The ABC’s internal politics can be toxic. But protecting Australia’s democracy is worth the pain

‘The ABC staff are loyal not to management – and certainly not to the board – but to the content they produce and to their notion of their audience,’ writes Margaret Simons, the author of Going Digital: The Transformation of the ABC. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

What the ABC does is reflected in almost every area of Australian life. In regional Australia, stories the ABC doesn’t report are likely to go unreported altogether. In the arts, books and events the ABC doesn’t cover are much less likely to reach audiences. If it stops commissioning drama and documentary, our creatives and their audiences suffer.

The existence of a well-funded public broadcaster, trusted by most, is one of the things that makes our politics different from that of the United States. It also, we can hope, makes our democracy more resilient.