Ousted ABC chairman Justin Milne urged Triple J not to shift the date of the Hottest 100 countdown because it could jeopardise government funding for a new ABC project, a Senate committee has heard.
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Ollie Wards, who serves as Triple J’s content manager, reportedly told today’s senate inquiry on potential government meddling in the ABC that he was summoned to a meeting with Milne, spectacularly-ousted managing director Michelle Guthrie, and former Regional & Local chief Michael Mason.
Wards claims that at the meeting, Milne said the ABC was seeking taxpayer funds for a project called Jetstream, but that pitch would be jeopardised by Triple J’s rejection of Australia Day as the date of the annual Hottest 100 countdown.
While the government maintains January 26 as a national celebration commemorating the anniversary of the First Fleet’s landing at Port Jackson, Triple J found a majority of listeners wanted the annual song countdown moved from a date many Indigenous Australians see as a day of mourning.
In reports on the matter last year, The Guardian reported Communications Minister Mitch Fifield himself had asked the ABC board not to adjust the date due to its political implications. Fifield eventually called the very inquiry we’re talking about right now.
Wards told the inquiry that Mason said the decision not to move the Hottest 100 would be “catastrophic”.
The ABC board eventually permitted the date change, and in 2019 the countdown was held on January 27.
Project Jetstream, a digital database project with a purported multi-million dollar price tag, appeared to be waylaid after Milne’s resignation in September last year. When pressed on funding for the project in the days after Milne stepped down, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was “not something I’m focusing much attention at the moment.”
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