"Good luck trying to change anything around here, there are too many lifers."
This was the advice given to me when I started as manager at ABC's Radio National last year.
It seemed like a dream job. I love the ABC and relished the opportunity to help steer RN.
But having previously worked as a journalist, foreign correspondent, editor and managing editor at lean, efficient and editorially-robust media companies including Australian Associated Press, Fairfax and News Corp for over 20 years, I was shocked by the culture, waste, duplication and lax work place practices exercised in some pockets of Radio National. I was even more shocked by the failure of the executive to want to do anything about it.
One problem, as one insider pointed out, was the so-called lifers, a pocket of predominantly middle-aged, Anglo Saxon staff who had never worked anywhere other than the ABC, who were impervious to change, unaccountable, untouchable and who harboured a deep sense of entitlement.
They didn't have a 9-5 mentality. They had a 10-3 mentality. They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch and popped out to Paddy's Market to buy fresh produce for dinner before going home.
They were like free range chickens, wandering around at will, pecking at this and that, content that laying one egg constituted a hard day's work.
They knew they couldn't be sacked or officially sanctioned because there was no appetite among the executive to make waves, take on the union or make a case for any more redundancies. So the lifers just thumbed their nose at any attempt at performance management. Managers came and went but they were there for life.
The RN budget was another shock. It was predominantly tied up in wages for 150 people. There was precious little budget to do anything new or innovative and you couldn't turn any program off, no matter how high its costs and how poor its audience share and reach.
The executive would pander to the whims of celebrity presenters because they gave the ABC "edge and credibility", yet would take for granted journalistic giants like Fran Kelly and Geraldine Doogue who present world-class programs.
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That's why these ABC budget cuts announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull are not just necessary but vital to the ongoing health of the corporation.
Pockets of the ABC have been allowed to get too fat, flabby, wasteful and unaccountable.
The doors have to be prised open so that the winds of change that have swept through media companies around the world can reinvigorate our ABC.
The same efficiencies and work place practices that are the norm in corporate Australia need to be front and centre at the ABC so that it remains a strong, independent voice that is both editorially robust and reflects who we are - a culturally, geographically and socio-economically diverse nation that doesn't believe anyone is entitled to a job for life at the tax payer's expense.
Louise Evans is a former manager at ABC's Radio National and former managing editor at The Australian.
So say all of us!! A journalist with guts, and by the way she is a woman!!
