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ABC budget cuts ‘a political attack’

AAP

AAP

Funding cuts to the public broadcaster are a political attack, not a budget balancing measure, says one of Australia’s best-known journalists.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Wednesday a cut of 4.6 per cent to the ABC budget, which the leading journalist described as “a serious broken promise” and “just political”.

Centre for Advancing Journalism honorary fellow Michael Gawenda told The New Daily he could see no justification for the $254 million funding cut, which he believed would hamper the broadcaster’s ability to innovate in the online space.

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“I think these are political cuts, ideological cuts designed in some way to punish the ABC,” said Mr Gawenda, a three-time Walkley Award winner.

“We need the ABC more than ever given the problems commercial media organisations are having, especially newspaper companies where the journalism is increasingly restricted by the fact that the business model is broken, journalists have to be put off and fewer things can be covered well.”

The ABC will receive $5.2 billion over five years rather than $5.5 billion, which the Community and Public Sector Union described to The Guardian as a political betrayal.

“The Abbott government has betrayed voters by breaking its promise to not cut the ABC and SBS,” said the union’s president Michael Tull.

“Malcolm Turnbull can dress it up any way he likes but this is a blatant Liberal party attack on one of Australia’s best-loved and respected institutions,” Mr Tull said.

A crowd-funded billboard in Sydney

A billboard pleading with Malcolm Turnbull to save the ABC from cuts.

The Communications Minister defended against these claims, saying the Prime Minister’s ‘no cuts to the ABC’ line must be interpreted in the context of his own remarks and those of Treasurer Joe Hockey that the broadcaster needed to be more efficiently run.

“Unless you believe that Mr Abbott was, in that one line, intending to contradict and overrule the very careful statements of intention made by Mr Hockey and myself, his remarks can only be understood in the same context,” Mr Turnbull said.

ABC editor-in-chief Mark Scott said in a statement the cuts will amount to more than the 4.6 per cent announced by the Minister because the government has made no allocation for “inevitable” redundancies.

In the end, the Australian people will judge the value of the ABC, Mr Scott said.

“That view is already clear,” he said, citing the 84 per cent of respondents to a recent Newspoll survey who said the ABC was performing a valuable role.

Mr Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of The Age, acknowledged the cuts could have been worse, and that the broadcaster would probably “be able to live with” the reduced funding, but insisted they are unnecessary.

“I guess the ABC will cope better than most with a 4.6 per cent cut, except that I see no reason for it,” he said.

Mr Gawenda also criticised the Minister’s recommendation that the roles of ABC managing director and editor-in-chief be split. He saw the wisdom in dividing the responsibilities, as is the case in most commercial media companies, but said it would amount to “ministerial interference” for Mr Turnbull to insist upon the change.

“I see no reasons why those should not be split, but it’s not a decision that should be made by a minister, and I would hope that the board would make that decision or not make it without feeling any pressure from Turnbull,” he said.

Furthermore, the Minister’s call for the board to exercise greater oversight over ABC content to ensure accuracy and impartiality also earned Mr Gawenda’s ire for being dangerous and nonsensical.

“That seems like a piece of nonsense to me,” he said.

“The idea that boards of media organisations, including the ABC, ought to be involved in editorial decisions seems to me to be really dangerous.”

If the broadcaster’s process for ensuring accuracy and impartiality need to be improved, then that should occur, Mr Gawenda said, but he warned that it appeared to be yet another political move to “reign in” perceived left-wing bias.

“I don’t even believe Turnbull believes this nonsense, but there are many in the government that do believe it, including the prime minister,” he said.

“The board ought to ignore this sort of political pressure,” Mr Gawenda said.

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