From Sports Media on Daniel James, this is seven Am. It sounds like a bad dream. You're on stage, you say something about Joe Rogan, and suddenly you're the subject of a global pylon led by the world's richest man, Elon Musk. But this is what the chair of the ABC, Kim Williams, recently endured at the comments he made at the National Press Club.
I think people like mister Rogan pray on people's vulnerabilities, They pray on fear, they pray on anxiety.
But Williams wasn't there to talk about Rogan. He was there to defend the ABC, an institution still dealing with a decade of cuts, staff departures and questions about management's ability to guide the national broadcaster in an age of lies designed to sew division. Today, Kim Williams on the challenges and why he insists he's in the right job. It's Monday, December ninth. Kim, thanks so much for joining
us as Vaniel. You've had a deep interest in the ABC for such a long time, like so many Australians, but one would argue that your interest has been deeper than most. If the ABC is firing on all cylinders. What does that look like?
Well, if the ABC is firing on all cylinders, I think it becomes the indispensable ally to being an Australian citizen. It is a useful contributor to your worldview. It is a useful participant in your formation of thoughts and ideas and priorities.
Into of our nation and its direction.
It's a useful barometer of community perception, of community sentiment, and it is a place that is devoted to interrogating and celebrating that which is about Australia and the many audiences and communities that constitute the Australian nation. I think those are the sorts of elements and virtues that the ABC pumping on all cylinders would constitute.
At a time where people can get their news and their entertainment from anywhere or anyone, the ABC is reaching less Australians, with the primer driver of that being a decline in ABC news. Do you have an opinion as to what that might be?
Well, I don't agree with the question, and I don't agree with the underpinning to your question. The ABC is the number one source of news in Australia. ABC Online is getting a weekly audience of around twelve million Australians and to my knowledge, and please feel free to correct me, Danielbert, I don't think anyone else is getting that kind of audience. Now, your question may refer to a diminishment in news consumption on the part of Australians. I am not convinced that
is correct. I understand a number of people produce material that says news consumption is down. I'm a skeptic about this kind of popular notion of news avoidance and I'm very very cautious in accepting it as an established fact.
The client I was referring to came from the government's website Transparency dot gov, and this is a direct quote. ABC News Web has been the primary driver of overall network declient with weekly users averaging seven point seven million, which is of course a high number, but that's down by thirty percent year on year. That's the decline. We're talking about, a decline from viewers from the ABC itself.
Well, I don't know when that report was published. Certainly from the time of the relaunch of the ABC Digital News offering, our numbers are very much higher than that.
Kim not long after he started his chair Managing Director David Anderson announced he was resigning a year into his second term after more than thirty years at the ABC. What does that meant for the stability in the way the broadcaster is currently being run.
Well, we're in a moment of transition. David has been on some personal leave recently, but he'll be back next week and I would think David would continue to provide the steady pair of hands that he has provided for an extended period of time over the last six years, and as he had provided previously in a variety have different roles at the ABC. We are recruiting a new managing director and I'm confident that we will have an appropriate replacement available for announcement in due course.
What is that period of transition from David as managing director to this new managing director meant for the organization? In practice?
I think in practice it means that there is a certain degree of caution Internally, there are elements of normal antibody rejection of fresh thinking and new ideas. That's a very institutional response to change, and that there are also a lot of people who have high expectations and very real and considerable enthusiasm for refreshed thinking, and that's not set in a comment on David at all institutions tend to have a deficit of agility, regrettably predictably.
Yes, I know they're from experience. You recently intervened in reversing decision by the managing director to fold radio into the Content division. This is something a manager director will normally be in charge of. We've spoken to quite a few people who say that you are quite an interventionist chair. Are you in the wrong job.
No, I'm not in the wrong job.
I'm in a very strong role as Chair of the ABC, and I am charged with governance responsibilities number one for the efficient operation of the ABC and the service of all Australians. Number two for protecting and defending the integrity and independence of the ABC, and number three for having responsibility for the impartiality in the collection and dissemination of news and information according to commonly accepted standards of objective journalism.
They are the three roles described in the ABC Act as the responsibilities of the Board of the ABC. I think you'll find that all of my actions are entirely consistent with the good governance principles that are reflected in those things, and of course the ABC Board has the custodianship responsibility for the charter.
The charter is in section six of the ABC Act.
The responsibilities of the bord are in section eight of the ABC Act. I can assure you, Daniel, I sleep metaphorically with a copy of the Act under my pillar.
