Constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the Coalition government
With the Liberal Party’s privatisation hat thrown firmly in the ring, Denis Muller looks back at the national broadcaster’s distinctly public history in this crossposting from The Conversation.
In January 1931, as the newly elected United Australia Party government of Joseph Lyons was contemplating the establishment of a national broadcasting service, the prime minister received a deputation of prominent Melburnians, including a barrister and member of the Victorian parliament, Robert Gordon Menzies.
They urged that the new broadcasting service “be organised on an independent basis and that cultural potentialities of the Broadcast Service be considered a matter of primary importance”. The broadcast service came to be named the Australian Broadcasting Commission and went to air for the first time on July 1 1932.
The key element of the ABC Charter quoted above is that it should “inform and entertain”. Not quoted, it also says that it exists “to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia”. There is good reason why the inquiry’s “focus is clearly on the ABC news service”, because, like her predecessor, Michelle Guthrie referred to the ABC in her speech this week as a “news organisation”. This is the basic problem, the Charter only refers to “news” in passing (in relation to content to be provided to the international service) but specifically includes music and drama and that the ABC should “entertain” as well as inform. Yet for at least the past twenty years, the ABC has moved funds away from those areas in order to prop up an already excessively obese news department. The result is corporation that does not have “Broadcasting” at its heart and for that reason, the Australian taxpayer, whatever their political alliance, has been duped.
Thanks ex ABC, you have motivated me to get off my backside and check out the Charter. At Part II – section 6 of the ABC Act 1983 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013C00136) it extends over a page or two, and is not as intimidating as it may sound. Given we all pay for it, it’s highly recommended reading for all who value the on-going existence of the organisation, or indeed for those arguing for major changes.
Being a Charter, and having a large accompanying Act to interpret it and to bring it to reality, it is necessarily densely written, with each word and phrase having significant meaning and interpretation. One can pick out bits and pieces as has been done. Several phrases particularly caught my attention –
For example, ex ABC has commented on the lack of mention of news services; a reading of the Charter reveals that the provision of news and comment is only referred to specifically in regard to provision of services outside Australia – “to transmit to countries outside Australia broadcasting programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment”.
Intriguingly, added to the Charter in 1983 was the clause 1(ba) “to provide digital media services”. Interesting to reflect that given the enormous changes in the provision and content of media since the inception of the ABC, and advances in web-based services since the addition of this clause in 1983, that provision of news and comment on digital services to satisfy the information needs outside Australia automatically provides those services to everyone within Australia. I would suggest that the intense interest in the ABC by some powerful media organisations has been in part generated by the very successful implementation of these digital media services.
The Charter does require of the ABC that it “reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community”, is a “provider of an independent national broadcasting service to provide a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialized broadcasting programs”, and reflects the “multicultural character of the Australian community”. Wow! A big ask, and I think it generally does a pretty good job of that!
Yes, we all pay for the ABC; it is a large organisation which must, as all corporations do to survive, review its functions, its content, its efficiency, and demonstrate that it remains true to the Charter. Being a taxpayer funded entity it must also be regularly reviewed externally for not only operational efficiency and effectiveness, but also independence, neutrality and quality.
In supporting ongoing review of the ABC we need to stand up for what is in essence a good organisation providing in general a high quality service, and ensure we do not simply become patsies to the more dominant commercial media organisations baying for its blood.
With respect, the author being part of Melbourne University and publishing this on The Conversation, says it all. It’s a Leftist perspective of an institution that has become a Leftist mouthpiece. The suggestion of privatising was symbolic. Nobody would buy the ABC. It’s a worthless liability. But it’s morally, ethically and pragmatically wrong to tax all Australians to subsidise a foghorn for anti-Australian sentiment that denigrates Australian culture and attempts to subvert Australian values while poisoning young people with a perverted take on our history in order to instil self-loathing in them. The ABC should become a neutral information service only: regular news, weather, emergency announcements. That can be done for under $100M. Give the other $1Bn to worthy causes.
Hey Mike, I read your comments: mate, what are you talking about? One challenge is how to tell someone politely that their comments are BS – one solution to this came up in the British Parliament and was reported by that venerable public broadcaster, the BBC. Translated into Australian it goes a bit like this –
Rick Symons: Dear Editor, Mike has the brains of a Galah
Editor: Rick Symons, your comments are unworthy of this place, and I request you withdraw them
Rick Symons: Dear Editor I withdraw my comments unreservedly. Mike does not have the brains of a Galah
I’m being too harsh. You have actually won the prize for the most efficient opinion piece I have read. In several sentences you have given a pretty severe assessment of an institution, Melbourne University, a person, the author and a corporation, the ABC. All without giving the reader a shred of supporting evidence. My God, if only my assignments at University had been that easy. You then tell us about being anti-Australian, denigrating Australian culture, subverting Australian values, poisoning, perverting and instilling self-loathing – again without giving the reader a shred of supporting evidence.
Mike, what do you expect us to do – just roll over and nod in agreement? Who are you to be pontificating on what it is to be Australian, what are Australian values, what is Australian culture? Maybe those in your echo chamber understand but the rest of us out here need a bit more to go on mate.
If the Liberal Party has drifted away from the values and ideals of Menzies, the ABC has traduced, trashed, and trampled them. The ABC’s role is to serve the whole nation, not just the Left. If it continues to flout its purpose, the so-called “constant attacks” on it really will become constant. Those who are faithful to the values and ideals of Menzies have had enough of being targeted by “our” ABC. The national broadcaster now finds itself in the position of the ancien regime before the Revolution. Let it put its house in order, or let it tremble at what will follow.
