background briefing .....................9

The ABC needs friends because it has enemies

Darce Cassidy

For more than twenty years there has been a support organisation in Australia which has existed to defend a government body.

We have never had a 'Friends of the Tax Department', a 'Friends of Foreign Affairs' or a 'Friends of the Australia Council'. While there is an active social welfare lobby there is no 'Friends of the Department of Social Security'.

It hasn't been necessary because these arms of government have never had the same range of enemies as the ABC. So who are the enemies and who are the friends?

The ABC is the creation of the federal government, but in recent years the government has been its greatest enemy. This was not always so. For much of its early history the ABC was pliable. There were occasions when the ABC did its job and held the government up to scrutiny; more often punches were pulled or programs were directly censored.

While ABC Boards and ABC management have always been aware of the source of their funds, the ABC of the eighties and nineties has not been the timid, pliable and compliant broadcaster that it was in its early years.

Programs like Four Corners, This Day Tonight, AM and PM broke stories that damaged the governments of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Neville Wran. There were reports of the land deals of Liberal minister Phillip Lynch and revelations that the handwriting of Ian Sinclair's father had become rather wobbly shortly after his death.

The methods of the past began to lose their effectiveness. The old boy network used to work. The promise of a knighthood (from the fifties through to the seventies imperial honours were almost automatic for the ABC brass) once worked wonders. If it didn't, then a discreet hint that the next budget would be bad for the ABC was believed to be effective in the good old days.

Now there had to be a new way to tame the ABC. Away went the carrot and out came the stick. Threats about the budget became public and overt. Chief executives were vilified rather than honoured. No longer the placid and contented Sacred Cow, the ABC became Aunt Sally.

Then there are the commercial broadcasters. They need audiences to sell to sponsors. ABC audiences are in a higher socioeconomic bracket to commercial listeners and viewers. They have more money to spend, so they can be sold to the sponsors for a higher price. The commercial broadcasters desperately want to manipulate all that spending power.

Community broadcasters are divided about the ABC, but many see it as a rival. Although they were originally supposed to rely on the community for support, they see themselves competing against the ABC for government money. Stations like 3RR in Melbourne and 5DDD in Adelaide vigorously opposed the extension of Triple J because they didn't want competition from another alternative youth station.

Advertisers don't like the ABC being a commercial-free zone.

Federal bureaucrats resent the ABC because of its comparative independence. They'd love to regulate it.

Attack comes from all sides.

When ABC programs get good ratings, we are told that the ABC should not be competing with the commercial channels.

When ABC programs get poor ratings, we are told that the ABC is elitist, it has nothing for ordinary Australians who should not have to pay for it through their taxes.

It is claimed that the ABC is inefficient and too expensive. Yet it is far more efficient than the BBC or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The entire ABC (Radio, Television, the Orchestras, ABC Online and the Overseas Service) is run for less than the cost of just one commercial television network - Channel 9.

Then there's the death of a thousand cuts. The ABC is so highly regarded that no government can afford to abolish it outright, but they can offer the ABC a choice: prostitute yourself or starve to death.

This is the message from the most recent Howard government appointee to the ABC Board, former Liberal power broker Michael Kroger. He says that the ABC doesn't have enough money, the government can't afford to give it any more, and therefore the ABC should commercialise its Internet presence. But the World Wide Web is just another kind of broadcasting. It is a different technology to radio and television, but it is broadcasting nonetheless. Sponsorship would have the same consequences for this new broadcasting technology as it would for the older media.

Enemies surround the ABC and the attack is constantly shifting. Budget cuts, intimidation, vilification, commercialisation, ridicule, harassment, obstruction, censorship, and dismemberment. They have all been tried or threatened.

The ABC has survived hard-nosed hatchet men like Sir Henry Bland and bitter conservative ideologues like Dame Leonie Kramer. It has survived intensive parliamentary scrutiny and endless reports and inquiries.

The ABC is battered and tired but alive.

Now, more than ever, it needs friends.