, on which there will be more to say from that part of the ABC in the near future.
These are always very dynamic processes. The ABC is an institution. Change and management and responsiveness in institutions is always demanding, and that’s part and parcel of working in a place like the ABC to try and rise to a higher standard in the performance of its legislative and adopted policies. Do we always get it right? We would be less than human if we did.
Helping to ensure social harmony or social cohesion has been mentioned quite a bit recently in terms of the ABC’s remit. What does that mean in real terms? How is that measured? What does that look like?
I’m not sure how you have a precise measure on the contribution to social cohesion in Australia, other than to ensure that we are well engaged with Australian audiences, that we are offering a broad diet of material for Australians to access, that we are doing that in a professional and fair-minded spirit, that we are providing opportunities to an array of different talents, both from the employed workforce and from commissioned work that comes from outside the ABC.
There are a variety of many, many measures that would constitute an adequate responsiveness to and reflection of commitment to a sense of social cohesion and I would hope that we’re doing all of those things to different extents and with different measures of success in the course of our daily work.
It’s a hard thing to speak about precisely because it is a whole-of-enterprise effort.
On leadership and senior management
How integral do you consider news and editorial experience to be to senior management at the ABC? Is there anything to be learned — and I go back to the BBC on this — about the lack of editorial background that their leadership has? The example I have in front of me is how Gary Lineker’s situation was dealt with in terms of his remarks on asylum seeker policy.
I don’t think there’s anything to be gained productively by commenting on Gary Lineker and his relationship with the BBC. It’s a different society—
—but more so to the thrust of the question.
It’s a different set of people, and clearly certain decisions were made which will be revisited. I’m not unfamiliar with all manner of policy processes and policy determinations in relation to editorial and other content matters. I’ve been engaged in editorial policy and content policy since the early 1980s in a wide variety of different settings. I’ve been the chairman of the Reuters Trustees for the past seven years and have been on that board for just under nine years. I’m someone who is richly embedded in all of that sort of dialog and formulatory fabric. And I think it’s important that you have people that have that experience and people who have other experience. Our board has a number of people who have rich experiences in editorial life and in content manufacture, content production, content origination — and that’s a good thing.
On the ABC’s audience
How do you keep the ABC audience from ageing out?
I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ABC audience. I think there are a multitude of audiences that are serviced by the ABC. So the notion that suddenly the whole audience drops off a cliff is something that I am sort of amused by, or bemused by — although I have read much commentary to that effect, and I am equally amused every time I read it.
I did say jocularly the other day to a group at the ABC — there’s a new 60-year-old born every minute, and there’s a new 50-year-old born every minute, and there’s a new 40-year-old born every minute. And I hold that to be a statement of truth.
So it is a constantly evolving process — nothing is frozen. And we should never, ever think that, and one should never disqualify members of our audience as being in some way illegitimate or welcome because of their age.
Are young people then, by that token, being serviced by the ABC in the same way?
Young people are clearly — and have always been, I might add — the most magnificent challenge to any media enterprise. I have sat in so many rooms where consultants have come in and they’ve said: “We’ve got it solved.”
And you look at them and you say: “Have you? What’s the problem and what’s the solution?”, and they’ll say, “Your problem is 18- to 25-year-olds.”
I have said in the past, “What were you doing when you were 18 to 25? Because I guarantee the one thing you were not doing much of was watching television.”
And I say that in humour, obviously, and I don’t mean it disrespectfully, but I think that the challenge of “young” has become more complex and very, very, very much more distributed and much more invigorated.
And one of the things I observed recently to some colleagues in the ABC is if I was programming for an audience segment that was aged between, for example, 19 and 23, I doubt I’d put a 55-year-old on the job. I’d probably put a 24-year-old on the job and I’d mentor them like mad in terms of all the gaps they might have in their analytical fabric, or in terms of their skill sets to make them as empowered as possible.
