Not-so-friendly worm infests the Apple Isle

IT'S an open secret that the Friends of the ABC is little more than a front organisation for the ALP and the trade union movement.Now a series of memos outlining a strategy for the Tasmanian branch of FABC to adopt in an endeavour to defeat the Howard Government is proof positive of the partisan nature of this so-called consumer body.

The key to the operation is a two-page memo from FABC treasurer and former state ALP candidate Daniel Hulme. A former president of both the UTAS student union and Tasmanian Young Labor, Hulme's draft election strategy says there is a need for action groups to convince voting FABC members the ABC is under attack from the Howard Government. Curiously, this was the theme of an article by Greg Barns in last Tuesday's Hobart Mercury. Barns complained the ABC had been dumbed down because it aired the Tasmanian-produced program, The Collectors, on Fridays. His beef with the show appeared to be its success, which he equated with an Australian obsession with material possessions that he felt was related to Prime Minister John Howard. He also questioned the need for the ABC to have a magazine associated with a gardening program, and asked why there was a cooking program on the national broadcaster. What a small, sad world Barns must live in to imagine the ABC's audience shouldn't include cooks and gardeners. Coming on the heels of Tony Jones' expensive and carbon-creating mission to the UK to heap scorn upon those who challenge the ABC's opinion of the climate debate, Barns' attack on the Government's imagined threat to the broadcaster was really too, too ridiculous. Hulme's campaign is another matter. Its basic premise is untrue, but he doesn't tell the FABC that. At the FABC's national conference in May it was decided that there would be a national day of action, with particular attention paid to marginal seats focusing on independence from government, the need to fund the ABC properly, and the need to keep the ABC free from advertising and commercialisation (except, presumably, when it is advertising staff members' products or wares which are in accord with the institutionalised thinking of the ABC). But far from cutting the ABC's budgets or tackling the problems of inherent bias within the ABC culture, the Howard Government has substantially increased the ABC's funding and is the first government to give the ABC extra money for programs and infrastructure since the mid-1980s. Fact. The members of the FABC need to know that, contrary to their treasurer's claims, in the last financial year of the last Labor government's reign, the ABC received $522 million. In the 2007-2008 Budget, the ABC will receive $863 million, a funding increase of more than 60 per cent in the past decade. Fact. Indeed, in the three years 2006-2009, the ABC will receive $88.2 million in new funding, an outcome welcomed by the chairman of the ABC as the best outcome for the national broadcaster in more than 20 years. Fact. Perhaps Hulme and Barns think the Howard Government intends to choke the ABC into submission with wads of cash. It is doubtful whether members of the FABC, nationally or in Tasmania, will ever be told the truth about the Howard Government's largesse, because the FABC is committed to working against it. The Tasmanian branch is firmly in the ALP family, with president Anne O'Byrne a former president of the Tasmanian branch of the ALP and wife of the former Labor Senator Justin O'Byrne, in the chair. She's also a relative of the current state member for Bass, Michelle O'Byrne, who paid tribute to her as a wonderful mentor for political life in her maiden speech in March 2006. The national office is just as deeply steeped in the leftist tradition, with old-time Monash Maoist Darce Cassidy, a former ABC state manager and former secretary of the ABC staff union, running its website. He was the FABC's national media spokesman until replaced in May by Professor Alan Knight, a long-time ALP activist. Its journal, which features an article on Mark Latham's greatest booster, the former ABC pin-up girl Maxine McKew, is also promoting a national day of action to push false political claims. What is clear is the FABC, like Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, is running a scare campaign against the Howard Government by making claims that are untrue and then promising remedies it cannot impose. The Tasmanian chapter is to meet to discuss Hulme's plans next weekend, those FABC members who are non-partisan, if there indeed are any, should demand the resignation of its leadership and the appointment of genuine apolitical figures committed to an honest appreciation of the ABC's fortunes. Anything less reflects the grip the ALP and unions have on the front organisation.