Ever been watching TV or listening to the radio and found yourself wondering “how much do you reckon she/he gets paid?” Well, it’s your lucky day because the salaries of the ABC’s most high profile radio and TV presenters have been leaked.
Leigh Sales, Tony Jones, Richard Glover, Annabel Crabb, Jon Faine, Juanita Philips… the top eight presenters earning in excess of $250,000 have been named and it’s been an incredibly awkward 24hrs for them as details of their salary packages have been broadcast across the media.
That sound you can hear is every journalist in Australia falling over themselves to compare the leaked numbers with their own pay packets. Ouch.
The result is a whole lot of unhappy people. The ABC journalists on the list are pissed that everyone knows what they earn. The ABC journalists who aren’t on the list are pissed that they don’t earn as much as their colleagues. The Managing Director of the ABC, Mark Scott (who tried to block the information from being made publicly available after repeated requests from competitor News Ltd ) is pissed that the leak has occurred. If you thought you were having a bad week at work, just imagine the irate queue of people outside Mark Scott’s office.
But are you pissed? Maybe you are. Maybe you’re majorly pissed that the journalists who bring you news and current affairs are paid so much money. Money that comes from the federal budget.
The ABC’s competitors – including commercial radio and news organisations – want you to be. They say it’s outrageous that we-the-taxpayer are footing the bill for such big salaries. Leigh Sales only works half an hour a day, right? 7:30-8pm when her show is on air.
Not quite. To do her job as well as she does, she must be across the latest national and international news, she must work closely with her producers every day for hours before the show to decide who to interview and then spend time preparing her questions. Yes, it’s her job but what’s worth considering is how much less she’s paid than someone doing a similar job on a commercial network.
FACT: Your contribution to the ABC’s annual $1.8b budget is surprisingly small, just 10c a day. And of course, that doesn’t just get spent on salaries. For 10c a day you get an extraordinary amount of content across multiple platforms including ABC TV, ABC Radio, Radio National, iview, ABC Kids TV and triple j. For free and without any advertising. All of this content is free from bias or any commercial interests and it exists purely to serve you not any shareholder.
So do you still feel ripped off by ABC salaries? Or are you proud of these Australian journalists for rising to the top of their profession and being paid well for their talents?
Top Comments
The ABC is an important part of what makes my day to day life worth living. Worth Every Cent.
The ABC is an institution and part of Australia's history, keeping people of all ages across the country informed and entertained since 1929. I've certainly had my 10c a day with giggle and hoot! The only way the ABC could possibly be considered biased and leftist is because the commercial stations are swinging so far right. This feels like a ploy to discredit the ABC, but why? There are abc alarmists all over the place just now. Why? Are the 'Rightist capitalists' afraid of differing opinions? The government seems to want us to be afraid of the ABC, annoyed at the funding, but why? To 'streamline' the information pathway so we are all brainwashed into thinking the same way (worked during the election). whats wrong with finding out the whole story? So far, apparently we'll be better off without the carbon tax (more money for companies not people), climate change is not happening ( come on... If we believe it will and act on it, and nothing happens we're far better off than the reverse), teachers are paid too much, we don't need the Great Barrier Reef as coal is more important, the world heritage listed forests in Tasmania aren't small enough and need reducing, and apparently people can't have drug and alcohol problems anymore because there's no funding to help them.. Basically if the government don't agree with it, it can't exist...(Aunty included) I could go on and on. If the ABC asks the opinion of the greens, they would be the only ones. We need the ABC, even if it does have a bias (I don't think it does) it is a counter point in the argument, a differing opinion, and isn't that what democracy is all about? I've signed a petition, I hope everyone on here so inclined signs on the dotted line.