DANIEL:

In January, Jonathan Holmes met with then-managing director of the ABC David Anderson.

JONATHAN:

Well, I'm not going to go into depth about what was on the agenda.

DANIEL:

It was David, Jonathan and some of his colleagues from the group “ABC Alumni”. These meetings happen a few times a year and usually, what happens at Ultimo, stays at Ultimo.

JONATHAN:

They were confidential. I've decided to release this snippet of that conversation because A, David's no longer managing director and B, it turns out that he was precisely correct in what he said.

DANIEL:

What he said was in response to a question - did Anderson think the Coalition had plans to cut ABC funding if it won the election?

The fear from Jonathan and his colleagues was not unfounded. Successive Coalition governments have made cuts to the national broadcaster over decades. And as Peter Dutton now signals he’s looking to cut anything he deems to be “waste” at the ABC, alarm bells are once again ringing.

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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

Today, chair of ABC Alumni and former host of Media Watch Jonathan Holmes, on the Coalition’s plans for the ABC, and whether its possible to truly shield the national broadcaster from outside interference.

It’s Tuesday, April 15.

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DANIEL:

Jonathan, thanks for joining me. What can you tell me about your meeting with David Anderson back in January?

JONATHAN:

We were concerned that given what was happening in the United States, where public radio and public television are both under severe threat of being completely defunded, at least by the federal government, and where they'd already defunded Voice of America, their overseas radio service. And at that time, Peter Dutton was quite admiring of a lot of the things that Donald Trump was doing in the United States. He’s less so now, I think. We asked David, what do you reckon, if the Coalition gets in, are we likely to see actual defunding of the ABC privatisation, which News Corporation were calling for again as they have for decades? And he said, no, no, no. They won't do that. What they'll do is what they've always done, which is they'll hold an inquiry into the efficiency of the ABC, and almost regardless of what the result is, they'll cut the budget a bit. And if that goes okay, they'll cut some more the following year, and so on. He said that's the standard Coalition approach.

DANIEL:

You worked at the ABC for decades, Jonathan, starting in the 80s. How many efficiency inquiries did you witness during that time and what came out of them in the past?

JONATHAN:

I can't document them all but Kim Williams, in a recent speech, claimed that there have been 15 since the year 2000. Each one of them occupies the finance department of the ABC in vast amounts of work in, you know, answering the same questions over and over again. I mean, one of good ways of being efficient at the ABC would be to stop the bloody efficiency reviews, quite frankly, because they got the queue up so much time effort. But before that, you know, the Mansfield Inquiry in 1998. 1982, there was the Dix Inquiry, and there was a whole succession of them, and they're absolute regular events. Sometimes the ABC comes out of them really well. For example, there were four or five under Howard. One of them was by KPMG that was asked to look at the ABC's efficiency. He came back with a response that said that the ABC was an extremely efficient organisation and, in fact, to do the job it needed more money. Of course, that wasn't what the Howard government wanted to hear, so essentially they kind of suppressed it. I mean, you still can't get the full report. Quite often they would actually make a cut, like in Abbott's government, they cut the ABC and then they instituted an efficiency inquiry under Peter Lewis to basically explore how it could possibly manage to survive the cuts. And that's happened a couple of times, you know. Cut first and then inquire after.

DANIEL:

So now we're in the thick of the election campaign, Peter Dutton has started talking about having another efficiency inquiry. Can you just lay out for me what he has said and what you thought as you were listening?

Audio excerpt — Raf Epstein:

“Peter Dutton is driving through Melbourne right now. Good morning.”

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“Good morning, Raf.”

JONATHAN:

Yes, well when he was asked by Raf Epstein on Melbourne morning radio.

Audio excerpt — Raf Epstein:

“But I have to ask, are you going to cut the ABC's funding if you win?”

JONATHAN:

Dutton said, and I'm quoting, well, I think there's a lot of very good work that the ABC does and if it's being run efficiently, then you would keep the funding in place.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“If it's not being run efficiently and there is waste, then I think taxpayers who pay for it and who are working harder than ever just to get ahead would expect us to, you know, to not support the waste but to invest into areas where the ABC is doing things really well.”

JONATHAN:

Epstein pushed him a bit to say, well, does that mean a cut? And Dutton said, there's just going to be a ruler run across where we're spending money in government.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“And I want to make sure that we're spending government money efficiently and that way we can bring inflation down and the dream of home ownership can be achieved more quickly.”

Audio excerpt — Raf Epstein:

“Appreciate your time this morning. Thank you. Enjoy Melbourne.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“Thank you, Raf.”

JONATHAN:

My reaction was here we go again. Absolutely, of course we should be efficient and of course, we should be excellent. And of course, the ABC should be and it should be a publicly accountable organisation. But I doubt that Peter Dutton watches ABC drama, I doubt he's ever watched Bay of Fires or Newsreader or, you know, any of this stuff. I doubt that he listens to Triple J. So, you know, how are they going to rate whether the agency's excellent or not. It's a very difficult task. I mean, a lot of people who are supporters of the ABC don't think it's as excellent as it should be in various areas. I've spent quite a lot of time defending the ABC to its friends, but you either think it's necessary, essential service that helps Australian democracy or you don't. And frankly, on that score, I would reckon that Peter Dutton probably doesn't. And as Kim Williams said in his reaction, we are an efficient organisation, go for your life.

