BY ADAM MACLEAN
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is stuck in the middle of a very nasty global trend: with publicly-funded media increasingly under financial and editorial threat from hostile governments, important alternatives to the big-business media monopolies are being snuffed out. It's time we reversed that trend.
Since the early 1990s, a cumulative total of $120 million has been cut from the ABC, $55 million of that in 1996, the first year of the Coalition's reign. Thirty-four percent of its funding has been cut in 15 years.
Even if Labor is elected to federal government, this trend seems unlikely to change: the ALP has only offered the ABC an extra $100 million over three years, 40% of the $240 million needed to reverse the cuts imposed by the Coalition.
The nobbling of the national broadcaster hasn't been limited to its funding. The federal government is clearly attempting to meddle in the program-making decisions of the ABC and undermine its editorial independence.
This meddling has been exacerbated by the appointment 18 months ago of ex-Young Liberal, and self-styled "mini-media mogul", Jonathan Shier, as the ABC's managing director.
His recent delaying of a Four Corners program, which cast new light on the dubious activities of high-level Liberal Party figures, has led many to ask in whose interests is he managing the national broadcaster: the public and its need to know or an increasingly paranoid federal Coalition government?
The ABC's independence is also under threat from governments' routine practice of appointing their ideological mates to the seven-member ABC Board.
The main ABC staff union, the CPSU, has pointed out, "the Board has failed to protect the ABC and its editorial independence and has failed to adequately protect the non-commercial nature of the national broadcaster ... It has overseen yet failed to act on the dismantling of production capacity in TV, and the diversion of funds away from program making and the areas that support program making."
In June, the Senate voted to set up an inquiry into the methods of appointment to the ABC Board "that would enhance public confidence in the independence and representativeness of the ABC as the national broadcaster".
Written submissions close on August 9, for tabling on September 25.
With public anger over the ABC's predicament clear, federal and state politicians are clambering over one another to be seen to be leading the charge against Jonathan Shier.
Australian Democrats Senator Vicky Bourne already has a private member's bill about ABC governance awaiting a final vote in the Senate.
But, while the Democrats (rightly) view the substantial funding cuts to the ABC as an essential part of the "problem", their draft bill would not significantly change the way the board is appointed.
Bourne's bill would hand appointments to a joint-party Senate committee, rather than cabinet, but politicians would still run the process and any hearings would still be in secret. The main people excluded from such a compromise is the Australian public itself.
Decisions about who should govern publicly-funded institutions need to be taken out of the hands of politicians and decided by those who are most affected by such decisions. In the case of a national public broadcaster, that is the people themselves.
It's time for the democratisation of one of the most important cultural institutions in this country. For too long the governance of the ABC has been done by people, generously compensated from the public purse, but with little or no experience in broadcasting.
The board's membership is narrow and subject to what amounts to cronyism. The historical practice of "jobs for the siblings" should end and be replaced by a system that has at its centre the election of all its members.
Models, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, should be seriously examined. As well, the ABC Board's membership must be enlarged to better represent the broad range of interests and requirements of a diverse, modern society. These people should be drawn from the various regional and metropolitan areas of Australia.
Since the ABC's corporatisation under the Hawke Labor government, managing directors have exercised too much control over the organisation. The separation between governance and administration should be reintroduced. The managing director should be removed from the ABC Board and have observer status only at board meetings.
Staff-elected representation on the board should be doubled (to two) to better reflect the diverse range of interests and skills of the 4000 people who make up the ABC.
The ABC Advisory Council — a body publicly nominated yet appointed by the ABC Board — should be widened and be made up of several regional and metropolitan sub-councils as well as "expert" panels. They should be given genuine advisory powers that exceed the current toothless "consultative" role that is all but ignored by the current board.
Clearly, such a model for better decision-making at the ABC can not happen without better and wider sources of funding, while still remaining 100% in public hands.
The ABC should not be viewed as an island in the sea of telecommunications. Convergence of the many communications and entertainment technologies — interactive and digital TV, mobile and WAP phones, broadband and Internet II — means that the public broadcaster requires many additional resources to develop content for these media.
Given the outrageously high profits enjoyed in the commercial communications industry in Australia, a tax on their advertising revenues should be levied. Any future leasing of the Australian airwave (spectrum) should carry levies that go into the program development costs of the ABC.
These funds would represent a modest contribution to the public good, rather than going into the pockets of the media barons. In addition to the present system of federal government three-yearly grants, these would go a very long way in ensuring a future for broadcasting in the interests of the people.
[For further information about the Senate inquiry or to make a submission yourself, visit < http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/ecita_ctte/Advert/ecitaA HREF="mailto:_abcboard.htm"><_abcboard.htm>.]