‘We are aware of many more situations’: We talk to ABC’s Louise Milligan after Four Corners’ Seven investigation
ABC’s Four Corners launched its 2024 season with an investigation into Channel Seven’s workplace culture on Monday night, in which complaints of workplace bullying, sexual harassment, and whistleblowers not being listened to, were laid bear.
“People are frightened about speaking out because they say they’ve seen the way others have been crushed,” reporter Louise Milligan said on the broadcast, noting the climate of fear present in the 200-plus former and current Seven journalist she spoke to when pulling the story together.
Milligan spoke to Mumbrella this morning about the investigation, the reaction, and what happens next.
What sparked this investigation? Was it a single thing or was it just a wide ranging cultural thing? And how long ago did you start working on it?
For this particular Four Corners, I was asked to have a look into it after the Spotlight revelations in the Federal Court.
So back in April, when that was happening, I was still on a book tour with my novel. And so I basically came back to work and got started. And it was just a sense of, you know, ‘how much deeper does this all go?’ And to answer the second part of your question, I did know that it went deeper, because seven years ago, when the Amber Harrison story broke, I had started investigating.
Again, I had been asked by my former executive producer to have a look into Seven because I had worked there and, you know, it would be assumed that, because I had contacts and so on, I might be able to see whether that was representative of a broader culture. So I had made calls at that time. And then, of course, there were all the suppression orders around Amber Harrison. There was a suppression order and there were non-disclosure agreements.
When I started looking into it, she was fighting that and it was a question of whether she was going to win. And then when she didn’t, we had to abandon the story. But I found out at that time about Amy Taeuber, the young Adelaide cadet who was in our story last night.
And I did a story for 7.30 about Amy Taeuber. And during that period, lots of Seven people had got in touch with me. So I knew that, historically, there had been issues and I had seen what was going on with Spotlight, which was a different set of issues. So, I just thought it would be worth having another look, as did my boss, just to see what we could dig up.
But I must say that I was pretty astonished about how widespread it was. We spoke to way more than 200 people. I mean, I’ve lost count now, but we stopped counting at 200.
And you mentioned that, there’s lots of NDAs and the big culture of NDAs. Because you worked at Seven, were you worried that you might have signed an NDA when you worked there years ago that might come back and bite you?
I was not talking about my own experiences.
Yeah, that’s true.
So, no. I was working as an investigative journalist. And I mean, yes, I did work at Seven. I finished up there at the end of 2012. I had a largely good experience there, and I finished up on excellent terms. Like, they didn’t want me to leave.
So, you know, none of this was really about my experience. But, I did see a lot of sexism there, you know? And it was only when I went to the ABC that I really fully appreciated how much sexism there was there. It’s complicated and nuance, right? My bosses were good to me, and as I say, I thrived there and I left on really good terms. But I could see that there were issues with sexism.
However, I think those issues are far more profound now, which is a pretty sad indictment given that it’s 12 years down the track.
And what do you make of Seven’s statement that a lot of these things have since been dealt with, and this program mostly dealt with historical things. Did that annoy you?
Well, that’s not true.
First of all, it’s good to see that they have acknowledged that there are problems there. And, in our research period, they were getting rid of people in real time, you know? But, it’s not true to say that these are all historical issues, because two of the people who we spoke to were still working at the Seven Network when they did their interviews. One of them still is, and one of them has only just left – and she left without a job to go to, earning less than $60,000 a year, because she couldn’t, in conscience, stay at the place. She couldn’t support what was happening there. That was a hugely brave decision for her to do all of that – but she wanted to speak out on behalf of other women. It’s interesting to me because, as I say, we spoke to a lot of really powerful people, or people who had been powerful, within that network, who are far better off than her and have a lot more behind them. So, it just shows how much guts she had.
Was it a frustrating story to report, in that regard? There’s so much information you’re being told, but so little of it that you can actually put on the record and report?
There are some absolutely terrible stories, one that I can think of in particular, one that referred to a person who was still employed by the network that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to scrub from my brain, but that we won’t be able to tell because of the fear that people have.
That one, it frustrates me a lot.
Since our promo went out [on Thursday morning] and since the story had been broadcast, we’ve been contacted by so many more people with so many more stories — which we sort of thought might happen — and it’s one of the frustrations of Four Corners that you just find out about all this other stuff once you broadcast. That happened, with my last story as well, Cranbrook, and that process led to the resignation of Australia’s second-highest-paid principal.
So with that in mind, is this something that you would do a follow-up story on, now that you have all these people that have come to you?
Yeah. We often do follow-up stories, and of course we work for the ABC, so we’re part of an organisation that has the capacity to continue to follow things. And that happened with Cranbrook as well. And it happened with St. Kevin’s story that I did a few years ago, and the story about Saxon Mullins.
