Updated ,first published
Some of the ABC’s most recognisable faces, including Late Night Live host David Marr and The Radio National Hour presenter Fran Kelly, walked off the job for 24 hours on Wednesday morning, demanding higher pay from the public broadcaster.
Many of the ABC’s services switched to BBC transmissions as more than 2000 staff stopped work according to their unions, striking over what they claim are poor working conditions and an unacceptable pay offer to raise wages by 10 per cent over three years.
Kelly, who was a mainstay of political journalism as host of RN Breakfast for 16 years, said the ABC was leaving staff stranded on salaries too low to meet the cost of living.
“I’ve seen too many sensational journalists, committed journalists, committed producers leave [the ABC] not because they wanted to, but because they had to because they just had to get a life and get their family going, and that’s what they had to do,” Kelly told staff at a rally outside the ABC offices in Sydney.
Kelly addressed the rally alongside media union president and ABC journalist Michael Slezak. Marr was in the crowd alongside Four Corners reporter Angus Grigg. In Melbourne, hundreds of staff congregated outside the office to drive home the union’s message.
Speaking to staff in Melbourne, business reporter Dan Ziffer said jobs were so insecure in some instances that journalists could win an award one day and be rejected for a loan for a car the next.
Earlier in the morning, the ABC’s managing director Hugh Marks told ABC Radio Sydney host Hamish Macdonald he could use an escalation in the Middle East conflict or the fuel crisis to demand staff return to work during the landmark strike, which began at 11am on Wednesday.
He said that on Tuesday evening he had widened the definition of “emergency broadcasting” at the public media corporation to include “a matter of national or international importance”.
Pressed earlier by ABC Radio Sydney Mornings host Macdonald on whether he included the ongoing fuel crisis and wars in the Middle East in that new definition, Marks said it “depends upon how those matters progress”.
“It is not a great time for our team to be out. There are a lot of things happening in the world,” he said.
Marks, a former chief executive at Nine, which owns this masthead, also said this week he wanted the Fair Work Commission to intervene and resolve the dispute, a position some ABC staff viewed as a signal that he was unwilling to agree to a better pay offer.
But the Commission can only step in once bargaining becomes intractable after nine months of negotiation, an option that will not be open to the ABC until July.
Rohan Doyle, employment and industrial relations partner at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, said this could lead to months of rolling industrial action if the parties fail to reach an agreement by then.
“Industrial action can be taken right up to when the intractable bargaining declaration is issued, and normally you’d see unions exercising their rights and putting that kind of lawful pressure on employers [until then] in the hope they can extract some concessions”.
As ABC staff walked off the job, its radio stations in Melbourne and Sydney replaced their standard news bulletins with a pre-recorded message explaining the disruption, followed by the 1980s hit Waiting for a Star to Fall.
“Due to industrial action, we can’t bring you your usual program. We apologise for the interruption. Regular ABC radio programs will resume as soon as possible,” the message said. The ABC has disputed union figures on the number of striking staff.
On the ABC TV news channel, presenter Gemma Veness warned viewers in the lead-up to the deadline that “there will be disruption to programming”. After 11am the broadcast switched to a feed from BBC World News America.
The 7pm news and 7.30 will not air on the ABC’s primary channel on Wednesday evening. Macdonald confirmed there would be no 7pm news bulletins on the ABC’s main channel on Wednesday evening.
Cassie Derrick of the media union said if Marks wanted his workforce to provide quality news on matters of national and international importance, he needed to provide quality jobs.
“Our members take their obligations to public safety very seriously, but they won’t be taken for a ride,” Derrick said.
ABC staff are demanding the public broadcaster address what they claim is widespread poor pay, working conditions and job security.
The ABC argues its pay offer of a 10 per cent rise over three years is fair in the context of constrained funding and that staff have long average tenures at the broadcaster.
The ABC receives more than $1.1 billion in annual taxpayer funding.
Speaking to a press conference outside the ABC’s Parliament House bureau as the strike began, opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the decision to strike was “an absolute disgrace”.
“There has never been a more important time in this country when we need ABC journalists and other content makers to be out in the field, informing Australians. We have a fuel crisis. We have a cost-of-living crisis,” Henderson said as ABC staff walked out behind her.
Henderson said she was a member of the media union while she worked at the ABC, and that she supported the staff’s right to “prosecute their case, but just not in this moment”.
With Nick Newling, Meg Watson and Kayla Olaya
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.
Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X or email.