A year into his role as managing director of the ABC, Hugh Marks has made one thing clear. The Australian newspaper, a notable chronicler of the ABC’s perceived sins, is his “new friend”.

Since December, the former Nine Entertainment chief has granted the Murdoch broadsheet three exclusive interviews. Last week, a day after the national broadcaster’s first strike in 20 years, Marks was reported by the Oz to be “unpicking the ABC’s union-driven culture”.

“It was a fractious environment at the ABC, generally, over the week leading up to the strike,” Marks told the paper’s media editor, James Madden.

After nine months of negotiations failed to reach an agreement on pay and conditions, 2,000 unionised staff walked off the job on Wednesday for 24 hours.

“It would be unreasonable to ask the taxpayer to stump up for us having to increase the offer to staff,” Marks said.

The question of whether the ABC could work within its $1bn budget and pay executives less and staff more was never raised. (According to the annual report, the base salary for the MD is $1m, his chief financial officer, Melanie Kleyn, receives $650,000 and the news boss, Justin Stevens, is on $529,000.)

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Earlier in March, Marks sat down for “an hour-long interview with the Australian to mark his first year anniversary in the role”. Some news staff told Weekly Beast the interview was “unhelpful” as it played into News Corp’s constant attacks on ABC journalists, including the Americas editor, John Lyons.

While praising Lyons’ coverage, Marks said “in hindsight” he may have chosen his words more carefully. The comment undermined the ABC ombudsman’s finding that Lyons’ analysis of the latest war on Iran........

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