The announcement in last
week’s budget that the ABC’s funding indexation will be frozen for three years from July 2019
is the latest in a series of extraordinary attacks by a government that
displays an unprecedented level of hostility to the national
broadcaster. It represents a real cut to the broadcaster’s operating costs
of $84m.
Added to the $254m cut over five years announced by
then-communications minister Malcolm Turnbull in November 2014, and a $28m cut to the enhanced newsgathering
service in the 2016 budget, this brings the money taken out of our national
broadcaster since the election of the Coalition government to over a quarter of
a billion dollars.
Contrast this with the
former Labor government’s approach. In 2009, when I worked in the office of
communications minister Stephen Conroy, the ABC was awarded the largest funding increase since its incorporation in 1983,
with $136.4m in new money to fund the creation of the ABC Kids’ channel and 90
hours of new Australian drama. Four years later, the ABC was given $89.4m to set up the newsgathering
service and enhance the digital delivery of ABC programs.
In addition to record
funding boosts, Conroy, arguably the best friend in government the ABC has ever
had, also ensured the ABC charters were amended to specifically require them to
deliver digital services; overhauled the board appointment process to put it at
arm’s length from the government of the day; and, in a move that enraged the
Murdoch empire, created legislation that specified that any international
broadcasting service funded by the government could only be delivered by the
ABC. This came after the government’s refusal to award carriage of the
Australia Network to News Corp in 2011, a decision that was regarded both at
home and internationally as common sense by everyone other than the owners of
Sky News.
All this is now under
attack. The Turnbull government seems determined not only to undo every measure
of financial and legislative support implemented by the last Labor government,
but to undermine the ABC’s operations so thoroughly that its ability to provide
the services its charter requires will likely be devastated.
The legislation passed
in early 2013 prevented the incoming Coalition government from reopening the
tender process to award the Australia Network to Sky – so they shut it down
entirely instead.
Five years later, the
Lowy Institute laments that “[o]nce a significant
player in what the British Council calls the Great Game of the Airwaves, the
ABC’s purpose-designed, multiplatform international services have suffered
near-terminal decline”.
"We must rise up against
this concerted campaign of funding cuts and attempts to limit the activities of
our national broadcasters"
As far as the board
appointment process goes, Turnbull as prime minister and his communications
minister Mitch Fifield are doing their best to ignore it: two recent appointees,
Minerals Council boss Vanessa Guthrie and Sydney Institute
Director Joseph Gersh, were not recommended for appointment
by the independent selection panel. Fifield is relying on clauses in the
legislation governing the appointment process that allow the minister to
appoint from outside the recommended list in exceptional circumstances, but has
publicly offered no reason why these candidates were more urgently required on
the ABC board than those recommended as more qualified by the selection panel.
It’s also impossible to
discover whether the minister has tabled the statement to parliament giving his
reasons for ignoring the advice of the selection panel, as required by the
legislation. If he has, perhaps those statements explain why Guthrie and Gersh
are the most qualified candidates to provide governance of our most trusted source of news.
Despite the selection
criteria set out in Conroy’s legislation, the ABC board now includes no one
other than the staff-elected director and the managing director, Michelle
Guthrie, with media experience and, despite the full board having been
appointed by this government, they seem unable to make a case to maintain the
ABC’s funding.
But the biggest danger to
the ABC is the government’s agenda to reduce its digital services, and it’s
here where the ABC – and, in this case, SBS as well – face a truly existential
threat. The so-called “competitive neutrality inquiry” into the national
broadcasters, currently underway, has ostensibly been launched to satisfy Pauline Hanson’s demands for an
inquiry into the ABC in return for her support for last year’s appalling package of media “reforms”, which will
reduce diversity and local content across the commercial broadcast media.
Don’t believe it for a
second. While Hanson’s hatred of the ABC will assist any future government
moves to neuter the broadcaster’s digital activities, this inquiry is yet
another gift to News Corp and the commercial media organisations, who have been
baying for the ABC’s blood since it arrived on the airwaves more than
three-quarters of a century ago.
The $30m of government money given, apparently with few strings
attached, to Foxtel last year was really just “compensation” for the fact that
the commercial TV operators got a windfall gain with the abolition of their broadcast licence
fees and
replacement with spectrum fees. This saves the broadcasters around $90m per
year (money which is forgone government revenue, by the way) so, of course,
Foxtel had to be similarly rewarded for … running a commercial business in a
competitive market.
Read the full article here.
North Coast Voices, 12 May 2018,"Time to show support for the ABC"
The ABC provides vital local news services, as well as things like emergency and bushfire warnings. Every time the Liberals cut the ABC’s funding they hurt local communities.— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) May 18, 2018
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