Extract from The New Daily
Ita
Buttrose and her ABC board have produced a glossy five-year plan to
cover up the fact the ABC is in accelerating decline through Morrison
government defunding.
Corporate spin has replaced the hard journalism that the ABC claims it epitomises as a frank and fearless news source.
Were
it to confront the facts the sub-headings would be: ABC cuts audience
services; Sacks up to 250 staff; Ditches Foxtel retransmission payments;
Strips $5 million from factual/entertainment (no documentaries); Axes
iconic 7.45am, 15-minute fanfare radio news bulletin that has been
broadcast since 1939; Thins out human resources across news and current
affairs, and broadcast operations; Fewer outings for Foreign Correspondent and Australian Story; Endless TV repeats outside prime time; A 25 per cent cut in travel budgets; Lifestyle show ABC Life downsized and rebranded to regional/local; Spare rooms in ABC Ultimo and Southbank HQs to be commercially leased.
ABC
supporters are now asking when ABC chair Ita Buttrose will transform
herself into the Boudicea the public broadcaster desperately needs to
secure its viability with a hostile federal government.
The New Daily understands
that in early February, before the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the
nation, Ms Buttrose saw Prime Minister Scott Morrison to privately
appeal for funding relief from an indexation ‘pause’ the Turnbull
government had applied to the ABC from July 1, 2019.
She
is understood to have told the PM she had taken statutory
responsibility for the ABC with reducing resources as production costs
were rising.
The ABC had been exposed underpaying its casual staff with costly compensation required.
The
$83.7 million indexation cut was coming on top of a hefty reduction in
the ABC’s annual appropriation from then Treasurer Joe Hockey’s 2014
budget.
In real terms, this meant
ABC operational funding – excluding preset and indexed transmission
costs – would be more than 10 per cent lower in 2021-22 than it was in
2013.
The
Buttrose board deferred program and staff cuts in late 2019, with the
broadcaster having to make extra provision to cover south-east
Australia’s unprecedented bushfires.
It again deferred any cuts in late February when the pandemic hit Australia.
It
is now apparent to all, including Ms Buttrose, that Mr Morrison is
unmoved even as audience trust and support from the bushfires has taken
ABC news online to media industry leadership, well ahead of News Corp
and other providers.
By accepting
Mr Morrison’s appointment as ABC chairman in 2019, Ms Buttrose scored
big credit points with the government for having politically neutralised
the biggest boilover in the ABC’s history.
In
one week in 2018, then ABC chairman Justin Milne was forced to resign
as his terminated managing director, Michelle Guthrie, sensationally
accused him of political interference on behalf of then PM Malcolm
Turnbull.
Ms Buttrose also scored
credit points when she stood up to the government on press freedom after
the AFP raided the ABC’s Sydney offices, and seized documents and data
held by ABC investigative journalists.
Now in her second year in the ABC chair, Ms Buttrose is having to oversee the ABC’s decline.
With
an expected 2 per cent cut across the Australian public service to be
delivered in Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s October federal budget, there
is unlikely to be any ABC funding respite, even though the ABC has been
declared an essential service through the national emergencies.
ABC
managing director David Anderson told staff on Tuesday that the ABC
five-year plan, if accepted with five-year funding certainty by the
government, will accelerate its transition to content creation for
digital devices, which were becoming ubiquitous.
With
no funding relief in sight, the ABC confronts more cuts to
‘traditional’ AM and FM radio and multi-channel television content and
services.
Considered, but deferred for now, is understood to be the termination of at least one ABC TV channel.
This
week the ABC submitted to the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission its proposal to be included in a mandatory revenue sharing
code.
The code, to be launched
next month, will require US tech giants Google and Facebook to share up
to a guesstimated $1 billion that the ACCC considers to be direct and
indirect value for the platforms’ use of Australian news media content.
The mandatory code under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, if implemented, will be the first of its type in the world.
The
ABC submission did not put any estimate on revenue it could derive from
the digital platforms for provision of its free content to Google and
Facebook users who browse and search online.
One observer has put the potential income at $100 million a year.
But
with an unsympathetic federal government, any life-saving money the ABC
received from revenue sharing could simply be discounted by a
commensurate reduction in operational base funding.
Over to you, Ita.
Quentin
Dempster is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster.
He is a veteran of the ABC newsroom. He was awarded an Order of
Australia in 1992 for services to journalism
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