The word is that Cabinet’s Expenditure
Review Committee has knocked back the ABC’s triennial funding submission,
except for money for new digital content designed to encourage the uptake of
digital television. The debate isn’t over and the door has been
left ajar. Senator Helen Coonan, who has pronounced herself a friend of the
ABC, is likely to have a second go and may yet achieve some success.

Meanwhile Coonan has killed the idea of
advertising on the ABC. It probably always was a red herring. The
original interview in The Bulletin shows that the suggestion is in a question, and when Coonan responds she seems
to be talking about ABC shops and commercialising IT rather than advertising on
television and radio.

But the Expenditure Review Committee’s
decision might explain the context in which Coonan took so long to hit the idea
on the head this week. She is getting a fresh taste of how difficult it will be
to get more money for the ABC.

If the knock-back holds, it will mean that
the only new funding the ABC will have had from this Government has been tied
to particular purposes designed to suit wider federal government agendas.

In the current triennial funding submission,
the ABC sought $13.9 million for 200 hours of new digital-only content to be
broadcast on ABC2 and streamed online. If it gets this money, and with the proposed
lifting of the ridiculous genre restrictions on ABC multicasting, the ABC’s
digital offerings could be rich indeed – perhaps enough to encourage
Australians to buy the set top boxes and new televisions necessary to receive
them.

Meanwhile the sources who directed vitriol at
current ABC chairman Donald McDonald in Paul Daley’s Bulletin article
have been identified by Mark Day as being “close” to former ABC board member
and senior Victorian Liberal Michael Kroger, who is in turn close to the
Treasurer, Peter Costello.

Insiders have long suspected the locus of
the most intense government hostility to the ABC is from the Costello forces,
rather than those connected with Howard. It’s worth wondering why all this vitriol
comes out now – including leaks from the ABC Board, which has been precious and
punitive about leaks in the past.

The board is presently involved in the
search for a new Managing Director. Perhaps it would suit some to see
McDonald’s influence on the process diluted, which would be achieved if it
became clear that he was not to be reappointed.

Coonan was lukewarm in her support of
McDonald both in the Daley interview, and in this interview with Kerry O’Brien.