Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. F. Pangallo:

That this council—

1. Recognises the significance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) to South Australians and especially to regional South Australians;

2. Acknowledges the importance of the ABC remaining a public broadcaster; and

3. Rejects any attempt by the federal government to sell the ABC.

(Continued from 20 June 2018.)

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (17:18): I rise today to thank the Hon. Mr Frank Pangallo for his commitment and dedication to media and communications within our state. The Hon. Mr Pangallo's motion to recognise the significance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to South Australians may seem like an obvious thing to say in today's day and age but, sadly, I have to reflect that it is not obvious to everyone.

In a move that is completely out of step with what the average Australian family wants, the Liberal Party has recently publicly confirmed its long-held private view that its membership and its elected members want to privatise the national broadcaster. We know that it has privately held this view for at least a decade after the proverbial B1, if you like, Tony Abbott, had to come out in 2013 and famously, of course, rule out any cuts to the ABC or SBS, a promise that was quickly forgotten as soon as he got into office, and has been trodden on many times since with over $254 million dollars in cuts since 2014 alone.

But that is not all: the new B2, if you like, of the Liberal Party, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, recently had to trot out the same line, proving that despite saying the opposite he really is thinking what B1 is thinking when it comes to the ABC.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently cut another $84 million in funding in May, claiming that these budget cuts are all about efficiency, but then he has been pouring money into Fox Sports, which got a $30 million grant, News Corp, which got a tax cut, and then they are looking to build yet another Captain Cook monument in Sydney, I believe, to the tune of almost $50 million at the same time.

What the Liberal Party, at best, does not realise or, at worst and far more likely, very much does realise, is that cuts to our national broadcaster have a real and damaging consequence which is evident not only to the quality of the programming, especially in the amount and the quality of homegrown Australian content on our ABC, but also in the physical presence of the ABC in our community in terms of jobs.

There have been over 400 people or about 10 per cent of the ABC's workforce lost in the most recent Liberal cuts to the ABC. Even locally we have seen the Adelaide studios take a cut to their operations as jobs and opportunities are sent to the Eastern States by a Liberal Party that says one thing in its election slogans and then clearly does another when it comes to the national broadcaster.

I fully support the Hon. Mr Pangallo's desire to stand up to the ABC's critics and defend the national broadcaster no matter where he or I may sit politically in relation to one another. The ABC should enjoy unwavering support right across the spectrum of politics. However, it seems that to be a supporter of the ABC in today's Liberal Party clearly seems to have consequences, as it did for Trish Worth, a former federal MP for the seat of Adelaide and a member of the federal executive of the Liberal Party who voted against the motion to privatise the ABC, because she said:

I enjoy many of the ABC's programs. Having lived more than a third of my life in regional communities, I know how important the ABC is.

Sadly, for those who do love the ABC and might still think about voting Liberal or running for office in the Liberal Party, Ms Worth is no longer a member of the federal executive. She, perhaps ominously, lost a narrow vote to a person who did vote to privatise the ABC.

Similarly, we await the outcome in Mayo where no doubt the proposed sale of the ABC by the federal Liberal Party will have sounded like something out of a plot of a show I loved very much Round the Twist. The Liberal candidate there, a subject of previous speeches by myself in this place, had to backtrack on her previous advocacy of the sale of the ABC in her employment at the IPA, an organisation ardently advocating the sale of the ABC. Her backtracking sounded nothing like the clear and unequivocal comments of Ms Worth in support of the ABC, and like the Hon. Mr Pangallo I do not think many voters will be buying her backtracking.

Recent polling in Mayo suggests that a candidate who vocally supports the ABC may well win, which would see another regional seat stronghold lost by a Liberal Party that, unlike its former member in Ms Worth, do not seem to understand what regional voters want anymore. There is a reason that the popular view within the Liberal Party to sell the ABC is so unpopular with voters and families. The fact is that it is easy to make ideological comments that the ABC competes with the commercial channels but it is hard to actually justify those comments when you look at the facts.

The ABC appropriately takes into account the interests of the commercial and community sectors in all of its activities. The ABC focuses on providing distinctive content and actively takes account of services provided by the commercial and community sectors. The ABC's activities do not crowd out commercial and community content suppliers. To the extent that there is any competitive overlap between the ABC and commercial and community sectors, the ABC enhances competition and innovation resulting in better outcomes for audiences.

The ABC, driven by its charter and not by the need to make a profit or chase advertising dollars, has given us great memories growing up as children with Bananas in Pyjamas, Play School, The Wiggles, Rugrats, and The Ferals, and they are still continuing with Australian made TV shows for our children and grandchildren.

Years ago when I was growing up I remember the ABC was the only broadcaster really interested in many sports that I now see regularly on commercial networks. Nowadays that role of the public broadcaster has been surrendered as the commercial broadcasters are able to outbid them in the war for commercial dollars. The ABC's role in promoting what was once unpopular or undiscovered having now been served, it has vacated that field as it moves towards other programming or the currently less popular sports that should be broadcast but perhaps do not attract the same dollars and cents.

While not an ABC example per se but one of a public broadcaster, the World Cup of football gives us yet another recent example, with SBS sublicensing the exclusive rights of 39 of Russia 2018's 64 matches to Optus because SBS could no longer afford the rights to the whole tournament. Ultimately, however, Optus failed to deliver. With technical issues plaguing their paid service, SBS said they stood ready to help Optus further. Optus subsequently agreed for all the remaining matches to be broadcast on SBS. This allowed me, of course, this morning to taunt my English friends as I, along with many millions of other Australians, I am sure, watched England go to penalties and finally actually win for once, Lucas.