Paridell, good Knight, you have alarmed your Queene with talk of Revolution! She asks that you retain the anonymity of your pseudonym. She knows the quixotic nature of revolutions, the rapid evaporation of the hubris of the echo chamber in the early phase, and the rapid settling of old scores before the real business of the revolution gets underway.
Personally I hope it does not come to pass. I’m not a rusted on ABC viewer or listener, however I consider the ABC does a pretty good job, and has a good range of high quality innovative programs. Yes the ABC is a large taxpayer funded organisation which must be regularly externally reviewed to ensure its efficiency, to demonstrate its independence, neutrality and quality, and to ensure it remains true to its Charter. Where some sections of the community it serves feel it has deviated from that ideal, that must be investigated and rectified.
Paridell, I know your capricious nature – do not become Paridell the Murdoch Patsy.
Give it a rest mates. Are you all too young to recall the abc bashing Hawke and Keating hard?
If the abc is a leftist conspiracy, it’s a statement rooted in the rightward drift of politics. You’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and shilling a line. All national broadcasted news in western democracies has a left wing bias because news has a left wing bias because actualities have a left wing bias. Not surprisingly, telling the stories nobody wants to print tends to be stories about privilege or have you forgotten to check your privilege?
Peppa pig and Harold Holt loving it up in a Chinese sub…
While never mentioned in it’s charter, there was an economic imperative to the establishment of the ABC. At the time the subscription radio industry was on the edge of complete failure due to rampant piracy. The ABC bailed out the failing A-Class licence holders, creating a service to serve their customers – the middle and upper classes, the UAP constituency.
With the subscription radio and television industry ably serving the now Liberal constituency, times have changed. Though it should be said that much of the subscription radio content, and a certain proportion of the subscription TV content, is currently commissioned by the ABC. The ABC does more of Screen Australia’s job than they do.
When founded, the ABC explicitly avoided having it’s own news service. The idea of such a thing was too controversial. Instead, it’s presenters read articles from newspapers, as the RPH stations do today.
The ABC is far from the organisation it was at it’s birth. It has grown in all sorts of different directions. If it wants to continue to live and breathe, it would be well advised to grow a little more on it’s right-hand side. It could commission more right-of-centre issues programming (especially on TV), and give greater prominence to it’s existing work in that space. It’s easy to pick on the left wing excesses of Q&A and The Drum, but the ABC does also do good right-of-centre work with it’s business programming and certain RN programs.
QandA, the Drum and 7.30 report all weight their guests carefully to ensure political balance.
The fact that you think it’s right wing actually shows that what you really want is a conservative propaganda mouthpiece which is not the place of the national broadcaster. Besides, we already have SkyNews for that.
We can’t rely on commercial networks for quality arts and entertainment programming either, which is why they only show reality TV and people get their quality drama from ABC, SBS or Netflix these days.
And no, I don’t work for the ABC, but I certainly respect it.
And just to think that Malcolm Turn-bull-shit’s corporate tax cuts would fund the ABC into the next century. I know where the true value lies.
I think in the television broadcast world all of the broadcasters sit pretty much in the middle and only vary by fractions of a degree. Subscription TV news is dominated by the NewsCorp right-wing influence/
Newspapers are dominated by the right-wing NewsCorp titles.
Magazines are now so few and hardly have a political bent.
Out-of-home is also pretty agnostic.
Radio is basically music for FM but the AM airwaves are dominated by the right.
So I suppose if you gulp down all the right-wing everyday then the ABC (and probably Fairfax) would appear to be left-wing.
The fact is that they are centrist – but from WAYYYY over there =======> that appears left-wing.
Carlingford, N.S.W. 2118, 20/08/2010.
Dear Mr. Muller,
I just stumbled on your article, which is now more than a year old and am still amazed, how far removed the left is from reality.
1/ It was me, who pleaded with Malcolm Turnbull, when he was the Minister for Communicatons under Prime Minister Tony Abbot, to
sell off the A.B.C. as it had already then become a mouthpiece for the Left.
Tax-payers already then had to fork out 1.4 billion dollars of their hard-earned money on a White Elephant A.B.C., who saw its rating plummeting year after year, after more and more people became
dissatisfied with their Left-leaning views and biased journalism.
People do not need a government-run media-outlet, as we have plenty of free-to-air t.v. channels and we can also use the Internet to access news and an endless line of topics without the restraints of political bias.
While Turnbull did not want to ruffle too many heads, he at least cut
the funding by a paltry 380 million, which of course still drew an outcry from the over-paid management and staff of the A.B.C.
An old friend of mine, a Salvation Army Officer, told me that his son, who works for a stationery supplier to the t.v. channel offices, was stunned when he first visited the A.B.C. offices. Those were all lavishly outfitted compared to the ones in the privately owned ones, which were of ordinary quality.
Even after the cut in funding, the 6,000 staff must have earned a stunning 168,000 dollars per year and all that for a below average
quality of news and entertainment service.
As the greater public did not care about the cut, the Coalition still
remained in power.
2/ Your claim that “constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the coalition government” is just another of the flawed predictions made by the Left.
In April of this year, the Coalition was again elected with an even
larger majority and we the old conservatives keep scratching our
heads in amazement how the “progressives” have actually become
more regressive back to the days of communism.
Regards,
Arnoldus Lapre,
91a Marshall road,
Carlingford,
N.S.W. 2118