Replace B.C.N.Z. with companies, report suggests

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 1

Replace B.C.N.Z. with companies, report suggests

A chronicle of inept management in the Broadcasting Corporation, uncovered by a Commission of Inquiry into staff contracts and advertising, has led the commission to recommend that the corporation be replaced by a group of limited liability companies.

The commission was set up in September last year to investigate allegations of impropriety and mismanagement in the corporation’s activities. Conflicts in •the production of the television programme, “That’s Country,” had prompted the controversy. It came to a head when the Opposition spokesman on broadcasting, Mr J. L. Hunt, said in Parliament that a disturbing amount of evidence pointed to corrupt practices within the organisation.

mended by the commission is to restructure the Broadcasting Corporation as a limited liability company owned by the Government. Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand should then be incorporated as separate, subsidiary companies, with responsibility for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the “Listener” vested in the radio company. The report and its recommendations will be studied by a committee of officials of several Government departments. Their comments will be taken into account when a special committee of the Cabinet considers the report. The members of the Cabinet committee will be Sir Robert Muldoon, Mr McLay, Mr Cooper, Dr Shearer, Mr Falloon, and Mr Talbot.

ment was associated with unauthorised spending of ?23,000 on a documentary made about a chocolate bar commercial.

of the corporation and needed to decide whether they wanted to be artists or managers, the report said. The commission approved steps the corporation is taking already towards more adequate financial management and control, but said there was a need for better communication between production and financial management. It said that the corporation was making progress towards improving its financial reporting and forecasting. There was also an improvement in internal auditing. It noted the “potential for lack of accountability” and said that the Public Service Association had submitted there was "no secret within television that there are certain ‘no go’ areas which the accounting and personnel systems cannot penetrate.” The Inland Revenue Department was investigating some matters of higher expense reimbursement than was justified by the facts. The Audit Office was also investigating some aspects, the commission said. Report details, page 3

The report brought down by the commission — Mr W. R. Jackson, of Dunedin, and Mr M. R. Good, of Christchurch, both chartered accountants—was critical of weak management by several persons in the administration of Television New Zealand, and also of “the most unusual and cavalier approach to his board” of the corporation’s chairman, Mr lan Cross.

In its report, released yesterday, the commission noted one “dubious” payment and an instance of unauthorised expenditure, as well as what it called small irregularities in staff contracts.

The commission said that it had been led “to the inescapable conclusion that the top management of TVNZ is lacking in administrative skills and the capacity to remedy ills.”

to attend adequately to business and administrative matters,” the report said. The commission said it had no doubt that either the organisational structure of TVNZ was fundamentally wrong, or the people within it were not equipped or sufficiently competent to perform ’ satisfactorily within it, or both. Some senior executives seemed unable to rank their duties in order of importance to the smooth running

The central conclusion of the commission, however, was that many of the problems it had examined were the direct result of weak management in an inappropriate management structure. Television New Zealand was singled out as being particularly deficient in good management. The solution recom-

An immediate result of the publication of the report has been a request by the Attorney-General, Mr McLay, for the corporation to investigate further a $3OOO payment from an advertising agency to a television producer. The pay-

“It has allowed a system of delegation and non-inter-vention to run riot, to the extent that the organisation is controlled by producers and trained artists, very skilled in the artistic field, but who, on the evidence, are ill-equipped either by qualification or experience