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The Fraser Years - and the origins of Friends of the ABC

In early 1976 the incoming Fraser Liberal National government heavily cut the ABC's budget as part of its election promise to reduce public expenditure. Heavy cuts in staff and programs followed. There was a call within the ABC for strike action and the first organised public support for the ABC came into being.

Outside the ABC, cells of troubled listeners and viewers began to form in April ['76], first in Melbourne, where they took the name 'Aunty's Nieces and Nephews', then in other cities where they were 'Friends of the ABC', to deplore the cuts and generally speak out.'*

Allowing for inflation,the $128m allocated to the ABC amounted to a cut of 10%. (Does that sound familiar?) There was a belief in the ABC that the new government was deliberately weakening the broadcaster

'to mute its independent voice and to make it compete less vigorously with private enterprise.' *

Alan Ashbolt, for some time head of Special Projects in radio, circulated a statement in support of a 24 hour weekly strike. 'If we fail to act now,' he declared, 'the ABC will be dismembered and its existing functions destroyed.' A decision not to strike at that time was made only out of respect for the acting chairman of the Board, Earle Hackett, who counselled against strike action.

The outcome of the turmoil was a government inquiry into broadcasting. (Sound familiar?)

Fraser might have followed the lead of the Brits, who were in the middle of a three year inquiry into the BBC. From 1975-77 sixteen men and women 'diverse in outlook and expertise' deliberated under the chairmanship of Lord Annan before submitting their Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting. But in Australia one public servant, FJ Green, secretary of the Postal and Telecommunications Department, was to produce a 'report on the structure of the Australian broadcasting system and associated matters' in less than five months.

"In the ABC submission to the Green Inquiry, acting chairman Hackett reflected that though the ABC was as important to Australian democracy as an independent judiciary or an elected parliament "there seemed to be nothing to protect it except the goodwill and determination of a few individuals meeting at odd times and in odd places". Whatever the outcome of Green's inquiry, the ABC's submission would record the state of mind of people who believed that they were trustees of an endangered institution."

Hackett had proved himself an articulate and formidable defender of the ABC. "It is one of the two leading systems in the whole world," said Hackett at the end of what turned out to be his last address as acting Chairman. "And its quality and its impartiality in the future depend crucially on its autonomy and on its size."

"You have our wholehearted admiration and gratitude,' said Aunty's Nieces and Nephews .

But before the report of the Green inquiry was made public later in the year, the ABC was to be plunged into more controversy and turmoil.

Hackett was replaced by a permanent chairman, Sir Henry Bland. Bland had retired from the public service in 1970 when he was Secretary to the Department of Defence and Malcolm Fraser was his Minister. During 1975 he was an informal adviser to Fraser, who had privately invited him to be Chairman in January 1976 when Hackett still had six months to go.

"More than a hundred people, many of them academics, published a statement in the National Times declaring that his appointment was 'clearly political in its purpose'. Aunty's Nieces and Nephews said they would be watching him.

His first act as Chairman was to write a memo to all staff introducing himself genially but saying also that the ABC should not 'conduct itself regardless of community response and therefore in a fashion that may excite the few, but offend the many.' The last phrase made headlines and confirmed apprehensions that he saw himself as sent in to clean the place up. "I know also that you all are, or soon will be, unbiased", ABC staff were assured in a forged memo parodying his own. "

There followed episode after episode of intervention in ABC programs by the Commission (ie the Board).

'Sir Henry's gag' was a prohibition on broadcasters announcing forthcoming public demonstrations, including those against the Governor-General following the dismissal of Gough Whitlam. 2JJ got round this by reading from the vice-regal calendar published in the papers each day.

Attempts by the Board to remove glimpses of nudity from the Alvin Purple series resulted in unusually large audiences for the ABC.

'Poor naked Alvin was becoming a national hero, to be defended against the villainous Sir Henry.'

(continued)