ABC veterans Kerry O’Brien and Philip Williams have thrown their weight behind a campaign to encourage people to vote for political candidates who support a well-funded ABC.
“At no point in my lifetime, has the ABC been more important than it is today,” O’Brien says in a video published by ABC Alumni whose members are ex-ABC staff.
Williams, the ABC’s former chief correspondent who retired last year, says former prime minister Tony Abbott abolished the ABC’s international arm, the Australia Network, nine years ago while Labor was promising to boost the ABC’s role in the Pacific.
Williams said the ABC had closed several of its foreign bureaux in recent years and any further reduction in funding could lead to more cuts.
“I’m really worried the ABC won’t be able to keep covering the world as it has done if its funding is squeezed even more,” Williams says in the video.
Before the election was called, the Morrison government promised to restore ABC funding to 2018 levels, when Malcolm Turnbull imposed an $84m indexation pause.
The ALP has pledged to focus on regional broadcasting with an $8m a year increase to the ABC’s international program.
O’Brien said the ABC was “hopelessly behind” financially since the Abbott government was elected in 2013.
“A strong ABC is absolutely crucial in a landscape where democracy seems to be losing its way and the media has been weakened,” he said.
“The ABC cannot function the way it should be able to because financially it has been bleeding for the past nine years.”
The ABC has lost $783m in funding since the Coalition came to power in 2014, according to a 2020 report on the accumulated impact of government cuts to the public broadcaster.
Williams and O’Brien are two of several former ABC staff, including ex-Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes, to front election videos.
“The time has come for those who say they love the ABC, who say they rely on the ABC, to stand up and be counted,” O’Brien says in his video. “Our vote is one of the most precious things we have. So is the ABC, so please, make your vote count – back the candidates who support a stronger, better-funded ABC.”
Pete Lewis is a bit of a legend in rural Australia. Pete’s election campaign message for ABC Alumni echoes the words of former MD Mark Scott: “The further you get from Ultimo, the closer you get to the beating heart of the ABC.” #Vote1ABC pic.twitter.com/kaarjkqcCl
— abcalumni (@abcalumni) May 4, 2022
The former Four Corners, 7.30 and Lateline host said 70% of Australians trust the ABC but it was “constantly under attack” from the likes of right-wing lobby group the Institute for Public Affairs which produced a five-part podcast last year called Their ABC: What’s wrong with the ABC and how to fix it.
“The IPA believes that ABC is dangerous for democracy, and it is incompatible with a free society,” O’Brien says. “More than a dozen federal Coalition politicians contributed to that podcast.”
They included Bridget McKenzie, Nicolle Flint, Matt Canavan, James Paterson and Andrew Bragg.
O’Brien warned that in the US, which spends less per capita on public broadcasting than Australia, misinformation was “endangering America’s democracy”.
“Only 29% of Americans trust the mainstream news media,” O’Brien says in the video. “Australians don’t trust their media much either. But 70% do trust the ABC more than any other news source. Yet it is constantly under attack.”
In 2018, the government was forced to deny it wanted to privatise the ABC after the Liberal party federal council voted overwhelmingly to privatise the ABC.
Then prime minister Turnbull was not in the room when delegates voted to support the Young Liberals’ motion to sell all parts of the ABC that did not service rural regions.
Labor has pledged to extend the ABC’s triennial funding cycle to five years, an idea supported by former competition tsar Rod Sims.
Sims has called for “strong and clear” ABC governance and stable funding for the public broadcaster and said privatising the ABC would “represent extremely poor economic and public policy.”
