Last week the Australian government announced its 2021-22 budget which included $58.6m for the media sector.
But while this may sound good after years of disinformation and “fake news”, the ABC is still estimated to lose $10m.
Since 2019, the ABC has had to contend with its funding being “paused” or “frozen“, which they have said is equivalent to a funding cut, though Prime Minister Scott Morrison disagreed.
The Morrison government’s fight with the ABC over funding previously led both Labor and The Greens parties to create petitions to “Save The ABC” from the current government.
But until an election is called it remains unclear how either parties will do this.
The cost of innovation
The ABC’s charter, included in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983, states the ABC must provide “innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard…broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community”.
The ABC have been at the forefront of media innovation in Australia, becoming one of the first Australian media organisations to develop an online presence when they launched their website in 1995.
In 2006 they became the first Australian media organisation to offer podcasts of their radio programs, and 2008 saw the launch of iView, still one of the best catch up TV services.
Since then, the ABC have continued to experiment and innovate, and promise to continue doing so, with several recent news articles presented as interactive features on Story Lab.
But such innovation isn’t without consequences, and in 2018 commercial media organisations complained that both of Australia’s public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, weren’t competing fairly.
Accused of using their funding to gain an unfair advantage, within news markets in particular, a government enquiry found both broadcasters innocent, at a cost of half a million dollars to tax-payers.
In his response at the time, ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie said:
“[The ABC charted] a course for the rest of the sector to follow. We pioneered multi-channelling and video on demand with our iview initiative, the latter entirely funded by internal efficiencies. The commercial TV stations declined the ABC’s offer to share iview with other broadcasters, but they happily benefitted from our successful market testing by launching their own catch-up services and multichannels years later.”
A bad year for news media
Even with innovative ideas the media landscape has shrunk around the world thanks in part to the pandemic in 2020, which saw funding for public broadcasters threatened.
The UK’s BBC and the US’s PBS and NPR services were each under attack by their respective governments, and in Australia the ABC had budget issues of their own.
The summer bushfires added an estimated $3.1m to the ABC’s broadcasting costs in 2020 as their emergency broadcasting efforts increased, while up to 250 jobs were lost due to budget cuts.
2020 also saw local newspapers close in the UK and US, while in Australia News Corp ceased printing more than 100 newspapers which serviced rural and regional Australians.
At the same time, the ABC had been trying to better service rural / regional areas, and it was revealed by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald in 2020 that the Morrison government had denied proposals made by the ABC to expand coverage of remote communities and employ more journalists located in rural areas.
They still need money
The ABC have had missteps too, such as in 2017 when they shut down their shortwave radio service in the Northern Territory, much to the annoyance of remote communities who relied on it.
While budgets weren’t cited as the cause, Labor promised in 2019 that they would fund the services return if elected, though they haven’t released any further details.
At the end of the day this comes back to money, and while the ABC is unlikely to ever start a newspaper to replace those closed by News Corp, in their submission to a 2020 enquiry into media diversity in Australia the ABC said they were investigating ways they may be able to support community news outlets, “such as through training or content sharing, if funding becomes available.”
Elsewhere in their submission they noted that while the ABC was not established to deliver hyperlocal news, they may face pressure to do so if local and community news publications continued to close, and again requested the government to provide support in terms of “funding and protecting the independence of public service media”.
The message appears to be loud and clear, if Australia’s national broadcaster is going to reach everyone in Australia, there needs to be more funding.
For now, it remains to be seen if funding of the ABC will ever be increased, and it’s an issue which will likely be taken to the next federal election.
Featured photo: Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Singapore FinTech Festival 2020. Via Wikimedia Fair Use.
This article has acted as a reminder of the distinctiveness of the ABC as not only a public broadcaster, but as an innovator. Removing the dependency on advertising and private business models, the ABC has been able to pioneer new or different ways of story-telling. I think it would be such a deep loss for Australia if this was taken away. The budget cuts have already decreased this element of the ABC – any more and the ABC will lose its ability to function AND SERVE as a public broadcaster.
Nice one James!
Big loss for ABC now in 2021 as Frydenberg pushes for private sector recovery for ‘Team Australia’
I was looking at some 2009 data from the Community and Public Sector Union that found the ABC’s productivity was well beyond some commercial news media capacity. Perhaps the 2018 inquiry signalled just that: ABC outshining the Murdoch and Costello forces in terms of online and streaming services.
The ABC article you linked about News Limited’s influence in rural Australia was particularly interesting too. It’s devastating that hyperlocal and rural news isn’t prioritised by the current govt. I wonder how our views as early-career journalists may change once some of us have spent time at rural publications. Considering the ABC’s role in bushfire coverage, I’d hope most of us will be sympathetic to more ABC funding for rural Australia. Especially given the unpredictability of disaster and crises in the regions lately (mouse plague, flash floods etc).
Thank you Charlotte. It’s easy to forget how innovative the ABC has been for Australians as we take a lot of what they provide for granted.
