On Thursday morning, Scott Morrison did the rounds of the media... excluding the ABC. He then revealed he'd agreed to two more televised debates - to be hosted by Nine and Seven, the friendly neighbourhood Costello/Stokes outlets. In the past, the National Press Club has been the debate venue, and Labor has declared their interest in continuing that tradition. (Last election, the Liberals insisted on it.) The moderator at the Press Club is usually the president - and the president right now happens to be the ABC's Laura Tingle. Morrison hasn't directly responded to the invitation, but said today that three debates made "a good number", and "I've already done one". (For anyone who missed it, that was on Rupert's Sky.) The ABC has issued a separate invite for May 9, with their Sky-import, the not-overly-taxing David Speers as host. The Morrison camp has so far ignored that offer.(With Albanese only due out of Covid iso on Friday, and Labor's party launch booked for the end of next week in WA, Morrison is also attempting to force the Nine and Seven debates to both happen in the next 7 days. It's a tactic transparently designed to dodge questions in the final fortnight, and push hard on his recovering rival.)
On Tuesday, while attempting to brush off questions of foreign policy failure following the announcement of the Solomon Islands deal with China, the Prime Minister chose to highlight and mock one very specific piece of the Labor's Party's Pacific plan (a package of strategic, diplomatic and economic reinvestment). That piece was the re-funding of the ABC's regional service, Radio Australia. Coalition cuts saw Radio Australia end shortwave transmissions to remote northern Australia and the Asia/Pacific in 2017. The shortwave service had been a respected source of reliable news, current affairs and emergency information since its launch by Menzies in 1939. Ignoring the journalistic, social and soft-diplomacy value, the Coalition cut it under Howard, and finally ended it under Turnbull. Then the ABC's frequencies were sold to China Radio International, China's national broadcaster.
Scott Morrison summarised Labor's announced intent to fix this ideologically-driven own-goal with a typically sloganeering scoff: "I sent in the AFP, the Labor Party wants to send in the ABC!”
His comment served both to highlight his continuing incomprehension of the value of diplomacy - even as the consequences of such un-thinking wash over the region - and his dedication to demeaning the ABC.
Three months ago, after 9 years of cuts (which the PM smilingly refuses to call cuts, but which add up to over $700 million), the Coalition quietly announced its intention to discontinue the "indexation freeze" that's gutted services and seen hundreds of staff losses at the public broadcaster. With government scandals piling up on all sides, independent candidates threatening blue-ribbon seats, and no change in anti-ABC rhetoric, this was pretty clearly a cynical move intended only to remove an election "barnacle". Considering the immediately-broken Abbott promise of "no cuts to the ABC or SBS", and the recent repeated failures of funding delivery after announcements elsewhere, this new commitment should be taken with an enormous pinch of salt.
It's no exaggeration to say Morrison and his crew loathe the ABC. As a basic starting point, public provision of services is anathema to the neo-cons, and this particular service has been central in exposing dozens of instances of administrative wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, the industrial lobbyists of the Institute of Public Affairs - whose publicity-shy, fossilised sponsors increasingly set Liberal Party policy - have for years sought the dismantling of the organisation. Beyond the government's budget cuts, complaints, programming pressure, board interference, and parliamentary attacks, in 2018 the Liberal Party annual federal council actually voted to privatise the broadcaster. The government has stated it won't follow-through on that threat - but the hostility is open, and this administration's word is scarcely its bond. Slow undermining before disposal is usually the favoured technique for public assets, and this looks to be well in train. Multiple media outlets have sounded the alarm on the unprecedentedly secretive nature of the Morrison government and its anti-transparency obsessions (including the attempt to classify the Covid-era "National Cabinet" as covered by federal cabinet-in-confidence provisions, the stacking of the body responsible for Freedom Of Information decisions, the AAT, with dozens of Liberal Party pals, and the raids and prosecution of journalists and whistleblowers). In November last year - while blocking the introduction of an anti-corruption body that would be able to examine his own government - Scott Morrison backed the idea of yet another inquiry into the operation of the ABC, this time examining the efficacy of their complaints process. Three weeks ago, the Prime Minister's office told Murdoch's Australian newspaper that they might not do any more 7.30 interviews before the election, because "the people watching 7.30" are "rusted on". The PMO said it preferred to talk to A Current Affair for its "big" audience of "swinging voters". The notable difference in the quality of journalistic enquiry, and the obvious motive of sidestepping public accountability hung about the comments like a bad smell.
With Peter Costello, Rupert Murdoch, and Kerry Stokes undisguisedly playing politics with their media outlets (both before and during this election campaign) and social media feeding disinfo into every device, a properly-funded, independent public broadcaster has never been more vital - in the Asia/Pacific region, as well as around the nation.
If this election allows the current Prime Ministerial incumbent to continue, we're overwhelmingly likely to see the opposite.
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