In early February the federal Coalition government announced it would end its three-year freeze on the indexation of funding for the ABC. Having reduced ABC funding by a total of $84m since 2019, the decision was a barely disguised effort to neutralise the public broadcaster as an issue ahead of the imminent election.
Given its record of overt hostility towards the national broadcaster over the past nine years, it is important to ask what does the Morrison government really want for the ABC if it is re-elected?
One thing we know the government does not want from the ABC is for its comedians to call people “cunts”. It doesn’t want the ABC to use the phrase “Invasion Day”.
We know the government didn’t want the date of Triple J’s Hottest 100 changed, and so it would probably prefer it go back to where it came from, so to speak – 26 January. It wants the ABC to do more “public-interest journalism”, but not if it concerns allegations Australian troops killed unarmed men in Afghanistan, not if it concerns private lives in the Canberra bubble, and not if it concerns conspiracy-peddling individuals in the prime minister’s orbit.
What does the government want for the ABC? First, to be content with what it gets. “Everyone has to live within their means, including the ABC,” Scott Morrison said in 2018. It does not want the ABC to respond to funding cuts by cutting programs: “That would be cowardly,” declared Malcolm Turnbull. Nor by closing bureaus: “A deliberate act of political vandalism,” Christopher Pyne said. It certainly does not want public campaigns about cuts, which senator James Paterson has dubbed clumsy “political blackmail”.
In 2018, Morrison scoffed at the idea of more ABC funding, and suggested with a hint of menace that those in the ABC pressing for more should be ashamed: “They’ve been getting a free ride.” According to the prime minister, the safest place for journalists to work is the ABC, precisely because it is government-funded.
Therefore, setting aside that ABC journalists are berated in a way and with an intensity that those at other news organisations are not, the government seems to have neither the time nor the inclination for questions about the manner in which it provides for the ABC. It would rather employees of the national broadcaster assumed a position of gratitude, said thank you and went on their way.
A good chunk of MPs in government, if given their own way, would like to see the ABC privatised. Others would prefer it downsized, made into a market-failure broadcaster only, with a charter that keeps it on a tight leash. A select few would prefer its ambit remain much as it is, though with a dramatically recalibrated understanding of “objectivity”, perhaps in line with Tony Abbott’s suggestion that included “basic affection for the home team”.
To Malcolm Turnbull, a new objectivity would include “genuinely accurate and impartial” coverage, in which the ABC would rise above the fray.
The more ABC-friendly in government think it should be more positive. Nationals MP Darren Chester told us that the ABC had a “negative view of Australian culture and society”, that it “talks the country down a bit”. It should reconsider, he said. For a story on disadvantage in Indigenous communities, why not a “more constructive” story about the solutions? The ABC, in this thinking, should be much like its old nickname, Aunty: cheery, benign, inoffensive.
The more transactional think the money government provides means the ABC should take direction from government. They have little time for niceties like editorial independence. “We have to pay for you,” Barnaby Joyce said when an ABC journalist pushed back on his suggestion it should cover a particular story. “And, you know, that’s a substantive part of the budget.”
Similarly, some in government think the ABC needs to be more responsive to complaints, and to reach out more: to find the mythical “rightwing Philip Adams” and put them on air, preferably in prime time and on a prominent station. After all, one conservative commentator told Jonathan Holmes, audiences on the right did not think anything on the ABC resonated with them, and were angered by this. “They just don’t see why they should go on paying for it,” remarked Holmes.
From the energising effect of this anger, and the government’s self-interest in fanning it in order to unite supporters in opposition to a common foe, it seems fair to surmise that the government, at the root of all its talk about bias and standards and funding security, would really like for Aunty to be Aunt Sally: a target for sticks and stones that never dodges or fights back but stands, fixed in place, smiling and silent.
Leaders of the major media organisations in Australia doubtless have their own desires. Some would prefer the ABC continue to develop talent and content that they can poach. Others, aggrieved by a belief that they are shouldering unprofitable obligations, would prefer the ABC were given sole carriage of areas that they no longer have an interest in, like children’s programming or rural and regional content. More, contending with a difficult and turbulent business environment, would prefer that the ABC were overhauled and constrained by legislation from doing anything that might duplicate what the commercial media does already.
A particular ideological strand also infects these desires. When the Australian’s Paul Kelly argued that “politics defines the market position of a media organisation”, he was referring to the supposed hoax of an impartial public broadcaster in the modern era. But Kelly could also have been writing about the organisation for which he has worked the better part of his journalistic career.
To adopt his view of a politically defined media market is to see that News Corp Australia’s newspapers and television broadcasts are positioned to cater to that rightwing audience to which Holmes referred, to attract subscription dollars and advertising revenue. There is a rampant ideological and commercial self-interest, then, in having the ABC to beat up – even on the most spurious of grounds.
Where this leaves the ABC is at a buffeted intersection of criticism that is political, ideological and commercial in nature: in effect, as one front in a broader culture war that ranges from the universities to the arts to the social welfare sector. It is an invidious place to be. The point of a culture war is never to vanquish the target of criticism. Culture wars, like those on terror or drugs or poverty, are never won, never declared over. They only exist to create and foster new lines of division. Or, as the satirical online site the Onion once put it: “Drugs win drugs war”.
The ABC should not be a player in that culture war.
While the case for the continuation of a thriving public broadcaster in Australia is clear, there are areas for improvement.
These include an adherence to proper process for appointments to the ABC’s board, ceasing the use of tied funding and indexation freezes, extending the three-year funding period to five years, and a respectful, constructive relationship between government and the ABC in which politicians recognise they are custodians of office only, and bear the responsibility to pass to their successors a country and government better off than they inherited.
These solutions are, at one level, technocratic. But to leave them to be implemented by technocrats and our elected representatives would be a mistake. The ABC’s future is reliant less on the Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor party than it is on us. The ABC is a national institution that belongs to each of us, and its future should be of concern to all of us.
In 2007, when the ABC turned 75, the Sydney Morning Herald asked what Australia would look like without the ABC: “You can imagine an Australia but not this Australia.” Let’s ask another question: imagine the ABC if its funding had not been cut, if its governance had not been so politicised, if its journalism had not been so subject to self-interested attack, if it had not been sucked into the culture wars. Imagine if its role had been celebrated and championed instead of dismissed and damned. What would that look like?
It is possible to envision an ABC that is vibrant, relevant and confident, producing and broadcasting programs of world-class quality, in a variety of forms, appealing to all comers; that is engaged with Australian life and culture; that explores with a liberal, adventurous spirit what might be possible. It is possible, too, to envision a world where both government and the ABC acknowledge the inherent tension in their relationship but act with respect for the institutions they each embody. It is possible, in short, to envision a national broadcaster of which we all are proud, and which continues to make an invaluable contribution to the life of this country.
Thus, as the ABC nears its 90th birthday and moves toward its centenary in 2032, we offer this answer to the titular question of our book, Who Needs the ABC?
We all do.
This is an edited extract from Who Needs the ABC? Why taking it for granted is no longer an option, by Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins. Published 29 March, Scribe, $29.99