Like SBS, the ABC in particular has proved very innovative and flexible to an audience's needs like those of younger generations through programs such as Countdown and the radio station Double J and then triple j. Like its predecessors I named above, one clear thing that sets triple j apart from any other radio station is their lack of advertising. If it was to become privatised, young listeners would lose out on the high integrity content and instead be forced to listen, in my opinion, to yet another banal commercial station.

This of course would have a flow-on effect in which triple j gigs would no longer represent the radio station's sound. Instead of supporting local musicians and emerging Australian talent, the events and the station will be about making the most money advertising businesses and would feature only, of course, popular music. Triple j is an excellent example of the platform changing as the audience needed it changed. As commercial and radio stations dedicated to younger listening audiences faded or became stations dedicated to playing music for broader audiences, so does the ABC platform change to suit the needs of a younger audience that is literally forever new.

While in the short term commercial television, radio and even online services might lose eyeballs, if you like, or ears to the ABC, the fact that the ABC does not accept paid advertising means that it is impossible for commercial media outlets to lose revenue to the national broadcaster. The fact is that the challenges faced by commercial media in Australia are unrelated to the behaviour of the ABC and are more closely related to the rise of Google and Facebook. Indeed, this is accurately identified by the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism, based on the submissions by Schwartz Media and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. I quote:

In Australia, internet advertising revenues are scheduled to grow from $3.93 billion in 2013 to $7.25 billion in 2018, but that revenue is not going direct to news organisations that produce journalistic and other content. In increasing amounts, it is going to intermediaries. Morgan Stanley in Australia say that Facebook and Google are taking all of the ad market growth and then some. They estimated last year that Google and Facebook will collectively extract $4 billion to $5 billion worth of ad revenue, representing 35 to 40 per cent of total ad revenue.

Living in the modern era, the opportunities are now endless, and the ABC has come a long way with its modern platforms and ongoing commitments to quality programming rather than endless refits of those reality shows or popular talent quests that I do not seem to get around to watching. We all love the ABC and, indeed, many of us love SBS, too, for the same reason in that they have never been just broadcasters and they have always operated differently to commercial broadcasters. The distinction is made very clear by academic Julianne Schultz from Griffiths University, who said:

Commercial broadcasters engage with an audience of consumers, seeking to maximise their numbers and the profits that can be derived by successfully entertaining and informing them.

Public broadcasters are required to provide a universal service to fulfil their responsibility to citizens.

With regard to Australia's public broadcasters, this universal service includes regional and remote broadcasting, National Indigenous Television (NITV), foreign language and multicultural content, emergency broadcasting and many other areas of content that are regarded as minority, perhaps, or not in the commercial interest. Indeed, the ABC's special duty to report public emergencies is an example of this fundamental difference between it and commercial television. The ABC fulfils this duty through local stations, ABC News, ABC News 24 and ABC Emergency, reaching people via social media, radio, television, mobile and online.

I cannot tell you the number of times during summer I can recall my reliable service of grandstand test cricket which, thank goodness, is being continued, being interrupted by the emergency service warnings of a bushfire. Similarly, the coverage during the statewide blackout was an exemplary service and provided much needed calm during that state emergency. There is no equivalent obligation or expectation on commercial broadcasters, nor do those broadcasters have the history, relationships, infrastructure, multimedia and public respect that would make high-quality, widescale emergency broadcasting possible in the manner provided by the ABC.

Similarly, anyone who has ever watched The 7.30 Report over the years would have seen the political leaders of every stripe grapple with the highly qualified journalists and presenters the ABC employs. Their level of integrity and credibility has never been matched, or sought to be matched, by commercial broadcasters. While it may be politically inconvenient for some from time to time in our role in this place or in other places and jurisdictions, the high number of royal commissions and other inquiries prompted by Four Corners' reports is manifest proof of the high-quality public service the ABC provides to us all.

If it is not clear by now to everyone, like the Hon. Mr Pangallo and everyone in the Labor Party, I love my ABC and we are not alone. According to the 2016-17 ABC corporate tracker, 81 per cent of Australians remain of the view that the ABC television provides good quality programming and 71 per cent feel it does a good job in terms of the number of shows it provides that they personally like to watch. With regard to ABC radio, 72 per cent of Australians believed the quality of programming on ABC radio was good, compared, for instance, to 65 per cent who, for some reason, believed the same to be of commercial radio.

The similarities between the ABC on the one hand and commercial broadcasters on the other are purely superficial ones. Public broadcasters provide a universal service to all Australians, while commercial providers cultivate audiences and entertain them in order to sell time to advertisers. Although some may complain about the ABC and its impact on the market, the public broadcaster is not responsible for commercial broadcasting revenue woes. Commercial providers operate in a comparatively low regulation and unmonitored environment, free to compete for viewing audiences, with dollars the ABC will never have access to because that is not in its charter.

It is well past time that we call out the attacks on the ABC for what they are: an ideological opinion by a minority of Australians who do not represent the prevailing community views of what the public wants from our national broadcaster or increasingly, for that matter, what the public wants from their elected representatives. I commend this motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.