Bill Shorten vows to undo ABC’s $83.7m budget cuts should Labor be elected
Bill Shorten has proposed a reversal of the Coalition’s $83.7m cut to the ABC should the Labor party claw its way out of opposition and into government at the next election.
According to Shorten, doing so will ensure the broadcaster can meet its charter requirements and adapt to the digital media environment, while still maintaining jobs.
Shorten said “enough is enough”
They’re not cuts not matter how many times you keep repeating the outright lie.
If you’re paid $20 per hour today and next year you’re paid $20 an hour, you haven’t had your pay cut. The ABC funding hasn’t been cut – it’s just remaining that the exact same level for the next three years.
Run by Murdoch’s IPA how can it be other than being run into the ground by a bunch of Liberal trolls.?
Of course he’ll give the ABC money.
Can’t have the publicity machine being nobbled.
Zoe, you do realise that such a reinstatement of funds will have no effect on “… the loss of up to 37 positions …” because those job cuts are specifically to “allow the organisation to invest the saved funds into content creation” (ABC quote). The same as the 22 redundancies in the state newsrooms, not to save money but, according to the head of news, “We’re not doing this to save money, or withdraw resources from local newsrooms” but so that “… new senior editorial roles would be introduced to add to the expertise and skills in the newsroom …”.
Just in case you inadvertently gave the impression that any of these redundancies were the result of government funding cuts.
I take it that the above commenters would be happy to still be receiving the same salary they were getting (say) a decade ago, simply because it hadn’t been cut.
Dear JG,
You ask if ‘the above commenters would be happy to still be receiving the same salary they were getting (say) a decade ago, simply because it hadn’t been cut’.
The truth of the matter is that industry salaries haven’t risen over the last few years, they’ve declined; just as the number of jobs has declined as well.
Just because we used to get paid more year on year doesn’t mean that trend will continue.
As an industry we have to recalibrate our salary expectations to match the reality of what clients are paying us.
For more and more of us, how to keep our jobs is more relevant than whether we’re earning the same salary or not.
Twenty years on, I’m still waiting for Labor to roll back the GST, which Wayne Swan called at the time a ‘bastard tax’. He went on to be Treasurer for six years and he remains in Parliament to this day; the Labor leader of the time has just become the Governor of WA; and the GST is still with us.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for any stray 83 million dollars to come the ABC’s way.