Recently I found myself in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson.
Let me explain.
It’s no secret I’m not an admirer of the Liberal senator from Victoria and what I like to call her services to the “handbag brigade”. (For those unfamiliar with the concept, the “handbag brigade” is a pejorative term used in reference to female Coalition members who have been, more than once, wheeled out to defend the indefensible.)
There was a fairly typical example late last month when a number of Coalition women, including Henderson, gathered outside Parliament House (all looking very determined) to dubiously claim that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was a sexist bully.
More recently, the senator’s attack on ABC investigative journalist Louise Milligan at Senate estimates was equally embarrassing.
Henderson asked the ABC’s managing director David Anderson about a speech Milligan had given to the ACT Bar Association in Canberra last month that was the subject of several negative articles in The Australian. She insisted, despite the fact Milligan gave the speech in her private time and many of The Australian’s claims about the speech were disputed, that Anderson and the ABC should take responsibility for any “offence” caused.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Once the drama died down and Henderson’s laughable accusations of ABC journalists going “rogue” stopped echoing through the room, she tabled two letters she’d sent to Anderson requesting more specifics about the ABC’s pay structure — including details about employees earning $230,000 or more and a breakdown by gender, place of work and remuneration.
My ears perked up. Now that could be very useful information indeed. I know that for some time the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) members of the ABC have been trying to get hold of this information to “combat growing inequality” at the ABC, and that it was in part management’s refusal to disclose it that led union members to decide to campaign for a “no” vote on the ABC’s proposed new pay deal.
Thus, even though it pains me to say this, I found myself thinking: onya Henderson for asking these very important questions.
I was immediately reminded of the case of Carrie Gracie, the former China editor at the UK’s public broadcaster, the BBC. When the BBC was likewise forced in 1997 by Conservative politicians (yes, with their own agenda) to disclose the pay of all staff earning more than £150,000, it proved extremely embarrassing — and ultimately sparked a revolution. Two-thirds of the top-earning stars were men and the highest paid were all white.
Cue headlines such as “BBC’s gender pay gap revealed” and, my personal favourite, “Bloated blokes club”.
Within months, Gracie very publicly resigned on the grounds that she had been promised pay parity when she accepted the post. She was extremely disappointed to learn that her comparator, the North America editor, was earning at least 50% more than her. What’s more, another letter of protest was signed by dozens of well-known BBC names, women who would later band together in solidarity to combat pay discrimination and form a group called BBC Women.
Carrie would eventually succeed in taking a landmark equal pay case against the BBC, and her 2018 appearance at a parliamentary inquiry, in which she eviscerated the BBC’s “secretive and illegal” pay culture, became the stuff of legend. I confess that when I need a dose of fist-pumping feminist righteousness to put some gas in the old tank, I go back and watch it again.
But back to the recent exchange at Senate estimates. Knowing the story of the BBC’s “secretive” pay culture as I do and what happened when the lid was wrenched off — something Gracie said in her memoir, Equal, should serve as a “cautionary tale for employers everywhere” — I was quite shocked by Anderson’s response to Henderson’s request.
He indicated he intended to claim public interest immunity to resist disclosing any information about pay across the ABC, using the same tired arguments that BBC executives used years ago to resist publicly disclosing pay before they were finally forced to come clean: that the information was “commercially sensitive” and should be subject to privacy considerations.
The thing is, while it has been unlawful for the better part of 50 years in Australia and is clearly unfair, pay discrimination is still common. According to the Diversity Council of Australia, gender discrimination (of which pay discrimination is a key element) remains the leading driver of the gender pay gap, contributing 36%.
And women are powerless to correct it if they are operating in an information vacuum. In a recent column about pay transparency for The Sydney Morning Herald, columnist Jessica Irvine called this “information asymmetry”. That’s precisely why there is a growing movement towards greater pay transparency in Australia and around the world. Increasingly, sites like Glassdoor are making it easier for employees to compare their salaries. And as of November 1, it’s mandatory in New York City for employers to publish salary bands in all job ads.
Here in Australia, the industrial relations legislation working its way through Parliament will ban the use of “gagging clauses” that prohibit employees from discussing their pay. And the Workplace Gender Equality Agency will soon start reporting on the size of the gender pay gap at specific employers, rather than just as an industry composite.
Both will help individual women get one step closer to knowing what exactly is happening in their workplace and — pardon my French — ask, “What the fuck is going on here?”
As a member of the Champions of Change Coalition, which claims to encourage its members to take leading action to promote gender equality, I would respectfully ask Anderson if he risks being on the wrong side of history by swimming against the growing tide of pay transparency. And I would also humbly suggest that the public broadcaster should lead by example and caution that resisting pay transparency raises the question: what are you trying to hide?
Should the ABC hand over the pay details of its employees? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Correction: This article originally stated MEAA union members had already voted “no” on the ABC’s proposed new pay deal. It has been changed to reflect that members are campaigning for a “no” vote.
