David Flint bowed to the inevitable yesterday and quit. It was a fair enough decision: when you're chair of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and you have to disqualify yourself from hearing matters involving Alan Jones, John Laws, 2UE, 2GB, the Nine Network and the ABC, it's reasonable to ask what on earth you're doing in the job.

It was, of course, entirely his own decision to go. No one pushed him. He just thought it would be helpful if he vacated his chair three months early because the ABA and the Australian Communications Authority were about to be merged, and the ACA chair was vacant, so he concluded it would be best if the ABA chair was also vacant.

Yeah, right. The decision had nothing to do with the fact Flint was (and has been for years) hopelessly conflicted. How could he not be? The ABA sits in judgment on political advertising; yet its chair is a paid-up, card-carrying member of the Liberal Party. He was also a preselector in the blue-ribbon Sydney seat of Wentworth, which recently saw a major stoush between sitting MP and monarchist Peter King and republican challenger Malcolm Turnbull.
He's a public critic of Opposition Leader Mark Latham and his Iraq policy, yet he planned until recently to sit in final judgment on former communications minister Richard Alston's complaints about the ABC's Iraq war coverage.

He's a willing warrior of the Right who put his conservative views out for all to see in his book Twilight of the Elites, published a year ago, and he's an unabashed admirer of conservative radio jock Alan Jones, with whom he exchanged a stream of gushing letters.

He's been pinged on bias so many times, yet Flint last month declared to the Senate estimates committee that, his affiliations notwithstanding, he was able to make unbiased decisions on any matter. He said it with a straight face, quoting an admonition from the High Court that people in his position should "not loosely and too easily disqualify ourselves in these matters".

But now he has. Just in time, perhaps, for the Government to rush through the merger of the ABA and ACA before the election is called later this year, and appoint a new chair for the next five years. Creating that opportunity might be David Flint's last gift to a government he has served so diligently.
The Australian 8jun04

Mark Day