The ABC is refusing to air a documentary linked to two of its biggest personalities, 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson and her husband, former Q+A host Tony Jones, as the public broadcaster faces mounting questions about the film’s politically charged financing and Ferguson’s failure to disclose her connection to it.
Despite giving Jones a valuable 21-minute spot to spruik his anti-vivisection film, Sentient, on Radio National ahead of its premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival earlier this month, the ABC has told its stars their 95-minute movie will not be shown on the channel.
One of the film’s producers broke the news to attendees at a screening of the film at Brisbane’s Palace Cinemas on Friday night, hours after they had received word that their bid to have the film aired on the ABC had been knocked back.
“Tony Jones was due to appear for the Q&A session after the screening, but his producer, Ivan O’Mahoney, said he had taken ill that morning in Sydney and couldn’t attend,” one audience member said.
“Ivan said that very day the ABC had turned down the film and wouldn’t be showing it.
“He offered no explanation but seemed disappointed.
“You have to wonder, with a pedigree involving Sarah and Tony and the influence they must have within the ABC, why they were knocked back.
“The ABC endlessly and shamelessly plugs and publishes all manner of books by their people, so why not Sentient?”
The ABC certainly did its best to promote the film on Julian Morrow’s Sunday Extra show on Radio National on August 9 when the former The Chaser star introduced the documentary’s director as “someone from the pantheon of ABC journalism, seven-time Walkley Award winner Tony Jones”.
Morrow then went on to plug the film’s upcoming screening in Melbourne, adding that “Sentient was selected to screen at Sundance earlier this year, and it’s on at the Melbourne International Film Festival on the 11th and 13th of August”.
The ABC declined to comment on why it rejected the film for screening, but the decision follows growing concerns over Ferguson’s involvement as the project’s executive producer after her high-profile position at the public broadcaster, hosting its flagship nightly current affairs show, was used to bolster a funding application for the film submitted to Screen Australia in October 2023.
By that stage, the documentary, which examines the heated debate surrounding medical testing on monkeys and other primates, had already received a $3m cash injection from animal rights activist groups Animals Australia and Growing Kindness, which campaigned in support of Labor and the Greens against the Coalition at the last election.
As part of the Screen Australia application process, Ferguson was pitched as a “key creative” at the centre of the project, as well as its executive producer/
Her CV, along with links to her profile and work at the ABC, was also attached, while her status on the documentary was listed as “confirmed”.
The filmmakers succeeded in securing $200,000 in funding from Screen Australia to assist with financing the movie, but given the project had already received more than 10 times as much from the animal rights activist groups, it is understood that the documentary would have proceeded regardless.
Even though Ferguson’s connection to the activist groups’ financing raised a serious potential conflict of interest in her taxpayer-funded position, she failed to disclose her connection to the film to her employers at the ABC for more than two years, notifying the broadcaster’s then head of news and current affairs, Justin Stevens, only on November 28 last year after learning that it had been accepted for screening at the Sundance Film Festival in the US.
In a belated bid to disclose her connection to the documentary and receive retroactive approval to accept an executive producer credit, Ferguson fired off an after-hours email to Stevens on a Friday night, informing him that she had “co-developed with Jones an idea for a series that became a documentary concept later”, while also noting she had not been paid for her contribution to the project.
Stevens then sent the request on to the ABC’s managing director and editor-in-chief, Hugh Marks, at 6am on Saturday, seeking urgent approval for Ferguson, before receiving permission from him three hours later.
Ferguson and Jones subsequently both travelled to Utah to attend the Sundance screening in January.
Questioned at length about Ferguson’s connection to the documentary and its funding during a Senate estimates hearing in May, Mr Marks assured the federal communications committee that the 7.30 host had “no active role in the financing of the program”.
Instead, he insisted, her involvement had been limited to “tossing around ideas” and that the concept had been “taken forward by other people that did not involve Ms Ferguson”.
Mr Marks has since refused to comment on whether he stood by that testimony, given the revelations that Ferguson’s position and profile with the ABC were clearly used to add weight to the filmmakers’ funding applications and were involved in the financing of the film.
While there is no suggestion Mr Marks was aware of Ferguson’s connection to the funding bids or that he deliberately misled the Senate committee, opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the revelations “appear to contradict Hugh Marks’ testimony … that Sarah Ferguson played no active role in the documentary”.
“If Ms Ferguson did not disclose all relevant facts about her role, this is a serious matter which must have consequences,” Senator Henderson said.
A series of questions from Senator Henderson, taken on notice at the Senate estimates session in May concerning Ferguson’s involvement, including whether she attended the Sundance Film Festival in her capacity as executive producer of the Sentient documentary or had “been counselled in relation to failing to disclose her role” to the ABC, remain unanswered three months later.