SBS quizzed on Eurovision costs, possible Jury bias.

In Canberra, questions were raised over the Australian delegation to Vienna and why the SBS Jury voted Israel so low.

Eurovision became a talking point at yesterday’s Senate Estimates Committee, largely around SBS costs, but also the Australian Jury.

SBS Managing Director Jane Palfreyman confirmed SBS did send staff to Vienna, Austria for the event.

“It is a small number of staff. In terms of the payment that you referred to we obviously have a partnership payment to the Eurovision Broadcast Union. I can’t share that. That is commercial in confidence, as [are] a lot of our content acquisition deals, as you can appreciate. Sharing them would disadvantage us…,” she said.

“It is a small cohort, I think it’s in the order of two or three people, but I’m very happy to share that with you….. We have usually a publicist and someone from the content team who oversees the content obligations.”

Ms. Palfreyman suggested the SBS team would have been on the ground “a matter of days… there’s the semi finals and the finals” but TV Tonight understands around two weeks covers rehearsals, PR events and broadcasts.

Senator Henderson also enquired to the process for selecting the Australian Jury.

“I’ll take that on notice and come back to you. I imagine there’s some criteria, .so we come back to you on notice, Senator,” said Ms. Palfreyman.

The jury consisted of Kelley Abbey, Erica Padilla, Hans the German (Matt Gilbertson), Indiana Massara, Mitch Churi, Michael Ross, Millie Millgate (EBU requires at least two jurors to be aged 18 – 25).

“Can you just take me through how people did vote, and how does SBS tabulate the voting?” asked the Senator.

Clare O’Neil is the Director of Corporate Affairs and Head of Codes and Compliance said, “SBS doesn’t have anything to do with the public vote. You have to log on to the Eurovision EBU framework and I think it’s about 70 cents a vote. It’s a limit of 10 votes per person, and you can vote for as many different countries, or you can give all your votes to one country. That’s all. We don’t get any visibility of that at all at SBS.”

Asked if the Jury collaborates on voting, she replied, “I’m not aware of it, unfortunately, Senator. I’m sorry. There is a sort of Jury show, so the jury votes are generally based on a different performance, perhaps, than the one that might be in the grand final. I don’t want to speculate. I’m not sure how the Jury reaches its decision.”

Senator Henderson asked, “Ms. Palfreyman, is it possible to explain how the Jury appointed by SBS gave zero votes to Israel when Israel was ranked so highly and came in second in the competition?”

“Senator, I think it comes back to the criteria and how the Jury reached their votes. I think we’ll answer that when we take it on notice as to how they reached their outcomes.,” she replied.

Ms. O’Neil clarified the United Kingdom came last in the Australian Jury voting with Look Mum No Computer.

“The United Kingdom is often much maligned as a Eurovision entrant, so Israel was not last, but they were certainly down the order, and we’ll come back to you.”

For the record, Australia was one of only three countries that gave Bulgaria 12 points in both the Public and the Jury votes.