BY ADAM MACLEAN
Denied funding by the federal Coalition government to adequately sustain the national broadcaster for the next three years, Australian Broadcasting Corporation management on August 5 announced funding cuts of $26.1 million to programs and services.
International affairs program Foreign Correspondent will be cut extensively, losing up to one-third of its budget, and several overseas news bureaus are expected to be closed due to cuts totalling $4 million.
The recently introduced Business Breakfast will merge with World At Noon as a business-news hybrid under a new name. Coverage of one-off sports events also faces cuts.
The ABC's cadet journalist training program will be abandoned to save $530,000 a year, a development that demonstrated the ABC was being "forced to eat its own future", Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) federal secretary Christopher Warren told the Age newspaper on August 6.
The cuts include the end of educational programming, particularly the ABC's third-longest screening TV program, the 34-year-old Behind the News, the Schools TV program as well as the axing of ABC Online's education gateway. These cuts seriously threaten the organisation's legislative requirement to provide educational programming to the nation.
The cuts come on top of the May cancellation of the ABC Kids digital TV channel as well as the youth-oriented Fly TV, amounting to cuts of $7.3 million and the loss of 10 full-time positions.
Other announced cuts included $2.75 million from external advertising, $200,000 from the radio division and $50,000 from new media. These cuts in particular illustrate how ABC management has disguised significantly larger cuts than those announced.
In new media (internet), for example, cuts are more to the tune of $1.7 million, with the loss of special interest funding, unspent monies from the previous financial year and the recall by the finance division of a $400,000 loan. This has resulted in the "rationalisation" of the arts gateway of the ABC web site and the axing of the Learn Online gateway and the Public Record politics site. "Casual positions" (as opposed to full-time "jobs") have been axed and some people on extended leave are not being back-filled.
Calling the cuts "the price the organisation must pay for editorial independence", ABC managing director Russell Balding and the ABC Board are now cutting front-line programming. The communications minister, Richard Alston, is in no position to criticise ABC management for cutting programs when he is responsible for the severe under-funding of public broadcasting.
While claiming that only 100 jobs will be affected, and there will be just 25 redundancies, ABC management has provided very little detail to staff as to where those jobs will come from.
At a joint Community and Public Sector Union and MEAA meeting, union representatives told members that management is foreshadowing further program "rationalisations" to factual and documentary programming, in particular the Dimensions TV series and Gardening Australia. There is little trust in claims that the closure of some international bureaus won't mean further staff cuts.
Most revealing are management claims that affected staff will be moved into positions currently held by "casuals" and fixed-term employees. Both ABC unions have been recently campaigning to have these staff recognised as ongoing, full-time workers. Given the significant numbers of people employed by the ABC under contract, management is seeking to hide further staff reductions without paying redundancies.
The unions resolved to continue their campaign for fixed-term contracters being made permanent, full-time employees and that staff facing redeployment not be placed in these "casual", on-going roles.
Unions have also vowed to publicly campaign against the federal government's funding decision. The present crisis inside the ABC is a direct result of the government's rejection of the ABC's three-yearly funding submission, forcing the broadcaster to make further significant cuts.
Although the government claims it has maintained funding, this is misleading given the ever-escalating costs of broadcasting and the changing nature of broadcasting technologies. If local program making is to continue, it must be adequately and appropriately funded.
The ABC is recognised as one of this country's most important cultural institutions. It must be defended vigorously from government interference as well as management short-sightedness.
The recently announced union and community campaign to save Behind the News from the axe is an important one. BTN is the only current affairs program for young people, encouraging students to analyse and question the news placed before them. It has a weekly audience of 1.3 million students.
These cuts aren't just the loss of a TV or radio show or the taking down of a web site. They represent the loss of an important link between youth, culture and a people's right to be informed in a modern democracy.
[To help save the ABC, visit <http://www.friendsoftheabc.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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