The Liberal Party has not been a friend to the ABC in recent years. The government-funded public broadcaster has been publicly criticised and attacked increasingly in 2018, and incoming Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s track record on the ABC doesn’t indicate we’re likely to see that ease up under his leadership.
One of the most damaging moves the government has made was the unprecedented early announcement of its funding cut for the next triennium — made in the new Prime Minister’s 2017-18 federal budget announced in May, when he was still treasurer. That cut, as Crikey wrote at the time, was a vindictive singling out of the broadcaster to be punished by the government in that budget.
The cut, or funding freeze, amounted to $84.7 million taken from the ABC’s budget over three years, resulting in dozens of job cuts. ABC news director Gaven Morris and managing director Michelle Guthrie responded saying there was “no more fat to cut” in the ABC budget.
Morrison did promise that, contrary to the Liberal Party’s vote to privatise the ABC in June, the ABC would remain in public hands: “The ABC will always be in public hands. It will never be sold … It is a public broadcaster. It always has been and it always will be.”
But, discussing that promise on the ABC’s AM program with Sabra Lane, he made clear that while he wouldn’t privatise the ABC, he certainly wouldn’t support it either:
It’s not for me to defend the ABC or promote the ABC. I fund the ABC as the treasurer and we do that every year and I think there are concerns out there in the Australian public about that and I think it’s for the ABC to demonstrate to the Australian people that they are not doing that. Now, I’m not saying they are and I don’t think you do, Sabra, and I don’t think you do on this program. I think this program is a good example of the unbiased nature of the ABC.
Earlier in the year, Morrison’s office was also one of those agitating against the ABC and its chief economic correspondent Emma Alberici. He sent an official complaint to the ABC over the corporate tax cuts analysis piece that was later taken down and edited.
The letter from Morrison’s adviser reportedly said Alberici demonstrated “limited understanding” of company tax, and was “riddled with inaccuracies”.
Like many conservative politicians, Morrison is also a critic of the ABC’s Monday night panel show Q&A. The Australian’s Media Diary noted earlier this year that neither Morrison nor the man he was facing in today’s ballot, Peter Dutton, had appeared on the show in years:
Diary hears Morrison was asked on to Q&A the Monday after last month’s budget but instead fronted up that night for a ‘town hall’ forum hosted by Paul Murray on Sky News. Diary asked several senior government staffers what was going on, and it seems the Q&A absences are deliberate. In fact, there is open hostility in some government quarters towards the show. One senior staffer simply said: ‘Why would we?’ Another said: ‘From the perspective of a conservative member of the government, you’re talking to the converted. You’re bashing your head against a brick wall. They often claim the audience is more Coalition than anyone else. But from our observation, we just don’t believe it.’
Morrison’s complaints to the ABC extend beyond his time in government. As opposition immigration spokesman in 2012 he complained about comments Stephen Long made on The Drum about his party’s policy on immigration. Long said Morrison’s position was “a cynical manipulation of an underlying prejudice in the Australian community and that it has very little policy merit”. The comments prompted an apology from the ABC, which said the comments were “without evidence”.
This is still a Free Country, and there are many hands
The beginning is just great in Morrison’s words “the ABC will always be in public hands”, but the quote goes to the arms that the hands are connected to. The arms are the government and from the government comes the funding for the ABC so the ABC can be in public hands. That is the thumb of the answer as I thumb through what it means. The quote means a lot more than it says in words because Scott Morrison leaves many things unsaid and the unsaid things are about the funding and the funding cuts to the ABC where staff are sacked because of those funding cuts. That has been left unsaid. And what is unsaid are the important things. The truth is the ABC is in the hands of the government.
So why are we having funding cuts because it has been recorded in the media that the Government from the May Budget are flush with money. Money is flooding into the government from Taxes, and because they have so much money, $444 million was given to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, an obscure organisation, connected to many commercial organisations to fix the 2,800-kilometre long Reef.
If that money is given away then money also could be given back to the ABC, because there was too much money to cut the National Deficit to bring the debt down to $18billion when the plan was to bring it down to more than $20 billion. So these funding cuts have nothing to do with funding but with bias in media delivery. The government wants the ABC to deliver the news as the government sees fit. They want to be the news expert of what is reported from the government to the people as the Government turn and turn more to the right.
We have seen this before in the Iraq war of Desert Storm. ABC Journalists reported back ion that war what was happening in Iraq to Australia, but the Generals and the Department of Defence thought that was too raw in reporting. So they dismissed the ABC journalists from reporting the war and sent them back home to Australia.
the new P.M is not scott morrison, its rupert murdoch and australia is about to become the 51st U.S state, low wages and trailer parks and education and health for the rich only and mass poverty and under employent is the social demograph of the hard right murdoch disciples, so tighten your belts and bend over and prepare to receive the blessings of ruperts new world.
Morrison is both part of and captive of the far right.
He will do exactly as he is told to by these right wing forces – regarding the ABC and in other matters.
Scomo is a fun person as he cracks jokes here and there to bring a smile to faces where there is little moisture and at his press conference he said “We are on your side.” Now that crack would have put cracks in a few serious faces, even Peter Duttons as those serious people would have ended up smiling. A fun person, on the button is Scomo, and as Treasurer in the Turnbull government he was into funding or was it reduced funding of the ABC. It was reduced funding and there as a result was reduced fun at the ABC as it led to staff cuts. And the ABC and its broadcasts give a broad cast in programming across the nation and its cities and the bush and out there in the bush, the National Party is listening, They were to sit across a log or something long but they are no longer to sit on a cross bench as they get across dryly in across way that there is now no rain.
But we have a new reign in Liberal prime ministership, a man from the city who says he needs to listen to the bush, or is that the right and honourable National Party and the National Farmers Federation.
Now Scot Morrison as PM, being interviewed on the ABC am programs he says that “The Drought” will be the government focus and priority but sadly there was no mention of Climate Change as on that subject he is between a lump of coal in parliament and a hard place and that hard place is where the ground is hard and without any rain, the drought-diseased plain mainly west of the Great Dividing Range. There is a cry from the bush and they have a push on for funding relief as they push for funding while the drys and the wets sort thing out in the Liberal Party of just who is going to be in the Cabinet. And that push in there ain’t hay.
Out on the western plain where the hay is being trucked back and forth and from the back of beyond it is dry and parched and there is no grass for the cattle to eat. Do they, the farmers, face defeat? They get off their knees as they pray for rain and get to their feet and ask the PM for relief. He wants to relieve them. Boy, are they relieved that Scott Morrison has come to the rescue. The PM is going to concentrate, yes concentrate on The Drought and the hope is he will fix it. But really, to make it rain is not as easy as saying ABC.
Mr Shouty is going to need very competent staff because that word salad with Sabra Lane was utterly unintelligible – no content discernible though the malevolent intent was clear.
As Warren Zevon would say, “Well he’s just an excitable boy”.
Scott Morrison is religious.
He will give a sermon about how you should live and that coal is a great fuel to keep you warm.