Maurice

I mean, he said he's been in the job three years and the first year and a half was dealing with crisis.

He said he's made changes to transparency and disclosure in RT.

I mean, that's true.

He also pushed back on Brennan's criticism.

when RT discovered things that they put them in the public domain now um which I think was a fair defense and it was kind of accepted by Brian Brennan but he also said RT has paid the price for transparency and that line did not go down well and Brennan basically called him out on it saying you can't complain about paying a price for doing the right thing it came across slightly tone deaf I think to a couple of the members of the committee and um I mean he also said uh backers also said he's

confident there are no more misclassifications but i suppose confidence is not the same as proof i mean the committee wanted him to commit to an independent audit to actually verify this and not just rely on his word so i suppose they want a bit more than confidence um has anything new come up in the committee today anything that we didn't know about before the beginning of proceedings uh well i suppose there was more on derek mooney um

So, I mean, the classification of him as a producer wasn't a misunderstanding.

According to Backhurst, there was actual instruction from previous Director General Dee Forbes in 2020 to class him as a producer, not a presenter.

So I suppose that chain of command is important because, I mean, the instruction came from

the chief financial officer at the time, Brito Keefe, and it went down to payment staff.

That's someone being told by leadership to do something a certain way.

It wasn't a miscalculation.

I suppose Blackhurst was trying to defend Forbes by saying they looked at Moody's contract, which is a radio producer contract, and they concluded that he did more producing than presenting, but you have a radio producer contract and

He's still primarily known as a presenter.

That's exactly what he is.

So the question was, was Forbes trying to hide him deliberately?

Or was he just making a categorisation call based on a contract?

I suppose the difference matters legally and morally.

But from a public trust perspective, it doesn't really matter.

Either way, it was a decision that kept a high earner off the transparency list.