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Cox Peninsula: not too late

The closing down of the Cox Peninsula transmitter near Darwin has been widely condemned and has received little or no support outside the ranks of the government. There have been renewed calls for it to be reopened, most recently by the Northern Territory government, and there is widespread belief that our relations with Indonesians during the crises of the last year would have been very different if Radio Australia shortwave broadcasts into Indonesia had not been silenced in 1997.

The ABC's biggest radio audiences - many times larger than the population of Australia - did not make submissions to the Mansfield Review in 1996. Radio Australia took the chop when Bob Mansfield decided - and recommended - that it was dispensable.

After the budget cuts, when its staff and services were halved, RA continued to broadcast to Indonesia where it had an estimated audience of around 20 million and where it was the most popular foreign broadcaster. But when Communications Minister Richard Alston shut down the Cox transmitter, RA was limited to the Shepparton transmitter in Victoria and its short-wave transmission no longer carried into Indonesia.

The people of Indonesia and the region, many of whom had learnt their English with RA and gained an understanding of Australia and Australians with their cheap transistor radios, could not understand why they had lost - been abandoned by - their favourite broadcasters.

The huge reservoir of goodwill and understanding built up over decades gradually drained away. Confusion about Pauline Hanson and One Nation, for example, was rife and prolonged. Australian diplomatists and businessmen in Indonesia at that time certainly knew the value of what they had lost.

The question must be asked, had Radio Australia's service into Indonesia continued uninterrupted, would the recent events in Indonesia and East Timor have been different?

We do know that Ambassador John McCarthy found it hard to convey the Australian position and what was happening in East Timor to people in Indonesia. And undoubtedly there has been much misinformation in Indonesia about events in East Timor and about the Australian intervention there. We have seen nightly scenes of ugly violence towards Australians in Jakarta, some blurred by the spit of young men on the lens of the camera.

Latest developments

In recent months RA has been ingenious in finding alternative ways of broadcasting into Indonesia through overseas facilities, but these impact on the other services that RA provides. The reopening of Cox would greatly add to its audience in Indonesia - as well as to other countries in our region and beyond - and the broadcast material would be more comprehensive than that which is going into Indonesia at present.

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Is there a possibility that the Cox Peninsula transmitter will be reopened for use by Radio Australia? Minister Alston is adamant that it will not. He has been quoted as saying it was up to the ABC to open up the transmitter, knowing full well that the ABC has not the funds to do this.

At the same time, the government is negotiating with foreign broadcasters either to lease or sell the transmitter. If this happens, it is uncertain whether RA would be able to use the transmitter with the consent of the foreign owner, and it is unlikely that it would be able to afford to without government assistance.

However, arrangements to hand over the Cox transmitter to a foreign broadcaster have hit a snag - the consent of the traditional owners has yet to be obtained and the process is going through the courts.

This gives us a breathing space in which to rally support and persuade the government that to reopen Cox for Radio Australia would be an act of statesmanship.

ABC's coverage of the events of East Timor

Writing about the failure of the commercials to cover East Timor adequately - with the honourable exception of Nine's Sunday - Dennis Atkins of the QLD Sunday Mail had this to say:

The real spadework has been done by the ABC's 7.30 Report and Lateline, with the latter providing the kind of intellectual depth the situation demanded.

Early on, Lateline suspended its planned stories and followed the events of the day, gathering experts and players from Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere. In this respect Lateline is unique in the English-speaking world.

The Zeitgeist Gazette (on-line, 13/9/99) commented:

The ABC's earnest but tireless Asia correspondent, Ginny Stein, scored a genuine, old-fashioned exclusive when she became the only Australian journalist to travel with the UN inspection team on their tour of Dili yesterday. Her report ... was an exemplar of solid, constructive reporting. There was no grab for headlines, no over-selling of the material. Ms Stein understands that the primary obligation of journalism is to report. A grand effort from the correspondent and her cameraman.