Ita Buttrose rebukes Scott Morrison's claims the ABC's budget has not been cut.

Extract from The Guardian

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

ABC chair says it ‘has been a devastating week for the ABC’ but the company refutes claims it is losing emergency broadcasting capacity

Elias Visontay

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Fri 26 Jun 2020 19.12 AEST Last modified on Fri 26 Jun 2020 20.49 AEST

ABC chair Ita Buttrose has called out claims by the prime minister that the national broadcaster’s funding has not been cut. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

ABC chair Ita Buttrose has publicly refuted Scott Morrison over claims the broadcaster’s budget has not been cut, clarifying indexation freezes will amount to an $83m reduction over three years.
Buttrose’s claims come as the ABC’s former national head of emergency broadcasting responded to reports there are plans to make the role redundant, warning such a move could “put the lives of Australians at risk” following a deadly fire season during which the broadcaster was credited with providing critical safety information.
On Friday, Buttrose released a statement responding to the prime minister’s comments on Thursday that “the ABC’s funding is increasing every year” and that “there are no cuts”.
“If you’re working in the media industry, if you’re a journalist today, the safest place for you to be is actually at the ABC,” Morrison said.

Buttrose called out the government for not regarding an indexation freeze as resulting in a budget reduction.

“Let me clarify the cuts because there seems to be some confusion in government circles about them,” she said.
“The 2018 budget papers clearly state that the government’s savings measures reduce funding to the ABC by $14.623m in 2019-20, $27.842m in 2020-21, and $41.284m in 2021-22. This reduction totals $83.75m on our operational base.
“It is true that over the three years the ABC budget does still increase but by a reduced amount, due to indexation on the fixed cost of transmission and distribution services. Previously, it was rising by a further $83.75m over the same three years for indexation on our operational base. This is the funding that has been cut and considered a saving by the government,” she said.
Buttrose also commented on the redundancies announced at the broadcaster this week, including the proposed axing of the manager of emergency broadcasting.
“This has been a devastating week for the ABC. With unemployment at an all-time high to have to inform up to 250 people they no longer had a job has been an incredibly difficult task.

“Imagine what it would be like during the bushfire season if we had to rely only on state-based or even regionally based media outlets. When we are in the middle of bushfires, don’t we want to know that they are being covered by a knowledgeable and experienced network of journalists with all the supporting infrastructure of a large national network?” Buttrose said.
Buttrose’s claims come as the ABC’s former national head of emergency broadcasting responded to reports there are plans to make the role redundant, warning such a move could “put the lives of Australians at risk” following a deadly fire season during which the broadcaster was credited with providing critical safety information.
On Thursday, the ABC said it “would continue to have national coordination in our management of emergency broadcasting”.
“The ABC’s vital role in emergency broadcasting has never been more clear. Nothing in this week’s proposals would jeopardise that,” the statement said, arguing it is “proposing to improve the service with closer ties between our emergency broadcast team and our local and regional teams”.
An ABC spokesman told the Guardian the proposal would flatten the structure of a national emergency coordination role and distribute the management of relationships between the ABC and emergency responders, including fire authorities, to several different employees.
There will continue to be two national coordination leads covering a seven-day roster between them as part of the proposal.
However Ian Mannix, who worked as the manager of emergency broadcasting at ABC from 2006 to 2017, said when he performed the role full-time and worked with two part-time coordination leads, they were already working to capacity.
He is concerned emergency warnings will be “missed” under the proposal, because without the national coordinator, “more complex tasks will be asked of already busy” state managers during an emergency.
He also warned the axing of the role could see a repeat of the period after he stepped down from the role and it went unfilled, when the ABC drew criticism for continuing to broadcast a rugby league match despite an emergency warning being issued for a fire at Tathra in NSW in 2018 that destroyed 69 homes. The ABC has since defended the incident, arguing an emergency warning was put to air on local radio “as soon as” the Rural Fire Service issued its warning.
Mannix said when he worked in the role, his fellow national coordination leads and the state managers told him “they didn’t have capacity for the overarching type of work I was doing”.
“The reality is that the ABC is capable of coping with some of the extra work, but I don’t think in complex and ongoing emergencies broadcasts will be managed as well.”
“The only time the ABC missed a warning was when we didn’t have a national manager (of emergency broadcasting),” Mannix, who took voluntary redundancy in 2017, said, referring to the Tathra 2018 bushfire.
“My concern is by stripping out this role, every time there’s an emergency in Australia, lives will be at stake. Without the national manager, I am concerned we will miss warnings, and therefore put the lives of Australians at risk.”

“I am genuinely concerned the ABC might drop the ball on emergencies,” Mannix said.
Stuart Ellis, the chief executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council who liaised with the ABC’s national manager of emergency broadcasting during the most recent fire season, has also expressed concern at any potential impacts on national coordination during bushfire emergencies.
Ellis, who told this year’s royal commission into the past bushfire season that state bushfire-fighting efforts are being frustrated by the lack of a national system to allocate resources, told the Guardian he had worked “hand in glove” with the ABC on its warnings policy over the past 15 years, including with the manager of emergency broadcasting.

Ellis said it would be “unhelpful” if the position, which liaises with bodies including the Bureau of Meteorology and state-based fire and response groups during an emergency, were to be made redundant.