Four Corners stories often have the ability to kind of continue to make change after the credits roll.
I noticed Amber Harrison was in the promo and wasn’t in the finished show. Was that for legal reasons?
I can’t talk about Amber Harrison.
That’s fair enough. Last Thursday, once the trailer was released, can you talk me through that? I imagine you just instantly got contacted by many different people.
Yeah, the messages from former and current staff were flooding in on every platform. Obviously, we had put out questions to various people, including the network, and we were sort of managing all of that. When you do Four Corners stories, it’s often a bit like that ahead of broadcast. But in the case of Seven, this is an organisation that has always been very robust in its defense of itself.
It was interesting because their statement – I mean, all I’ll say is their statement, which they put out to us – and their statement which they put out to staff, was all about, you know, ‘We want to be better. We want to know if there are problems, we’re reinforcing whistleblower protections’, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that is not reflective of their legal approach.
So either the two sides aren’t talking to each other or… one’s not true.
I found it interesting that [CEO] Jeff Howard in his all-staff email, said: “We know that they’ve been working on a story about Seven West Media for a while. Some of you may have even been approached to participate. Unfortunately, it looks like a few may have taken up the offer.” I thought even the wording of that saying, ‘unfortunately’, is unfortunate.
Well, I guess the thing is — like, what they would argue is — that they have internal whistleblower procedures. But the point is, they haven’t worked. And the point is that there are multiple complainants, apart from the scenarios that we outlined on camera.
We are aware of many more situations in which there have been multiple complaints about a particular member of staff — and all of the ones we know about happen to be reasonably senior men — where people complain, and they complain to management, they complain to human resources, you know, they make formal complaints, they make informal complaints. In some cases, there are numerous complainants and either nothing happens; in some cases, the person was promoted.
I know of two situations where there were multiple complainants and the alleged perpetrator of either bullying or sexual harassment was promoted. And then, in one of those cases, the person was later then complained about again and finally lost his job.
But then, there are also people who, they lose their job at first instance or, you know, they resign at first instance, and then they are brought back. And that’s why there’s this saying about the second-chance club. And it’s not just the second-chance club. Stephen Mayne was talking about the second-chance club for people whose stories are platforms or who are protected by the network.
But then there’s another second-chance club, for men, as we were told, who are accused of bad behaviour. And for, whatever reason, the complainants are not believed, or the complainants are ignored. And the men still continue to thrive in that culture.
So, I guess the point is that whistleblowers in that system don’t feel like their complaints will be taken seriously. That was something that was told to us again and again and again. Or, they’re afraid of what will happen to them. Because, I guess, some of the background to this — and this exists at Channel Nine as well — where there have been issues with the news director and everything that’s fallen from that. It’s an industry with shrinking revenue streams. In a scenario like that, the people at the top of the pile have more power and the people at the bottom of the pile have less power.
One thing that really interested me was speaking to young women reporters, who were at the same level in their career as I was when I started in commercial television 20 years ago, I hardly found anyone who was earning the same as I started on 20 years ago.
And a number of them, including [regional reporter] Olivia Babb, were earning significantly less. If you factor in the cost of living increases during that time, it’s quite shocking how low paid these women are. Another woman said to me, the woman who threw herself in front of a car, she said the same phrase as Olivia, which was, ‘I could earn more money working at Guzman and Gomez.’ And, I started Googling, I went on to Seek and I had a look at jobs. I found jobs working in service stations on highways in regional Australia that were the same or more money than some of these women were earning.
I’m sure the executive salaries have gone up in the last 20 years.
Obviously, the executives were not telling me how much money they earned, but I understand that their salaries remain high. I guess the point is, as well, the executives have been in management positions for a very long time. They’ve been in management positions, in some cases, before my era, so they’ve got legacy salaries, as well. There’s a really profound upstairs/downstairs kind of world, two-speed economy.
To some extent that exists in many corporations, but it wasn’t like that when I was there. The money was good for the time, and also just the benefits as well. If I compare Olivia, she wasn’t getting like the wardrobe allowance that I was getting, and the hair and makeup and all that sort of stuff that they provided. She was expected to do all of that on her own, on this extremely low salary.
It just shows indifference to the plight of the younger staffers as well, I suppose. It’s endemic.
One of the things that many women pointed out to me, there is still not a female news director, in a capital city, and there never has been. I was just surprised that Anthony De Ceglie — he has put some women into management positions — I was surprised that he didn’t take that opportunity to put a woman into a news director position. It would have been a good time. And, I think it would have sent a message to all the women who spoke to me who don’t understand why they can’t be managers.
Hopefully your reporting goes a long way to correcting that.
I hope that they take on board some of this. And I mean, their statements say that they are. So it just remains to be seen what will happen from here.
Watch the Four Corners episode here.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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