Labor pledges to give $60m to ABC for local drama if it wins election
The ABC is in line for a $60m funding boost to help create more local drama if the Australian Labor Party wins next month’s election, under a new policy outlined by the party yesterday.
As part of the policy, which was launched on Saturday by leader Bill Shorten, the party has also promised “caution” in looking at any possible changes to copyright, although mostly in relation to book publishing and territorial rights.
The party has used the policy launch to attack the Liberal government saying in its release: “Abbott-Turnbull Government has delivered nothing but chaos and cuts for the arts.”
Those cuts came as part of successive budgets which cut money from not only the ABC and SBS but also the Australian Council for the Arts and music projects like Sounds Australia.
However, the $60m falls well short of restoring funding for the ABC to previous levels, with around $254m cut from its coffers over five years by the Liberal government in the 2014 budget. Last month’s budget saw a further $20m cut from its newsgathering services.
In its plan for the ABC Labor proposes to invest $60m over three years which it says will allow the broadcaster to produce “30 hours of family drama programming each year, comprising 30 episodes of 1 hour each or 60 half-hour episodes”.
In the policy it states: “With this funding boost, the ABC could commission a long-running, quality local drama which provides an opportunity for Australian stories to take a permanent, prime-time place in the ABC’s schedule and provide for advertisement-free family viewing in a market that is increasingly being dominated by international content. “
It says that will help secure jobs for local writers, producers and actors, as well as helping to safeguard Australian storytelling. It points to last year’s drama ANZAC Girls as an example, saying it employed 1,500 people, including 1,300 extras, and cost $5.5m to create.
This week pressure group Friends of the ABC launched a politically-focussed campaign urging whoever wins power at the next election to stop cutting the ABC budget or else face a future where the organisation cannot produce quality programming.