And I think that we all need to recognise that in a digital era you have to give large, powerful, sometimes expensive, sometimes less so, but usually expensive tools absolutely at the disposition of young people and give them all the support needed in order for them to use them well and to explore and propagate fresh programming and ideas.
Can I take that to mean that in a revitalised Radio National, a revitalised radio section — whatever that might look like — that we might see a greater dedication to young people, to Triple J and the associated programs?
I think you need to communicate. You need to provide material that’s relevant to people on the devices of their choice and the devices of their preference and in the environments of their preference. I mean, for many young people, they’re not interested in broadcast media. They’re interested in digital devices and being able to access material in the digital environments in which they feel most comfortable and which offer them the widest range of choice. YouTube is a very obvious example, as I might say is TikTok. Perish the thought that one should raise TikTok, given that TikTok is such an item of controversy, but we have a hermetically isolated unit that produces TikTok material.
Everyone seems to be very hermetically isolated. It’s amazing how quickly they all did it!
We provide that material out, hopefully to delight people who are using TikTok as one of their many sources of delivery. There are no hard and fast answers on all of these things. I think the point is: you’ve got to be agile, you’ve got to be flexible, you’ve got to be responsive, you’ve got to be attuned and you have to be constantly learning and thinking in order to be a fully fledged contemporary organisation.
I’m just thinking about my demographic, whether I’m still in a relatively small army of people of my specific age — I’m 25 — that still listen to Triple J.
Well, look, Triple J is going through a process of dynamic refreshment and invigoration.
Are you regularly listening to Triple J?
Look, Triple J is not my personal thing. I’m not going to pretend — I listen to the news on Triple J, and I’m always interested in the news on Triple J, and I’m interested in the journalists who are working at Triple J, very much.
But in terms of the music offering, I suppose in Triple J terms, I’m a bit of an old fuddy-duddy. I love chamber music, and I’m not going to apologise for the fact that I love string quartets and that I love listening to choral music. That’s my thing. I’m very respectful of the music that’s on Triple J, but it’s not my thing. I’m an old-fashioned thousand flowers flourishing.
On his personal consumption
What’s your diet of news and current affairs look like in the morning? You hear of executives all the time that claim to have listened to 17,000 podcasts by 6 am.
Well, that’s not me, but I always have a podcast on the go. I obviously listen to a lot of our podcasts. I listen to a lot of our programming on a time-deferred basis. I always have something playing from the ABC or one of our competitors, or alternate sources of news. I listen to material from America, and the UK, and Canada, on a regular basis.
In classical music, I regularly listen to German, Italian, French and Dutch services because I think they’re very well programmed.
So if I asked you specifically this morning (September 25, 2024) what you were listening to on your way to work, what were you listening to?
On my way to work this morning, I listened to AM, and then when I got to the end of AM before I arrived here, and because everything shuts down as you enter the web of the carpark here, I switched across to listen to the end of the Ezra Klein conversation with David Remnick on the Middle East, which I might add, I actually stayed in the car for about four or five minutes to listen to the very end of the dialog between them, which I might say I thought was remarkably compelling.
I really wish that it had been on one of our services. I thought they were both wonderfully informed. Klein was a respectful interlocutor, and Remnick was an extremely generous and comprehensive respondent. It was a terrific conversation. I would recommend it to anyone. It’s really worth listening to. And yesterday I listened to his Zadie Smith—
—You’re a big fan?
I love listening to publicly open intellectuals. I think they’re fascinating people. I think Waleed Aly is one of the great communicators in Australia. I can listen to him for hours. I think he’s a wonderful interlocutor and respondent equally.
On local content quotas
In terms of bringing talent over — local content quotas. Is that something you intend to push the government on?
These are things that government determines. It’s not appropriate that I make comment on that. What is important that I make comment on is that Australia is the first name in the title of the ABC, and that’s something that must always be hovering over all the consciousness inside the ABC.
