Steve Price: Peter Dutton must be brave and offer alternatives to Labor this election
Peter Dutton must offer tough alternatives to Labor if he wants to win the federal election, and there’s no better place to start than the money pit that is the ABC.
Opinion
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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton must be brave and offer tough alternatives to Labor if he wants to claw back a soft start to campaign 2025.
Voters see through “me too” campaigning and want tough alternatives and real change. Critics will label them Trump-like, but Dutton needs to ignore the critics.
It might read a little like a political suicide note being handed to a Coalition already on the back foot, but let’s give it a crack anyway.
Let’s start with the money pit that is the ABC, radio especially, but TV isn’t much better. ABC ratings are falling off a cliff year-on-year despite funding increases under Labor.
The Opposition Leader should announce if elected he would allow SBS-style advertising on ABC TV and then simply merge the two and run the combined network with ads. Zero cost to the taxpayer, a guaranteed audience boost and a commonsense approach to broadcasting in the age of streaming.
We no longer have a need for an ethnic TV network, given migrants can stream all the content from their former home countries that they want – and SBS really isn’t doing what it was set up to do anyway.
Next, introduce a Netflix-like subscription fee for the new ABC-SBS super network and take that income off the $1.229bn of your money spent each year on the ABC.
A simple user-pays system for those who want their news and current affairs with a left-green view of the world. It will be all yours for the price of a couple of almond milk lattes a week.
That leaves the radio networks – a collapsing gaggle of little-listened-to failures. If you don’t believe me – and I can already hear the on-cue outrage from ABC Friends – read these numbers and weep.
Radio survey N0.1 this year and the breakfast ratings for the five – yes five – ABC radio shows saw ABC 774 Melbourne pulling a 6.3 share, down from 7.9, compared with its talk rival 3AW on a 20.6. Far worse on the well-funded and much lauded Radio National breakfast show it’s a grim 1.8 with a total cumulative audience of just 67,000 people. That really is just some politicians and public servants in Canberra, and you are paying for it.
News-radio – why we need these double ups is beyond me – had a 1.2 per cent audience share, dwarfed by Triple J on 2.8 and ABC classic on 1.5.
To give some context, 3AW had over half a million listeners tuning in at some stage each morning on breakfast compared with the new Melbourne ABC breakfast show hosted by Sharnelle Vella and ex-footballer Bob Murphy with half that.
That pair are the fourth breakfast combination in seven years after popular host – relatively – Red Symons was shown the door rating 13 per cent and seen by management as too old and too white for your ABC.
This outfit simply does not understand its core audience which is also old and white and dying off in big numbers. Hiring a string of not very funny young comedians on a station like 774 is plain dumb.
Dutton should haul in ABC chairman Kim Willams and new ABC managing director Hugh Marks and demand change and tell them quite clearly the money pipeline has run out. And please, Peter, don’t buckle on the idea Australians treasure their ABC these days – the numbers don’t lie.
After taking on the Left media – and remember those who consume what the ABC currently presents laughingly as balanced content don’t vote for you anyway – attack those greedy insurance companies gouging Australians paying for home contents and car insurance. Embarrass them into dropping prices by some serious reform of your own. Toss it out as policy during this campaign.
Under a Dutton government announce you will scrap the GST on all insurance policy renewals and like your petrol excise do it immediately. Better still, make the changes permanent. You should also shame state and territory governments into axing stamp duty on insurance renewals, reminding them these taxes were supposed to be dropped when the GST came in.
On two policies, car and home and contents insurance renewals this week, I paid a total of $774.30 in GST and stamp duty before the insurance itself. Tell Aussies if elected they will get cheaper petrol and cheaper insurance every year compared with Labor’s $5 tax cut in 18 months, REAL cost of living relief now.
Next promise to cut the crippling excise tax on legal cigarettes that are causing a tobacco war across Melbourne with nightly firebombings of vape shops.
No-one can afford to buy legal cigarettes anymore and retail sales have collapsed. Surely no-one is going to argue that making legal cigarettes cheaper is going to suddenly cause quitters to take up smoking again.
The tobacco excise levels are a blatant government cash grab causing violent crime and creating a black market lining the pockets of organised crime.
Finally, up your new policy approach to immigration and instead of a 25 per cent cut in migrant levels introduce a two-year minimum total pause. We all know the Albanese government has been using migrant numbers like some economic Ponzi scheme to top up the tax take and provide cheap labour while at the same time causing a rent and housing crisis.
How does that make any sense for the future of our children locked out of home ownership or the pressure it places on things like roads, schools and the health system.
This election seems bogged down in a series of personal attacks between the leaders and copycat policies from both sides afraid to upset anyone. It needs bravery and guts and who could argue that a better, cheaper ABC, an end to the tobacco wars, cheaper petrol and insurance plus an Australians first policy to turn around a housing crisis wouldn’t appeal to voters.
Over to you Mr Dutton.
Dislikes
Uber charging $47 for a six-minute trip in Central Sydney on Monday night.
The glacial pace of internal renovations at Tullamarine airport Terminal 1 – looks like a second rate third world country not Melbourne.
Increasingly blatant anti-Coalition attitudes from the travelling Canberra press gallery.
Victorian jail cells left to rot with black mould the latest example of a broke government on its knees.
Likes
Aussie golfer Min Woo Lee’s first win on the US PGA in Houston now onto the Masters.
Chatting with White Lotus star Patrick Schwarzenegger about acting and growing up with his famous dad.
The PM dining with Aussie golf superstar Greg Norman this week clearly a better way to Donald Trump that Kevin Rudd.
Cheeky ‘leave our signs alone’ warning to Monique Ryan from Kooyong candidate Amelia Hamer.
Originally published as Steve Price: Peter Dutton must be brave and offer alternatives to Labor this election
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