Adjudication No. 93 (March 1981) [1981] APC 5

ADJUDICATION No 93 (March 1981)

The Public Service Association of NSW has complained of an article in the Daily Telegraph of 18 November 1980, which gave an account of the termination of a strike by public servants in NSW.

The complaint is based upon three grounds, of which the first is that a statement in the article that the strike came to an abrupt end on the previous night "in the face of a tough stand by the Premier" was wrong in fact because the decision to return to work was made by the association with no knowledge of the Premier's statement.

The Daily Telegraph has pointed out that the Premier's statement received wide publicity on the day before the article was published; and the newspaper, while not challenging the truthfulness of the association's assertion, suggests it was extremely strange that the association acted in ignorance of what the Premier had said.

The Press Council is unable to be assured whether the statement in the article was wrong and it dismisses this ground of complaint.

The second ground is that a secondary heading of the article "Back for their morning cuppa" and a statement in the article "the members will return to work this morning in time for their morning tea break" were both wrong because the strike was called off from midnight on 17 November and members commenced duty from that time and at various times between then and 3 am on 18 November at their normal starting times.

The paper points out that only a small minority of the members would have started work at midnight and the bulk of members did in fact start at normal office times.

The Press Council considers that the secondary headline and the statement complained of constituted unfair comment and upholds this ground of complaint.

The final ground is that a statement in the article that "The strike began at midnight on Sunday over the government's decision to allow outside appointments to senior public Service jobs" was wrong in fact.

The statement was immediately followed by another that "It (the strike) was also over the government's decision to cancel the right of appeal for people affected by such appointments". This latter statement was not inaccurate but the preceding one was plainly wrong.

The paper contends that the first statement did not distort the broader truth that historically the association has resisted outside appointments and prefers a seniority system, that the "existing avenues" made it more difficult for the government to install outside appointees, and that removal of those avenues opened the way to what the association abhors, the placing of outsiders to plum jobs.

The Press Council does not consider that these considerations justified the first statement that the government's alleged decision to allow outside appointees to senior Public Service jobs was an additional subject matter of the strike.

The Daily Telegraph is admonished for its inaccuracy in this respect and the complaint on this ground is upheld.