There are plenty of opinions about the ABC out there but rarely are any of them good. Luckily for Australia, prominent Nationals have called for the entire organisation to move to regional Australia last night.
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack floated this corker: the ABC’s Sydney headquarters could be relocated to a regional town in order to save the taxpayer money while improving the public broadcaster’s coverage. But he isn’t quite out of brainwaves…
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
List of items suitable for elimination from the ABC, with a view to paying down the national debt.
1. ABC headquarters in Ultimo. A ludicrous white elephant, all of whose functions can be performed in decentralised locations.
2. All ABC buildings in capital cities. Just common sense. Living in the city is incredibly expensive and gives people funny ideas.
3. In fact, all ABC buildings of any kind. It’s all podcasts and YouTube now: let them do it in their lounge rooms like normal people.
4. ABC Kids. A whole channel for “kids”? Why are kids even watching TV? Ever heard of READING A BOOK?
5. Investigative journalism. Costly, pointless and basically just a way to justify snooping on me and my friends. Why should I pay to be snooped on?
6. Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. Have you heard what they say about us? Also I’m sick of the octopus guy.
7. Shaun Micallef. I think we can get a good price for him on the international market.
8. British panel shows. They’re all so bloody smug, aren’t they? They think they’re better than us but they’re not.
9. Q&A. I don’t anticipate anyone requiring an explanation for this one.
10. Triple J. Filth. Pure filth. And the music they play…just noise, isn’t it? In my day we had The Seekers. They never play The Seekers on Triple J. Why not? Because The Seekers had TUNES, that’s why not.
11. Comedy. Laughter is a waste of time and does not contribute to economic growth.
12. Drama. Real life is serious, we do not need distraction by people making up stories that aren’t even true.
13. Documentaries. We turn on TV to be entertained, why are we paying to be depressed by real life?
14. Gardening Australia. Hippy nonsense, pure leftist propaganda meant to trick us into abandoning valuable gas fields.
15. Annabel Crabb. Stop coming to my house. I don’t want to make you dinner.
16. iView. If you can’t watch something when it’s on, you shouldn’t get to watch it at all. iView just encourages laziness.
17. The news. We all have Twitter now, we don’t need a whole TV show to tell us what’s trending.
18. Philip Adams. We don’t even have to tell him, just switch off his mic and let him go on thinking he’s doing a radio show.
19. News radio. See “the news” above.
20. Management, editorial and administrative staff. Well, I mean, after all the rest, they’ll really have nothing to do, right?
A profound relief to see the insightful revelations of a senior politician. WHY HASN’T ANYBODY THOUGHT OF THESE IMPROVEMENTS BEFORE? Surely a primary candidate for the next Chair of the ABC.
I wish somebody would sit on McCormackerlooza. From a great height.
Oooooops! I fear I might have misinterpreted the “Michael McCormack’s top ideas to fix the ABC” article. I hadn’t realised until I just re-read it, that it was tagged as “Humour”. But look, it’s nice – and unusual – to find a politician – and an obviously very important one at that – who’s so prepared to foster derision.
Hey! Do what you like, but don’t you dare touch Philip Adams!
What an amazingly clear demonstration of “yesterday’s man”. Does he realise how he has demonstrated his irrelevncy?
What about getting rid of anyone who plays a round of Hit and Giggle with Cousin Jethro – they make him look human?