Speaker 1: In January, Jonathan Holmes met with then Managing Director of
Speaker 1: the ABC, David Anderson.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not going to go into depths about what
Speaker 2: was on the agenda.
Speaker 1: It was David, Jonathan and some of his colleagues from
Speaker 1: the group ABC Alumni. These meetings happened a few times
Speaker 1: a year, and usually what happens at Ultimo stays at Ultimo.
Speaker 3: They were confidential.
Speaker 2: I've decided to release the snippet of that conversation because
Speaker 2: he Davi is no longer managing direction, and it turns
Speaker 2: out that he was precisely correct in what he said.
Speaker 1: What he said was in response to a question did
Speaker 1: Anderson think the Coalition had plans to cut the ABC's
Speaker 1: funding if it won the election. The fear from Jonathan
Speaker 1: and his colleagues was not unfounded. Successive Coalition governments have
Speaker 1: made cuts to the national broadcaster over decades, and as
Speaker 1: Peter Dutton now signals he's looking to cut anything he
Speaker 1: deems to be waste at the ABC, alarm bells are
Speaker 1: once again ringing from Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This
Speaker 1: is seven AM Today. Chair of ABC Alumni and former
Speaker 1: host of Media Watch, Jonathan Holmes and the coalition's plans
Speaker 1: for the ABC and whether it's possible to truly shield
Speaker 1: the national broadcaster from outside interference. It's Tuesday, April fifteen, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me. What can you tell me about
Speaker 1: your meeting with David Anderson back in January?
Speaker 2: We were concerned that given what was happening in the
Speaker 2: United States, where public radio and public television are both
Speaker 2: under severe threats of being completely defunded at least by
Speaker 2: the federal government, and where they'd already defunded a Voice
Speaker 2: of Amara, their overseas radio service, and at that time
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton was quite admiring of a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that Donald Trump was doing in the United States.
Speaker 2: He's less so now, I think. We asked David, what
Speaker 2: do you reckon if the coalition gets in, are we
Speaker 2: likely to see actual defunding of the ABC, privatization which
Speaker 2: news corporation we're calling for again as they have for decades?
Speaker 2: And he said, no, no, no, they won't do that. What
Speaker 2: they'll do is what they've always done, which is they'll
Speaker 2: hold an inquiry into the efficiency of the ABC and
Speaker 2: almost regardless of what the result is, they'll cut the
Speaker 2: budget a bit and if that goes okay, they'll cut
Speaker 2: some more of the following year and so on. He said,
Speaker 2: that's the standard coalition approach.
Speaker 1: He worked at the ABC for decades, Jonathan, starting in
Speaker 1: the eighties. How many efficiency inquiries did you witness during
Speaker 1: that time and what came out of them in the past.
Speaker 2: I can't document them all, but Kim Williams in a
Speaker 2: recent speech claimed that there have been fifteen since the
Speaker 2: year two thousand and each one of them occupies the
Speaker 2: finance department of the ABC in vast amounts of work
Speaker 2: in you know, answering the same questions over and over again.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the good ways of being efficient
Speaker 2: for the ABC would be stop the bloody efficiency reviews
Speaker 2: quite frankly, because they chew up so much time effort.
Speaker 2: But before that, you know the Mansfield inquiry in ninety
Speaker 2: ninety eight, nineteen eighty two, there was a Dicks inquiry,
Speaker 2: and there was a whole succession of them at absolute
Speaker 2: regular events. Sometimes the ABC comes out of them really well.
Speaker 2: For example, there was four or five under Howard. One
Speaker 2: of them was by KPMG that was asked to look
Speaker 2: at the ABC sufficiency came back with the response that
Speaker 2: said that the ABC was an extremely efficient organization and
Speaker 2: in fact to do the job it needed more money.
Speaker 2: Of course that wasn't what the how government wanted to hear,
Speaker 2: so essentially they kind of suppressed it. I mean you
Speaker 2: still can't get the full report. Quite often they would
Speaker 2: actually make a cut, like an Abbott's government, they cut
Speaker 2: the ABC and then they instituted an efficiency inquiry under
Speaker 2: Peter Lewis to basically explore how it could possibly manage
Speaker 2: to survive the cuts. And that's happened a couple of times.
Speaker 2: You know, cut first and then enquire after.
Speaker 1: So now we're in the thick of the electric campaign,
Speaker 1: Peter Dutton has started talking about having another efficiency inquiry.