I genuinely wonder if any future government will start to reintroduce budget into the ABC. Even the very few Labour governments we have had since the major cuts have started haven’t introduced more budgetry support.
We have some extremely remote communities who need the essential services of the ABC, whose reach is the widest into the country.
Thanks for this article James. As the public broadcaster the ABC is essential to democratic and accountability functions of press in Australia – Its dwindling budget over the years speaks volumes of government attitude towards this. But moreover – the latest round of budget cuts shows an utter disregard for those in rural areas that rely heavily on the ABC for news and information. The Black Summer bushfires highlighted how essential the broadcast services the ABC offers are in reaching communities at times where access to information can literally save lives.
It is often lamented by critics that the ABC is only for “inner city lefties.” The ongoing budget cuts, by removing the public broadcaster from rural areas, shape an Australia that sadly brings this closer to reality.
Thanks for this article, James. I agree – there certainly does need to be more funding allocated to the ABC. I think the policy of successive Coalition governments re the ABC has long been death by a thousand cuts. In 2018, the Liberal Party’s federal council voted overwhelmingly to privatise the ABC. They’ve said it’s for budget saving purposes etc, but really it’s about silencing one of the only media organisations that generally provides objective news coverage of government conduct. It will not bode well for the health of our democracy if the Libs ultimately meet their objective.
Thank you for this article James. It is easy for some of us based in the city to forget how important the public broadcaster is for rural communities, especially in times like the 2020 bushfires. I hope that the government will realise that financially supporting the ABC to reach those communities and produce more local news will be so beneficial for so many Australians. The gradual shrinking of the ABC is very concerning, and a completely privatised news media landscape is a scary thought. The ABC plays a vital and fundamental role in delivering news that many Australians don’t consider enough. Hopefully, there will be a turning point in the future that will see more support for the ABC – even if that does mean more focus on regional areas and less on areas that already have plenty of news coverage. But I certainly agree that more funding would be best!
Thank you for this article James. It is easy for some of us based in the city to forget how important the public broadcaster is for rural communities, especially in times like the 2020 bushfires. I hope that the government will realise that financially supporting the ABC to reach those communities and produce more local news will be so beneficial for so many Australians. The gradual shrinking of the ABC is very concerning, and a completely privatised news media landscape is a scary thought. The ABC plays a vital and fundamental role in delivering news that many Australians don’t consider enough. Hopefully, there will be a turning point in the future that will see more support for the ABC – even if that does mean more focus on regional areas and less on areas that already have plenty of news coverage. But I certainly agree that more funding would be best!
Thanks for this article James, this piece raises some very compelling points. If the ABC and its national outreach is struggling to obtain funding then what hope do independent and smaller newspapers have?
I feel like we need to preserve the integrity of both, and certainly to reduce the ABC’s funding puts constraints on the broadcasting body and journalists to churn content with limited resources which puts additional pressure on what is already a demanding industry and as you say pivotal to rural communities where outreach is limited.
I’m just dumfounded that there is not more support from the Morrison government towards relocating reporters to rural communities, particularly as we come to discover the economic fragility the pandemic has hit us with as a means of revitalizing these regions, that they say are so vital to our industry.
Hey Maddie, thanks for the comment. You’ll be happy to know that the ABC is going to allocate funding to some regional areas now, thanks to the deal they struck with Google and Facebook. Of course it’s also worrying that our public broadcaster might have to rely on private funding of its commercial arm to help regional Australians…but I guess it’s something for now.
More info here: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/26/abc-does-deals-with-google-and-facebook-that-could-see-millions-spent-on-regional-news
Thanks for writing about this, James. The first thing that came to mind when I read about the funding cuts for the ABC is our remote communities. A number of towns and regions rely on news from the ABC and the Australians living in these communities will be affected. Our rural Australians are already under-represented by commercial media organisations.
The ABC is known to be Australia’s most trusted media outlet and recent figures show that public trust has been falling. This will continue to drop if the ABC don’t get the funding they deserve. These cuts not only affect our regional communities but our journalists who have been made redundant and have lost their jobs. They have been working around the clock to bring us the latest stories at a time when all we hear about is ‘fake news’. They need our support.
Great piece, James! I never thought about how the ABC would face pressure to step up as all the other smaller regional publications start to close. We only have to look to the 2020 bushfires to see how invaluable they were for isolated communities. Would be devastating to lose their contribution. Personally, I want to see more than just a petition to Save the ABC – what’s the plan from Labor and the Greens? We definitely need to hold them to account on their promises and policy come the next election.
Thanks for the article James. The ABC has become intertwined in Australia’s never-ending culture wars, with funding of the public broadcaster becoming a political football for both the government and the opposition. As you’ve written, the ABC provides an essential service to Australians, as exemplified through their reporting on the summer bushfires. Hopefully, in the future, the vitality of the ABC is recognised by all sides of politics and its funding stabilises. This will ensure the broadcaster can continue to provide high-quality reporting for all Australians.