background briefing .....................1

Quarterly Newsletter: Autumn 1999 Vol.1 No.1

Your National Newsletter - Online

Welcome to the first edition of the national newsletter of Friends of the ABC.

Prior to 1996, the NSW FABC distributed its News & Views to other states. Then, with increased activity and a huge jump in membership, several states began to produce their own newsletters.

Since 1996 FABCs across Australia have worked closely together and a national framework has evolved. It was an obvious move to have a national newsletter and combine our resources. This was an outcome from the FABC national conference held in Sydney in mid-February.

The title Background Briefing was carefully chosen. As well as reporting on the affairs of the Friends, we aim to explain the background to political moves against the ABC and to changes within it. The title is also a conscious tribute to one of its most significant programs.

The national newsletter will not attempt to cover all the activities of the state branches, though some special events will be mentioned. Each state will produce its own short version which will appear as a two page or four page insert.

The newsletters will be published quarterly. In future editions there will be a letters page and we look forward to your comments. But please keep your letters short.

At a FABC meeting in Canberra in February '97 Robyn Williams of the Science Show spoke of a man who approached him to express his gratitude for the program - he believed that information about breast cancer on the Science Show years before had saved his wife's life. There must be many such stories of information gained from the ABC that has deeply affected people's lives. Another was from a Friend who came to Australia 40 years ago with little English and learnt it by listening to the ABC. Have you a story you could share?

There is a thread running through this edition. It is the theme of enemies and friends. Darce Cassidy, a veteran of 33 years with the ABC, writes of the many enemies the ABC has had to contend with, and never more so than today.

The proposal of Board member Michael Kroger to sell-off ABC online services is yet another attempt to privatise the ABC. A columnist in The Australian recently dumped on ABC staff for trying to influence directions in their organisation and claimed that when the budget was cut 'few people cared'. The arguments of the enemies are constantly recycled and are inevitably threadbare and malicious. But we have to be ready to demonstrate, by letters to the press and the government and on talkback radio, that the ABC's friends far outnumber its enemies.

The very fact of our existence keeps a rein on the politicians. After all, we have more members Australia-wide than most political parties. But the ABC needs all the Friends we can muster while it has so many enemies.