The Guardian’s razor gang gets cutting

In this week’s On Background, The Guardian comes for its cartoonists’ contracts, ABC top brass take home the bacon, and Lachlan Murdoch strikes it even richer on the Rajasthan Royals.

Will the last dog on the moon please turn out the lights?

It has been a funny old 18 months for The Guardian in Australia. After losing editor Lenore Taylor, political editor Katharine Murphy and high-profile blogger Amy Remeikis, you’d think the organisation would want stability.

No dice. The Guardian has decided to cut reader favourite cartoonist First Dog on the Moon, also known as Andrew Marlton, down to a rolling six-month contract.

It’s an odd move, considering First Dog is part of the furniture at the Guardian. Some staff have gone as far as describing the cartoonist as an “institution”, a pillar of the publication’s 13 years of success in Australia, and one of the remaining individuals readers actively seek out.

“They absolutely love First Dog,” one told On Background. What’s more? His sketches have become an integral part of what The Guardian has termed the Berger Project, which is essentially a big push to build its audience on platforms such as Instagram in the hope they will eventually make it back to the main website.

(The name is inspired by the art critic John Berger, who wrote Ways of Seeing, and refers to the different ways an audience might view the Guardian.)

Marlton declined to comment when approached by On Background, but we hear the decision has also been extended to shorten contracts for some other recurring cartoonists, freelancers and production staff.

A spokeswoman for the Guardian said: “It has long been our practice not to publicly comment on operational matters.”

The rationale behind the move? If it smells like cost-cutting, it probably is a sign of things to come, several staffers remarked. At least that’s one way of seeing it.

Parliament parking palaver

Contracts aren’t the only place they’ve been penny-pinching over at Guardian towers. Another example is the decision to scrap the publication’s Parliament House car parking space, worth only a little more than $2000 a year.

These spots are used largely by photographers, and The Guardian hasn’t had one in Parliament House since photographer-at-large Mike Bowers left at the end of 2024. But they’re also pretty handy when parliament is sitting and spots are very challenging to come by. (This masthead has two spots, for what it’s worth).

The bureau lobbied management to keep the spot, On Background was told, but unfortunately, it was decided the money could be better spent elsewhere, or not at all.

Australian MD Rebecca Costello was conveniently in Parliament House on Thursday for a panel on the future of media. We wonder if she dropped into the bureau, and where she parked, if she drove at all.

It has been six weeks since former editor Taylor abruptly walked following a serious disagreement with Costello. Since then, it’s become abundantly clear there was next to no editorial succession planning. One of her two deputies, Patrick Keneally, is also expected to be moving to South Korea with his partner Bonnie Malkin, the outlet’s international editor, who has taken a posting at The New York Times’ South Korean bureau.

Hopefully acting editor David Munk has some comfy digs, because there’s been rumblings that he may be in the chair for as long as six months.

Taking home the bacon

It was a momentous week at the ABC, with staff walking off the job and asking for a greater share of the $1.23 billion Aunty receives in annual government funding.

It would be unfair to call it Marksism because the boss himself, Hugh Marks, has barely been around one year. But while staff are asking for (among other things) a real-terms pay rise a nudge above inflation figures, some in management haven’t been struggling to stay ahead of the CPI themselves, according to the ABC’s 2024-2025 annual report.

Part of what looks like an overall management pay bump is thanks to a three-month double up in managing director pay, as Marks’ predecessor David Anderson collected wages through until the end of June last year, despite hanging up his boots in March. The full total for Anderson: $1.22 million, or about 6 per cent up.

Chief number-cruncher Melanie Kleyn got a single-year pay bump of about 12 per cent to land a full package of $707,253, while news boss Justin Stevens netted almost a 19 per cent pay rise to $667,900. Former content boss Chris Oliver-Taylor’s $342,000 termination bonus meant he landed a big chunk more money than in 2024, though that was the last cheque he cashed from the broadcaster.

Of course, these pay packets come with the requirement to front up to the public and senators to a biannual grilling, which has to be worth some dough. And all those figures include various other forms of pay like superannuation and long service leave, so they aren’t all take home dollars.

In case you were wondering, the highest paid non-executive staffer at the ABC nets between $671,000-$695,000 per year, and there are 131 non-executive staff on more than $260,000.

$1000 bonus, anyone?

TOM ELLIOTT IS BACK

Was 3AW’s Tom Elliott really ever gone? That’s what we were asking when an odd post popped up this week on the Melbourne talkback radio presenter’s X account, saying that after a “LONG AND DIFFICULT JOURNEY IN HOSPITAL”, God had given him a second chance.

“TOM ELLIOTT IS BACK STRONGER THAN EVER!!” the Trumpian capitalised post read. Though the next post, an AI image of Trump himself on the receiving end of one of JFK’s famous back rubs, was the dead giveaway.

Elliott’s explanation? “Someone hacked my X account!”

Murdoch Millions

We brought you news of Lachlan Murdoch’s Indian Premier League cricket windfall in last week’s edition of On Background. Well, the sale of the Rajasthan Royals has since closed, and it went for more than anticipated.

When we last checked in, the Royals were forecast to sell for around $1.8 billion, according to reports in Indian media. In the end, they went for almost $2.4 billion.

Murdoch’s private company, Illyria, stands to make $304 million for his 13 per cent stake in the team, after taking an initial 11.7 per cent stake in the Royals in 2008 for just $11 million.

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