I was peruising through it this afternoon. I can't pretend to know one scuric of it as well as you do. Kim. After the break defending change at the ABC, Kim Williams, there's been a big shake up with audio at the ABC, particularly in Sydney. You defend the management's decision to let Sarah McDonald go despite her ratings. Has been an extraordinary reaction to that decision. Even in Melbourne. People are talking, Daniel.
I'm not going to mark any individual inside the ABC's report card publicly, so please do not put me in a position where you're expecting me to discuss or describe any individual inside the ABC. I would never do that, and I have not in any way made any comment about Sarah McDonald or anybody else inside the fabric of the ABC. I think that's holding and appropriate. What I have defended is the notion of change within any media organization, and I have defended the right and the integrity of
management in making changes. The notion that anyone has a job until they no longer want want that job in a public facing role on publicly owned airwaves delivering to the broad community of Australians is simply ridiculous.
So the question was, what do you attribute the extraordinary reaction to decisions made about those airways too? I mean, is that a deep So.
You're describing the noise as being extraordinary rather than it's simply being a body of noise.
Well, I don't think you can ignore your audience.
I don't think one should ever ignore the audience.
But I don't think you need to keep things in perspective relative to the size of the audience and the size and volume of the noise.
All things need to be contextualized.
Daniel, sure, and I tried to contextualize it. It was a big response to a decision made about taking audio in a new direction. So what is that new direction?
Well, I think you'll see that new new direction when announcements are made as to fresh announcers and fresh presentation formats. That will happen in the course of two thousand and twenty five. They will all obviously be publicly promoted and presented, and I think they'll be pretty enthusiastic responses from the public.
I confident that the audio management team has a strong handle on what the direction for ABC Radio is over the coming years.
I am I'm exceedingly confident in the capability and the creativity that is informing the leadership in audio.
One of the things that I think pretty much every Free to Wear media organization and struggling with at the moment is trying to attract and retain young listeners and viewers. They tend not to watch Free to Wear live. It has not on effectual the ABC down the track as people graduate from Triple J to Double J to local radio and radio national beyond. How can the ABC not only get young viewers and listeners back, but how can they retain them?
Well, I think the ABC in many ways cannot persist in regarding an ABC environment as being the exclusive environment in which you consume ABC provision content. And I think you need to respect the audience and respect the behaviors and respect the preferences of the audience in consuming material.
In other domains, for example, in YouTube or on TikTok, or in Instagram, or all of the diverse platforms that now exist and which clearly enjoy pretty hearty endorsement from the community at large in a wide, widely dispersed way across many, many forms of consumption.
Australians own the material.
And they should have access to it in a wide variety of different environments.
And finally, Kim, in your very entertaining Press Club address from the other week, he talked about making mistakes that happens to us all and it's important to acknowledge them in your time is chair so far? Reflecting on your first twelve months in the role, what mistakes have you made?
Well, I've been here for eight months, not twelve months, don't you, Although thank you for making it like twelve months, it feels in some ways like two or three years.
Frequently.
Look, I don't think it's for me to publicly mark my report card.
It's for others to mark that for me.
And of course it being Australia, people do they do some improfution in some times less than generous terms. But I take all criticism on board and processes and respect it and value.
It and probably the most controversial question of all. Before I thank you for your time, what's your favorite podcasting?
Oh gee, that's a tough, tough, tough question. I would have to say Ezra Cline is my favorite foreign podcast. I think Isracline is that rare beast. He is a publicly accessible, agreeable intellectual who grazes across a wide thought domain. In terms of Australian podcasts, I'm a big fan of Take Me to Your Leader. I find it a really really terrific podcast and I never miss a copy. But I'm a very very big user of podcasts and grays equally here and internationally.
Well, Kim, thank you for coming on our podcast. Thanks for your time.
I should say I think you do a pretty good podcast too.
That's that's all you have to say to him. That's all you have to say, thank you, Okay.
Bye.
Also in the years today, a Labor Cabinet minister has rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjaminetto Who's statement linking in Melbourne synagogue fire bombing to Australia's vote in favor of a UN resolution demanding Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territory In a post on x NATO, who put blame on what he called the Alberanezi government's extreme anti Israeli position.
Employment of Workplace Relations Minister Murray Wat said he respectfully disagrees and that the UN resolution was a step towards peace and organizers of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Marti Gras have voted not to ban New South Wales Police officers from marching out next year's parade. Three different proposals were put to the Marti Gras annual Drenial meeting to either block or limit New South Wales Police officers participation in the parade, and all three motions were narrowly defeated.
I'm Daniel James to be listening to seven AM. We'll be back tomorrow