Get Up! target Abbott and Turnbull with strategic outdoor for Protect Our ABC campaign
Activist group Get Up has taken their campaign to protect the ABC to the streets with two outdoor executions strategically placed in the constituencies of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The posters funded by Get Up members and created by Motion Picture Company feature the characters from the ABC’s long running children’s show Bananas in Pyjamas looking distressed next to the slogan “Protect our (ABC)”.
Rushcutter’s Bay poster
Military Road poster
The image on display in Bayswater Road, Rushcutter’s Bay – Turnbull’s constituency – was celebrated with a launch event this morning as Tony Abbott’s denigration of the ABC in a radio interview on Radio 2GB yesterday dominated the news.
Turnbull defended the ABC today following Abbott’s public attack on the public broadcaster for being critical of Australia during an interview with 2GB shock jock Ray Hadley.
The outdoor campaign funded by donations from more than 12,500 people is expected to be seen by 250,000 in the East Sydney suburb.
A second poster, showing the Bananas in Pyjamas next to a blender, has been installed in Military Road, Mosman, which runs between Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s home on the Northern Beaches and the Sydney CBD. Both posters will be on display for the next month.
A spokesman for Get Up! said: “They’re very tactically placed in the electorate of the PM and the Communications Minister, ministers who will have a deciding factor on the future of the ABC and both electorates where we have strong Get Up memberships as well.”
The campaign was launched last month in response to attacks on the public broadcaster by politicians and commentators and Sam McClean, national director of Get Up, said nearly 215,000 people signed up to support it within 72 hours.
“That makes it our fastest growing petition ever – underlining the community’s strong support for the national broadcaster,” he said.
Almost 160 Get Up members have signed up to letterbox Tony Abbott’s electorate of Warringah and Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate of Wentworth, he said.
Benita Collings, who presented children’s show Play School for 30 years on ABC TV, will be the ambassador of the campaign. She said at the launch event this morning: “I don’t want to imagine an Australia without the ABC and it’s clear from the polling and the momentum of this campaign that most Australians feel the same.”
In the interest of transparency and saving money why doesn’t the Getup donations page auto redirect straight to ALP’s https://australianlaborparty.nationbuilder.com/donate ?
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I’d rather see a public campaign that criticizes the ABC until this publicly-funded organization becomes truly non-partisan, as it is supposed to be.
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Well – that will please Tony’s former employer/ABC competitor.
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In the interest of transparency, why doesn’t news corp declare its ownership of the LNP?
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Hmmm, why the Bananas in Pajamas? Why not a gigantic picture of Tony Jones’s Head and “protect my quarter of million a year paycheck”?
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Why’s that WB … to highlight that the ABC’s biggest earner is way behind the commercial FTA presenters pay cheques?
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We need our ABC to provide us with information denied to us be our’democratically’ government. Also need entertainment uninterrupted by mindless advertising which, later in the evening, takes up at least equal time to the programme.
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I never miss the ABC’s seven o’clock news with the wonderful Juanita Phillips. Or the 7.30 Report with Leigh Sales and Lateline with the gorgeous Emma Albereci. I can’t say the news reporting is biased but even I’d agree that any Liberal that goes on 7.20/Lateline gets a much tougher time of things than a Labor/Green counterpart.
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WB point well made – but actually it’s not a quarter-million paycheck – it’s $390,000! And it along with Mark Scott’s $800,000 a year is a national disgrace.
Now you mention it, the ABC is a national disgrace.
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What a waste of supporters’ money to upstage and try to justify what ABC has done wrong !!!
ABC has degenerated over decades. ABC Classic FM station is the only station that warrant my frequent visits.
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The slogan should be: “Protect Labor’s ABC”
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As an outsider looking in, although I’ve been here 14 years. Australia’s media is truly, truly awful and I’ve worked in it for 10 years. The only saving grace you have is the ABC.
Amazing that so many come out to knock it. Or are your paid up members of News Ltd? I would ask yourselves when its gone who will hold those in power to account? Fairfax, News ltd (you seen news.com.au’s front page?) don’t make me laugh.
You wonder why The Guardian and Daily Mail are here and found it so easy, it’s because you do it so,so badly.
How many productions not from the ABC (Neighbours and Home and Away aside) are screened overseas?
Could you see any of you commercial publications challenging the international news market? Of course not because again you do it so badly.
The population are quite literally breaking the law to get overseas content because the stuff you produce here is terrible. You pay $90 a month to Foxtel for 10 year old reruns of Top Gear and Pawn Stars and they still play just as many ads as free to air.
You’re mugging yourselves off Australia and Rupert is laughing his a**e off at you.
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