Audio excerpt — Kim Williams:

“I don't think there's any doubt that in the event of Mr Dutton exceeding to office that there would be a very early call for an efficiency and, apparently an excellent review, on what the ABC does. Game on. The ABC is an accountable institution and I have no doubt it will perform well in any such review.”

JONATHAN:

I think the important thing to remember, though, is that however popular the ABC is, News Corp will always attack it, and a chunk of Coalition supporters will always attack it, but so far, most Australians trust it and value it.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break - what the ABCs new boss needs to do to keep the broadcaster strong.

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DANIEL:

Jonathan, you've seen, we've all seen, successive cuts to the broadcaster over decades. Can you lay out for me how the Albanese government's reinstatement of funding has impacted the budget as it stands?

JONATHAN:

Ok well, first thing is Albanese, he has not reinstated the budget. He's managed very cleverly to persuade most of the public that he has. What he's done is to restore the loss of indexation under Turnbull and Morrison resulted in $84 million less going to the ABC over those three years than it would have done if its funding had been indexed. And so Albanese promised in the previous campaign to restore that money. But he's done a bit more than that now. He's actually raised the budget to where it would've been if there hadn't been indexation. But the ABC is still, in real terms, somewhere between 150 million and 200 million dollars a year worse off than it was, in real times, in 2013. So thanks very much Albanese government. At least you've stopped us going backwards. But all those things that Kim Williams wants to do, with better documentaries and better drama and all of this stuff, it ain't going to happen unless we get more money.

DANIEL:

What is the overall budget of the ABC? Just want to get a sense of how significant the cuts have been to the total size of the budget.

JONATHAN:

At the moment, the ABC's operating budget is around a billion dollars. And on top of that, when you see what the ABC costs, they always add the transmission costs which don't go to the ABC. They go to the companies that own the broadcasting towers around the country. And that's about another $200 or $300 million dollars. What's actually happened is that the ABC is producing far more with less than it ever did. If you look at 1990, say, back then it produced one television channel, four national radio channels and practically nothing else. So now it produces six television channels, I think it's about 12 radio networks, if you include digital as well as analogue, masses of online stuff on every kind of subject under the sun and podcasts, I think hundreds of podcasts. You know, just incomparably more for less money with less stuff.

DANIEL:

And that’s the situation inherited by new managing director Hugh Marks, who has just started in the role coming over from the Nine network. What challenges does he face as he steps into the role?

JONATHAN:

Oh gosh, where to start. It is, I would say, one of the more challenging jobs in the country. Everybody's got a view about the ABC. Everybody knows what they would like to see. But of course, the first and biggest challenge for any CEO of the ABC at the moment is recognition. Huge numbers of people under 40 never watch live television. Or practically never, except maybe sport. A lot of the time, they're getting ABC content through YouTube or Apple News or whatever. They may not even be particularly conscious that it is ABC content. I mean, the days when everybody knew that Channel 2 was the ABC and 702 was ABC Radio in Sydney or 774 in Melbourne, I mean it's just long gone. So how do you justify your existence and get this vitally important, impartial, objective news across to a large enough number of people when there's nowhere that they will automatically go. You've got to do a lot of things at a lot of times.

DANIEL:

Finally, Jonathan, is there any mechanism that could be formally instituted to insulate the ABC from future political interference?

JONATHAN:

Michelle Rowland, the Minister for Communications in the Albanese government, has held an enquiry precisely to look at that issue. How do you make it harder for an incoming government, that isn't the same as the one that's outgoing, to stick to the commitments for the five-year period? That's the question that was asked and we haven't got an answer.

But look, you know, the fact is in the Westminster system, it's extremely hard to stop an elected government from doing what it wants to do. The parliament is sovereign and it all depends on the ABC earning the trust and rewarding loyalty sufficiently that it retains the 80% kind of approval rating that it has at the moment. And if that drops, then its enemies will probably find a way of getting rid of it.

DANIEL:

Jonathan, a fascinating discussion. Thanks for your time.

JONATHAN:

You're welcome.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today...

In the latest attempt to court the youth vote, the Liberals yesterday released a diss track on Soundcloud. At just over one minute long, Leaving Labor targets the cost of living crisis and is self-described as “Kendrick meets Question Time”.

The track dropped as economists levelled criticism at both Labor and the Liberals, saying that both parties' housing policies could inflame the housing crisis rather than ease it.

And,

The Greens have renewed their push for free university and TAFE, with the 46.5 billion dollar policy to be funded by higher taxes on corporate giants.

Greens leader Adam Bandt announced the policy yesterday, saying it’s a key priority they will push for in a possible Labor minority government.

This has been 7am. Thanks for listening.

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