Speaker 1: Can you just lay out for me what he has
Speaker 1: said and what you thought as you were listening.
Speaker 4: Peter Dutton's driving through Melbourne right now.
Speaker 5: Good morning, Good morning Rath.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Well, look, when he was asked by Ralph Epstein on
Speaker 2: Melbourne Morning Radio.
Speaker 1: Being generous, but I have to ask, are you going
Speaker 1: to cut the ABC's funding if you win?
Speaker 2: Dunton said, and I'm quoting, well, I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of very good work that the ABC does and
Speaker 2: if it's being run efficiently, then you would keep the
Speaker 2: funding in place in place.
Speaker 5: If it's not being run efficiently and there is waste,
Speaker 5: then I think taxpayers who pay for it and who
Speaker 5: are working harder than ever just to get ahead, would
Speaker 5: expect us to you to not support the waste, but
Speaker 5: to invest into areas where the ABC is doing things.
Speaker 2: Epstein pushed him a bit to say, well, does that
Speaker 2: mean a cut, and Dutton said, there's just going to
Speaker 2: be a ruler run across where we're spending money in government.
Speaker 5: And I want to make sure that we're spending government
Speaker 5: money efficiently. In that way we can bring inflation down
Speaker 5: and the dream of home ownership can be achieved more quickly.
Speaker 5: Appreciate your time this morning, Thank you enjoying Melbourne. Thank
Speaker 5: you Rafe Tekula.
Speaker 3: And my reaction was here we go again.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, of course we should be efficient, and of course
Speaker 2: we should be excellent, and of course the ABC should
Speaker 2: and it should be a publicly accountable organization. But I
Speaker 2: doubt that Peter Dutton watch his ABC drama. I doubt
Speaker 2: he's ever watched Bay of Fires or Newsreader or you know,
Speaker 2: any of this stuff. I doubt that he listens to
Speaker 2: triple J. So you know, how are they going to
Speaker 2: rate whether the ABC's excellence or not. It's a very
Speaker 2: difficult task. I mean a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: supporters of the ABC don't think though it's as excellence
Speaker 2: as it should be in various areas. I spend quite
Speaker 2: a lot of time by defending the ABC to its friends.
Speaker 2: But you either think it's necessary, essential service that helps
Speaker 2: Australian democracy or you don't. And frankly, on that score,
Speaker 2: I would reckon that Peter Dutton probably doesn't.
Speaker 3: And as Kim.
Speaker 2: William said in his reaction, we are an efficient organization.
Speaker 3: Go for your life.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any doubt that in the event
Speaker 4: of mister Dutton acceding to office, that there would be
Speaker 4: a very early call for an efficiency and apparently an
Speaker 4: excellence review on what the ABC does.
Speaker 3: Game on.
Speaker 5: The ABC is.
Speaker 4: An accountable institution and I have no doubt it will
Speaker 4: perform well in any such review.
Speaker 2: I think the important thing to remember though, is that
Speaker 2: however popular the ABC is, News Court will always attack it,
Speaker 2: and a chunk of Coalition supporters will always attack it,
Speaker 2: But so far most Australians trust it and value it.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break the ABC's new boss needs
Speaker 1: to do to keep the broadcasters strong.
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Speaker 1: Donovan, you've seen, we've all seen successive cuts to the
Speaker 1: broadcast over decades. Can you lay out for me how
Speaker 1: the Albernesi's government's ring statement of funding has impacted the
Speaker 1: budget as it stands.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, first thing is Albersi has not reinstated the budget.
Speaker 2: He's managed very cleverly to persuade most of the public
Speaker 2: les he has. What he's done is to restore the
Speaker 2: loss of indexation under Turnbull and Morrison resulted in eighty
Speaker 2: four million dollars less going to the ABC over those
Speaker 2: three years than it would have done if its funding
Speaker 2: had been indexed, and so Albansi promised in the previous
Speaker 2: campaign to restore that money. But he's done a bit
Speaker 2: more than that now he's actually raised the budget to
Speaker 2: where it would have been if there hadn't been any indexation.
Speaker 2: But the ABC is still in real terms somewhere between
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty million and two hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: a year worse off than it was in real terms
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen. So thanks very much Albansi government. At
Speaker 2: least you've stopped us going backwards. But all the things
Speaker 2: that Kim Williams wants to do with better documentaries and
Speaker 2: better drama and all of this stuff, it ain't going
Speaker 2: to happen unless we get more money.
Speaker 1: What is the overall budget of the ABC? Just want
Speaker 1: to get a sense of how significant the cuts have
Speaker 1: been to the total size of the budget.
Speaker 2: At the moment, the ABC's operating budget is around a
Speaker 2: billion dollars. And on top of that, when you see
Speaker 2: what the ABC costs, they always add the transmission costs,
Speaker 2: which don't go to the ABC. They go to the
Speaker 2: companies that own the broadcasting towers around the country, and
Speaker 2: that's about another two or three hundred million dollars. What's
Speaker 2: actually happened is that the ABC is producing far more
Speaker 2: with less than it ever did. If you look at
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, say that then it produced one television channel,
Speaker 2: four national radio channels and practically nothing else. So now
Speaker 2: it produces six television channels. I think it's about twelve
Speaker 2: radio networks if you include digital as well as analog,
Speaker 2: masses of online stuff on every kind of subject under
Speaker 2: the sun, and podcasts, I think hundreds of podcasts, you know,
Speaker 2: just incomparably more for less money with less staff.
Speaker 1: And that's the situation inherited by new managing director Hugh Mars,
Speaker 1: who was just started in the role coming over from
Speaker 1: the nine network. What challenges does he face as he
Speaker 1: steps into the role?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, where to start?
Speaker 2: It is, I would say one of the more challenging
Speaker 2: jobs in the country. Everybody's got a view about the ABC.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows what they would like to see. But of
Speaker 2: course the first and biggest challenge for any CEO of
Speaker 2: the ABC at the moment is recognition. Huge numbers of
Speaker 2: people under forty never watch live television or practically never
Speaker 2: accept maybe sport. A lot of the time they're getting
Speaker 2: ABC content through YouTube or Apple News or whatever they
Speaker 2: may not even be particularly conscious that it is ABC content.
Speaker 2: I mean the days when everybody knew that Channel two
Speaker 2: was the ABC and seven oh two was ABC Radio
Speaker 2: in Sydney or seven and seven four in Melbourne, I
Speaker 2: mean just long gone. So how do you justify your
Speaker 2: existence and get this vitally important, impartial, objective news across
Speaker 2: to a large enough number of people when there's nowhere
Speaker 2: that they will automatically go. You've got to do a
Speaker 2: lot of things that a lot of times.
Speaker 1: Finally, Jonathan, is there any mechanism that could be formally
Speaker 1: instituted to insulate the ABC from future political interference?
Speaker 2: Michelle Rowland, the Minister for Communications in the Alberanzi government,
Speaker 2: has held an inquiry precisely to look at that issue.
Speaker 2: How do you make it harder for an incoming government
Speaker 2: that isn't the same as the one that's outgoing to
Speaker 2: stick to the commitments for the five year period.
Speaker 3: That's the question that was answered.
Speaker 2: We haven't got an answer, but look, you know, the
Speaker 2: fact is, in the Westminster system it's extremely hard to
Speaker 2: stop an elected government from doing what it wants to do.
Speaker 2: The Parliament is sovereign and it all depends on the
Speaker 2: ABC earning the trust and rewarding loyalty sufficiently that it
Speaker 2: retains the eighty percent kind of approval rating that it
Speaker 2: has at the moment, and if that drops, then its
Speaker 2: enemies will probably find a way of getting rid of it.
Speaker 1: Jonathan, a fascinating discussion. Thanks for your time.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today in the labor'st attempt to
Speaker 1: court the youth vote. The Liberals yesterday released a disk
Speaker 1: track on SoundCloud at just over one minute long, leaving Labor,
Speaker 1: targets the cost of living crisis and is self described
Speaker 1: as Kendrick meets Question Time. The track dropped as economist
Speaker 1: level criticism at both Labor and the Liberals, saying that
Speaker 1: both parties housing policies could inflame the housing crisis rather
Speaker 1: than ease it. And the Greens have renewed their push
Speaker 1: for free university and TAFE with the forty six point
Speaker 1: five billion dollar policy to be funded by high taxes
Speaker 1: on corporate giants. Green's leader Adam Band announced the policy yesterday,
Speaker 1: saying it's a key priority they will push for in
Speaker 1: a possible labor minority government. This has been seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.