Opinion, Errol Simper, The Australian 1st December 1998
What does the Australian Broadcasting Authority do all day? Should some eccentric person ever choose to liken the authority to a famous novel, then it's entirely possible Charles Dickens' Bleak House might spring to mind.
Bleak House, of course, confronted us with legal matters so complex, so unwieldy, so incoherent, that generations of lawyers died in harness as the case outlived them with a great deal to spare. Each effort at a solution simply added to the complexity.
Should that sound - insofar as the ABA is concerned - totally unreasonable and inappropriate, it might be worth saying the authority once took three months to conclude Canadian media company CanWest did not illegally control the Ten Television network. The authority recently spent eleven months deciding the Seven Network and its regional affiliate, Prime Television, overran advertising limits while screening the film "The African Queen". This, presumably, was to compensate for screening "Schindler's List" commercial free. How sensitive and socially aware the habitually brash can suddenly become.
No matter. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances surrounding the CanWest inquiry; the equation had a habit of changing. No, no one here advocates wild, irresponsible, snap judgements which could be vulnerable to subsequent litigation. And, yes, the world continues to revolve calmly enough on its axis while the authority investigations are conducted.
The number of breathless bystanders hysterical with anticipation is comparatively small, often as small as the shards of justice are, ideally, ground. Nor does anyone seriously doubt the ABA is littered with competent, well-meaning personnel, determined to do what is right, proper and thoroughly irreproachable.
That said, there are those who are beginning to wonder how much longer the authority will take before deciding whether the chairman of Fairfax publishing group, Brian Powers, has lingering connections with media entrepreneur Kerry Packer.
You may have forgotten, but the authority is probing whether there's anything in any perceived Packer-Powers association which might do violence to the nation's much-discussed cross-media ownership regulations. These strictures, of course, prevent Packer - as controller of the Nine Network - from involvement with Fairfax. Power's you'll recall, is a former executive chairman of Packer's listed company Publishing and Broadcsting.
The authority began an investigation on May 18, the day Powers resigned from PBL and was appointed to the Fairfax board. He more or less had to be on the board because he'd acquired 14.9% of the Fairfax shares. Packer's interests had guaranteed the Au$15.2 million it cost Powers to take his FXT interest.
Well, as you've probably noticed, it's now December. You could also ague a kind of Bleak House syndrome has quietly established itself.
The US-born Powers, for example, no longer lives here, having returned to the US, from where he'll regularly commute.
Fairfax's then chief executive, Bob Muscat, has been replaced by Fred Hillmer, John Alexander, formerly the influential editor-in-chief of Fairfax's flagship title The Sydney Morning Herald is now publisher of Packer's special mastheads. Fairfax actually threatened to sue Alexander after he recruited a prominent SMH columnist, Max Walsh. Dickens would have loved it. Those with an intemperate imagination might even suspect Dickens of crafting the script.
Anyway, any perceived impatience as to what the authority has been up to since May 18 appears to be shared by Powers. He remarked to a shareholders' meeting on November 7: "I'm a bit surprised it's taken them (the ABA) as long as it has (to investigate the matter)."
In truth, of course, there is another - perfectly legitimate - way to look at all this. Rome, for example wasn't built in a day. He/she laughs longest who laughs last. No news is good news. Least said, soonest mended. Still waters run deepest. Time heals all wounds. More haste less speed.
And had Dickens tidied up all that litigation in chapter one, he wouldn't have a novel would he?
Yet, you still can't help wondering: what the dickens do they do all day?