Staff at ABC lied to board: director

THE ABC's most recently retired director, Ron Brunton, claims the public broadcaster's staff and management deceived, lied to and withheld information from the board to stop changes being made to the "culture" of the ABC.

Dr Brunton, a conservative anthropologist, says the board was treated with such contempt that in 2003 he was made to sign a statement he was not sure was correct. In his second year the annual report was printed containing "assertions I do not accept" before being shown to him.

The Rudd Government has still not replaced Dr Brunton, whose term expired in April, or John Gallagher who retired in February. Past Labor and Liberal ministers stacked the board with "political appointees" but the ALP's promised overhaul appears to have stalled. It is yet to begin to hunt for replacements, which was to be carried out by an independent three-person committee which would draw up a shortlist of names for the Government.

Writing about his time inside the ABC in the Sydney Institute Quarterly, Dr Brunton, a self-proclaimed ABC critic, said he was surprised when he was appointed by the Howard government and concluded the board was "largely irrelevant".

"I encountered many instances where I had reason to believe that I and other directors were being deceived on important issues by one or more levels of management," he wrote.

Dr Brunton, who was at the ABC during the terms of managing directors Russell Balding and his replacement Mark Scott, said there were "extremely tense boardroom episodes" and a clash between the board "whose members are appointed by an often hostile government" and the rest of the organisation who "see themselves as true guardians of the public interest".

"Various forms of deception would come to the fore in the playing out of these structural tensions," he wrote. "By deception, I mean something broader than deliberate lying, although that can certainly occur.

"It can also involve the withholding of important relevant information, or the cynical advocacy of the most self-serving of a range of possible interpretations - in other words, spin."

Dr Brunton said he was unable to give examples because he was bound by a confidentiality agreement. He said restrictions had stopped him writing a book about his time inside the ABC.

He said directors were "duchessed" by the ABC with "wonderful boardroom lunches" served by a uniformed waiter.

He criticised the ABC for being hostile to hints of advertising with news readers refusing to refer to the then "Pura Cup", a cricket competition, but giving "free advertising" for publishers, authors and film distributors. The ABC declined to comment.