Veteran Four Corners executive producer Sue Spencer has announced to staff she will retire in March as the impact of 400 job losses, 10 per cent of the staff, continues to ricochet through the national broadcaster.
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Ms Spencer told staff of the award-winning current affairs program that she would leave the position she has occupied for seven years when she finishes work on the second instalment of Labor in Power, covering the Rudd-Gillard years, which she is working on with reporter Sarah Ferguson.
The departure comes as angry union members at the ABC held a meeting to demand that the ABC reconsider its decision not to accept voluntary redundancies and instead conduct a "skills audit" of pools of staff with similar skills to determine who wouldstay or go. The ABC award is silent on whether the management should first seek voluntary redundancies.
One staff member who asked not to be named labelled the process " calculated and cruel".
Media Alliance federal secretary Chris Warren said staff were angry about having to compete against each other for jobs, especially as some staff had indicated they would be willing to go.
"This process is designed to get rid of the half-dozen people who management thinks will resist going, so instead they are going to put 250 people through a convoluted process to achieve their aim," he said.
Mr Warren warned the process would inevitably raise questions of discrimination and unfairness, particularly as management was cutting deeper than they needed to in order to change the profile of its staff to younger, cheaper staff.
Four Corners has largely escaped the staff cuts that are being imposed on other areas such as the newsrooms, Foreign Correspondentand the state-based 7.30s in order to both meet the government's $207 million budget cut and free funds for a digital expansion.
'It was all very sorrowful," said one reporter on 4Cs. "Sue joined the program in the 1980s as a researcher and she has been part of several Walkley award-winning programs including Paul Barry's program on Alan Bond. She's been a brilliant EP. She's the queen of long-form current affairs."
Names being mentioned to replace Ms Spencer are Sally Neighbour, currently executive producer of 7.30, and Jo Puccini, head of national news, although head of current affairs Bruce Belsham told staff there would be an open recruitment process.
