Page 4167 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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(b) a reduction in the resourcing for local reporting, political scrutiny, and the production of other local content that is important to Canberra residents; and
(c) the loss of valuable local programs such as 7:30 ACT, and a possible reduction of women’s sports broadcasting which feature ACT sporting teams;
(3) opposes the Federal Coalition Government’s cuts to ABC and SBS; and
(4) calls on the Speaker to write to the Prime Minister and Federal Minister for Communications expressing this Assembly’s opposition to cuts to the ABC and SBS and requesting that the cuts be reversed.
This motion calls upon the ACT Assembly to formally oppose the more than $300 million of cuts that the federal coalition will impose on our public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS. It asks all members to recognise that these cuts will be detrimental for Australia, for its independent journalism, sports coverage and political scrutiny, as well as specifically detrimental to the ACT and for the people that we represent in this Assembly. The motion asks all members to agree that our Speaker formally reflect our opposition to the cuts in a letter to the federal government.
Before I turn to some of the local issues, I will just recap the broader picture of the cuts to our public broadcasters. In 2013 there were no doubt some Canberrans who voted for Tony Abbott and the coalition government and who, before they voted, no doubt heard Mr Abbott’s explicit promise to the nation that under the coalition government “there will be no cuts to the ABC or SBS”. There could not have been a clearer statement: “There will be no cuts to the ABC or SBS.” This, of course, has been exposed as a blatant lie or a broken promise if you prefer to phrase it that way.
Mr Abbott promised before the election that he would “re-establish the bonds of trust that should exist between government and people” and would not break any promises. So his ABC statement broke two promises at once.
The twisting and turning that Mr Abbott has exhibited in the last week as he tries to say that he did not break a promise is acutely embarrassing. There are no cuts, no broken promises, just an efficiency dividend, he says. That is simply ridiculous. The promise was clear. And now there is over $250 million to be cut from the ABC and over $50 million to be cut from SBS.
Almost equally ridiculous is Mr Turnbull’s claim that the cuts will only affect operational efficiencies and that it is the ABC’s call to cut programming rather than tackle back office and administrative costs. Of course, as one would expect, the cuts will cause a massive restructure to the ABC. ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott, has announced already that he expects 400 jobs to be lost and drastic changes to the ABC’s capabilities, including program cuts. It already will be significantly cutting costs and back office functions to find savings but it cannot avoid making program cuts.
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