Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2068 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The first of two significant reductions in quality of service to the ACT community by the ABC occurred in about 1988 or 1989 - I forget exactly when it was - when the ABC, as a result of cuts by the Federal Labor Government, decided to discontinue local television broadcasting of news to the ACT. That was a very serious blow to the quality of service enjoyed by people around this city. Darwin has a local television news service from the ABC; so does Hobart. They are cities of smaller or commensurate size. There is every reason, in my view, why Canberra should also have the value of that 8c a day, or whatever it might be at this stage, that is put in by taxpayers of this country and this city and receive local television news as well. I think we should see that.

I think we should make the very clear point that the position of the ABC should not be just holding the line. Mr Corbell would say, "Let us hold the line on this; let us make sure there are no further cuts to the ABC". I would go further than that. I would say the funding that has been cut from the ABC in the last few years in respect of at least the ACT should be restored, and we should get back some of the things that previous Federal government decisions have cost the ACT. That should be the focus of this sort of campaign.

The other significant cut that was made to the ACT was the decision in 1994 to discontinue evening radio broadcasts from the local station, 2CN. That was a particularly serious decision because it was part of a program then in place by the ABC nationally to reduce costs, again in the face of Federal - if we must use the word, to match Mr Corbell's motion - "Labor" Government cuts, to reduce the level of service provided in regional centres. At that stage members of this place joined in the steps that I took to send a strong signal to the ABC that we were not happy with the idea of being pooled with broadcasting from Sydney or somewhere else; we wanted and expected continuing local radio broadcasting at that stage.

To the credit of all members of the Assembly at that stage, when I drafted a letter to Mr Paddy Conroy, the then acting managing director of the ABC, I was pleased to be able to get the signature of every member of the Assembly to that letter to make that point. I subsequently went to Sydney and delivered that letter in person to Paddy Conroy and spoke to them about the quality of service that the ACT was not getting as a result of that decision. I am pleased to report that it was less than 12 months later that the ABC decided to reverse the effect of that decision - not, I might say, as a result of a reversal of a decision to reduce funding to the ABC by the Federal Government, but because they reorganised priorities within the ABC to achieve that outcome.

However, there is an important point to make here. We made that point about the ABC's cuts at the time. We did not talk about the Labor Government's role in all of that; we talked about the reduction in the quality of service by the ABC to the people of Canberra. You might expect that, when there was a change of government last year, the ACT Liberal Government might have been less willing to criticise the Federal Liberal Government's decisions on the ABC and to reduce funding to the ABC. Not so. I would like to table the letter which I wrote on 25 May last year to Senator Richard Alston, the Federal Minister for Communications and the Arts, where I expressed

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .