REVIEW OF ABC ROLE AND ITS FUNCTIONS

Submission by K S Inglis, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University and author of This is the ABC. The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932 - 1983.

1. The timing of this review seems to me a matter for concern. First the incoming government announces cuts to ABC funding and foreshadows further cuts; then it announces an inquiry into the ABC, whose terms of reference appear to make continuing cuts a foregone conclusion: what else can be signalled, however softly, by such phrases a 'a more focused role' and 'refining the scope'? Would it not have been more rational to proceed the other way round?

2. As with timing, so with time: far too little, it seems to me, has been given to the public and to the Reviewer. Public submissions have had to be made within less than seven weeks of its of its announcement, and the Review itself has to be complete within less than six months of Mr Mansfield's appointment. For the last major review of the ABC, by the Dix committee, the Fraser government considered that a period of two years was necessary. The present haste is all the more puzzling when the government has already signalled clearly what the ABC's budgetary position is to be for the next two years.

3. Moreover, the response invited from the public is narrowly limited. The Dix committee held well-advertised public hearings all around the country. The Senate Committee on ABC Management and Operations chaired by Senator Alston in 1994-5 also held public hearings. No such provision is built into the present Review, perhaps because its authors thought there would be too little time. I hope a conversation with Mr Dix might dent Mr Mansfield's reported opinion that public hearings would not be worth while, and I hope Mr Mansfield will ask for more time.

4. That would have another advantage. Mr Mansfield's brief is as broad as the ABC itself: it is not confined, as the Senate Committee's was, to certain aspects of management and operations. Mr Mansfield's expertise is in business. So was Mr Dix's. But the Faser government appointed to that inquiry three other members with complementary skills and experience. It would surely be helpful to Mr Mansfield, and reassuring to many other people, if he could take on board two or three people (whether designated as associate Reviewers or consultants) known to be more intimately acquainted with the culture of broadcasting.

5. I share the widespread dismay at the different stances towards the ABC exhibited by the coalition before and after winning government. The Senate committee chaired by Senator Alston gave this ringing endorsement: 'The Committee believes strongly that the basic structure of the ABC is sound and that the need for a quality national broadcaster is greater today than it was a year ago.' As shadow minister Senator Alston gave unconditional assurances during the election campaign that there would be no cut in the ABC's budget, and that triennial funding would continue. After the election it turned out that the assurance was indeed conditional, and that the assurance of triennial funding was intended to cover only the current triennium, which ended in June.

6. The ABC has been suffering budget cuts for a long time. A downward line can be drawn from 1976, when the ABC had 7,500 staff, to the present, when it has around 5,000. Another 300 are going in response to cuts made by the Keating government. There was a time when the Labor party valued the ABC as a source of communication not owned by interests nearly always opposed to it. In recent times Labor leaders have been keener to be on good terms with Kerry Packer or Rupert Murdoch than to have access to the ABC. Lately they appear untroubled at the unprecedented concentration of media ownership which makes a strong and independent ABC an even more precious resource.

7. A strong and independant ABC is cherished even by people who discern in some programs a bias hostile to their interests. That perceived bias, the National Party MHR Bob Katter wrote recently to the Minister, 'is incidental in comparison with the need for an investigative reporting body that is free of commercial influence from the business sector ...' (He was thinking in particular of his own attacks on the pricing policies of oil companies, which 'got very little airplay on commercial operators' afraid of losing advertising dollars.)

8. In Australia as elsewhere, however, some people are encouraging governments to withdraw from public broadcasting and require those who want the sort of programs that the ABC and SBS provide to pay for them as they do for theatre and opera. I am not convinced that this outcome would be effective, equitable or popular.

9. In larger markets than Australia can ever provide, and especially in the USA, pay television by cable and satellite has added little diversity to the copycat programming of commercial networks. There is no reason to think that in Australia a user-pay system can yield anything like the diversity of programming which is high among the ABC's achievements. Before the election, that quality was celebrated in the Liberal and National Parties' policy document. 'This vast network', said the coalition in glowing tribute, 'provides a diverse range of programs and performances of cultural value and intellectual integrity.'

10. By election time the diversity was being diminished already by budget cuts, and the most recent reductions must further narrow the ABC's range of offerings. I notice that the two public intellectuals who edit our principal monthly journals of opinion, Robert Manne of Quadrant and Morag Fraser of Eureka Street, are here in full accord on the value of diversity. 'In my opinion', writes Manne, 'it is the extraordinary diversity and quirkiness of the ABC that makes it this country's most popular institution.' The new cyber-space technology, writes Fraser, 'are not a substitute for the unwieldy, unpredictable institution that has so for so long been the laundry basket of Australia - the best and the worst of us, dirty socks, racing slang, high intellectual fashion, low satire, Bible readings, the finest sports broadcasting in the world, politics coming out its ears - left and right ear' - all in all, 'an institution that does the hard work of giving a characteristic but never wholly predictable voice to a vast and diverse nation.'

11. To propose user-payment on grounds of equity usually pre-supposes that the users are a minority. Surveys of ABC audiences show, however, that most Australians watch or hear ABC programs some time each week. Nor is it clear that most people would opt for making users pay. When asked to evaluate our national institutions, Australians rank the ABC high, and such hard evidence as we have on the point suggests that most people do not want ABC revenue to be cut.

12. I fear that the Review presents a potential threat to the ABC's independence. The ABC is a statutory authority. Under the legistration which establishes it, the government appoints a Board responsible for its policies (and for the appointment of managing director). How the money voted by parliament is spent is a matter for the Board to decide. There is an episode famous in ABC legend when in 1970 the relevant minister (in those days, Postmaster-General) told the Chairman that the ABC's estimates for the next year would be reduced by $500,000 and that at least half the cut should be applied to current affairs on television. That was meant to hobble This Day Tonight and Four Corners. The Commission (antecedent to the Board) interpreted this message as a grave threat to the ABC autonomy, protested vigorously, and the Minister, startled by the fuss, gave in. It seems to me no less important in 1996 than in 1970 that decisions about how to allocate whatever resources are voted to the ABC remain those of its governing body.

13. If this concern seems unwarrented, consider the present government's demeanour towards another statutory authority, ATSIC. Announcing cuts to that body's budget, the Minister has signalled that the government, not the Commission will decide where the cuts are to be applied. He uses (and gives new meaning to) the word 'quarantine'. 'We want to quarantine housing, we want to quarantine education, we want to quarantine health', making the axe fall on other activities which the government judges less indispensable. Such overriding of the authority may well be illegal. It is certainly ominous. 'The government', writes David Hill, 'is under considerable pressure from its National Party Coalition partners to quarantine regional ABC radio from the cuts.' It is essential to the independence of the ABC that whatever the outcome of this Review, it is the Board that decides how to spend the ABC's money.

14. It is of course within the power of government to introduce legislation removing the Board and putting the ABC under the control of a department. Arthur Calwell wanted to do just that. His comrades were wise enough not to let him.

15. There is no evidence that such a change is on the present government's agenda. It does appear, however, to be thinking of revising the Charter which is part of the 1983 Act passed in response to the Dix committee's recomendations. The place of the Charter in this Review is puzzling. The terms of reference do not mention the Charter, only the copy of it attached to the Information Paper and Terms of Reference sent out to inquirers signals that the Charter is up for consideration, and Mr Mansfield, as reported, is saying that reviewing the Charter is central to his brief. If so, why do the terms of reference not say so? The Managing Director, Brian Johns, has publicly expressed a fear that the result of this Review may be a change to the Charter which will marginalise the ABC, requiring it to be no longer a comprehensive broadcaster but merely a supplementary one. I believe that this outcome would be a national disaster.