Extract from The Guardian
Interviewed on the ABC’s Four Corners program, Milne denies specific claim he rubbed Guthrie’s back at a Sydney restaurant
The former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has accused Justin
Milne of touching her inappropriately weeks before the former ABC
chairman sacked her halfway into a five-year term.
Guthrie told the ABC’s Four Corners program Milne had engaged in “inappropriate touching” but would not detail whether it was sexual harassment.
“I felt icky, it was inappropriate, it was unprofessional and inappropriate,” Guthrie said in an interview with the reporter Sarah Ferguson for Bitter End, a Four Corners investigation of what happened at the ABC when both Guthrie and Milne lost their jobs within days of each other.
Milne, who resigned after revelations of alleged political interference were leaked, denied he ever behaved inappropriately towards Guthrie and insisted she had been sacked because she was failing to lead the ABC.
“Well, she outlined a number of allegations and you’re going to have
to forgive me for not going into them chapter and verse, except to say
that I never, ever behaved in any inappropriate way with Michelle,”
Milne said. “I had no reason to whatsoever and I didn’t.”Guthrie told the ABC’s Four Corners program Milne had engaged in “inappropriate touching” but would not detail whether it was sexual harassment.
“I felt icky, it was inappropriate, it was unprofessional and inappropriate,” Guthrie said in an interview with the reporter Sarah Ferguson for Bitter End, a Four Corners investigation of what happened at the ABC when both Guthrie and Milne lost their jobs within days of each other.
Milne, who resigned after revelations of alleged political interference were leaked, denied he ever behaved inappropriately towards Guthrie and insisted she had been sacked because she was failing to lead the ABC.
Milne denied a specific allegation he had rubbed Guthrie’s back at a board dinner at Billy Kwong’s restaurant in Sydney in November 2017.
“Definitely not. Definitely not,” he said. “I think she meant that to have a sexual innuendo about it, which I can’t possibly for the life of me understand why she would say that. I’ve had no physical relationship with Michelle at all. I never, ever acted inappropriately with Michelle, or indeed with any other woman in the workforce, or any other woman at all.”
Guthrie said the incident had made her wary of Milne in social settings but had not affected her professional relationship with him.
“I made sure that I didn’t put myself into, I tried to avoid putting myself into situations where that might recur,” she said.
Guthrie said she had not made a formal complaint and she had not wanted the board to investigate it because she wanted to “get on with the job”.
“My sense was very much that on reflection, that the former chair wanted somebody in this job that they could control, that he could control, and I wasn’t that person, I wasn’t a pushover,” Guthrie said.
She met with a board member, Joe Gersh, to discuss the allegations.
The board said of the incident: “After being advised that the board had lost confidence in her ability to lead the organisation, Ms Guthrie made allegations regarding Mr Milne’s conduct toward her.
“The board determined that Mr Gersh would meet with Ms Guthrie to give her an opportunity to formalise her allegations and make a complaint, which would be dealt with by the board. Ms Guthrie declined to formalise her allegations or make a complaint.”
The alleged touching was not the only matter Milne and Guthrie gave conflicting accounts of in the program. There was little they agreed on, often directly contradicting each other’s account of the events leading up to the termination of Guthrie’s contract.
Guthrie said Milne had put a lot of pressure on her not to upset the government, including through Triple J moving its Hottest 100 away from Australia Day and some of the ABC’s reporting.
She said Milne had implied that the ABC should please the government and this extended to doing something about the economics editor, Emma Alberici, who had upset the Coalition with her reporting about tax.
“A number of times, really, he said that we have a problem with Emma,” Guthrie said.
But Milne denied that he had been doing the bidding of the government and the then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is a friend of Milne’s.
“I led the charge for us to make sure that our journalism was accurate and impartial,” Milne said.
“Early in the piece, the idea of providing Emma with a warning or moving her or moving her out were all discussed by management, not by me. The fact that they were discussing that was presented to me.”
But the ABC news director, Gaven Morris, said it wasn’t true he was considering sacking Alberici for the tax story, but then he clarified it saying it was “certainly not true around that company tax story”.
He would not be drawn on when or if he had considered sacking her because of other reporting. The government also took issue with a later article about Turnbull’s innovation policy.
“It was never an issue, uh, in my mind that that was an appropriate course to take in relation to Emma’s role,” Morris said.
Guthrie denied she had ever discussed sacking Alberici with her executive team but in email conversations with Milne obtained by Four Corners she appears to agree she was discussing “external development opportunities” for the former Lateline host.
Milne said it was a “silly corporate euphemism” he had used in the email which meant firing.
“Michelle came back and said, ‘We are. But this interference from Mitch [Fifield, communications minister] is not helpful.’”
Guthrie said she still had no idea why she had been fired. Milne said staff morale and feedback from executives showed that she was not doing her job.
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