Why the ABC will never be privatised

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie. Photo: ABC

Picking a fight about privatising the ABC is about as sensible as surrendering your nation’s cheap energy advantage to appease the climate bureaucrats of the United Nations. Such is the madness of national politics of this country that both are realities.

We live in an age where the re-emergence of the once-extinct Clivosaurus Palmerexus hardly makes us blink. It is just another day in Canberra as big Clive thunders in and signs up yet another of our nation’s endless supply of nameless senators prepared to swap parties, principles and loyalties for the shot at some more time on the red leather and travel entitlements.

But let us at least engage our common sense for a moment on the issue of privatisation and the billion dollar taxpayer-funded behemoth that is our — or their — ABC. Aunty will never be sold off. So, by passing a motion to demand the ABC’s sale, the Liberal Party’s federal council has done nothing but start a losing battle that opens up Malcolm Turnbull’s government to yet another avenue of populist attack.

There are five key reasons why the ABC won’t and shouldn’t be privatised. To start with, the broadcaster is valued by many Australians, especially Coalition supporters. The Coalition base (politically engaged people involved in small business, community service, farming and aspirational pursuits across the nation and especially the regions) often relies on the ABC for political coverage and local news. The corporation’s green left bias might infuriate them but that is precisely because they have such a high regard for the services it should provide.

Political commentators in Canberra — including Michelle Grattan published on the ABC website — seem to misunderstand both the Coalition base and the concept of virtue-signalling when they describe this move as “virtue-signalling to the base.” On the contrary, this is a case of narrowcasting to a hard line cohort of the Liberal Party; there is no virtue being displayed — they want to display ruthless bravado — and those applauding are not the Coalition’s base.

Secondly, this proposal makes little commercial sense. Free-to-air broadcasters are in enough strife already with diminishing advertising revenue; how would a vast new commercial player turn a dollar even if it picked up the ABC assets at a bargain price? It would lead to large job losses and disruption across the electronic media as limited advertising dollars were spread more thinly.

Thirdly, in my view (and that of many Australians), there is a role for a public broadcaster across our vast and disparate federation. This is why the national broadcaster was established in the 1930s; to try to help bind the nation together in the newly-emerging information age. Granted, the need is nowhere near as obvious now given the plethora of media choices and national networks available, but there is still a case for a public broadcaster than can cover the entire nation with a charter to supply crucial content, as well as gather and share insights from across our land.

The fourth reason is the sheer idiocy of the politics. Even if it wanted to, the government would never be able to sell the ABC because it will be blocked by parliament, public backlash, strikes, internal political dissent and all the rest of it. So the upshot of proposing the policy is just political self-harm. Labor and the unions now have another scare campaign to run all the way up to the election — justified by the Liberals’ own federal council resolution — that will be emotive and damaging. No sitting Coalition MP will thank the Young Liberal upstarts responsible for this stunt — let alone their candidates in next month’s by-elections.

While the issue is ventilated we can expect the ABC to be even more puerile and aggressive in its dealings with the Coalition.

And finally, the proposal to privatise the ABC is an admission of failure in the running of a major cultural institution. The ABC needs to curtailed, merged with the SBS and straightened out, sure, but arguing to flog it off is just another way of admitting an inability to fix the problems.

In opposition, the Coalition foolishly agreed to change the ABC charter to give it carte blanche in digital media. In effect, by adding digital media to the charter, they allowed the ABC perpetual unlimited opportunities to expand. The Coalition now needs to formulate a policy that will revisit the charter, prescribe and limit the number of platforms it provides and focus the corporation on core functions. Over time, through an SBS merger and budget restraint, public broadcasting activities should be shrunk and refocused.

Along the way a Coalition government should do all it can — by appointing a strong board and editorially-focused managing director, removing staff tenure and constantly pushing it to fulfil its charter — to change the ABC’s activist, green left culture. The ABC cannot be allowed to continue as the publicly-funded political platform for progressive ideologues. If current managing director Michelle Guthrie can’t convince her organisation to employ some prominent managers, producers and voices from the mainstream or right-of-centre, she ought to resign. Instead she is currently being pushed by the staff collective to fight back against a government that has never grasped how to tackle this organisation that is full of its ideological enemies but valued by its friends.