ABC management, driven mostly by former Liberal Party staffer and businessman Mark Scott seems hell bent on imposing a technocratic regime on the public broadcaster. In many ways this amounts to privatisation by stealth and Scott’s successes are many and far reaching.
While management has been able to argue that most of its decisions are in the best interests of the ABC it is debatable whether or not they are in the best interests of Australians.
While the ABC service has long relied on technology provided by third parties, dating back to its early dependence on Telecom for signal distribution, the current outsourcing and partnership arrangements do raise a question regarding what is a public broadcaster. Even the term “broadcaster” is questionable as more ABC content is distributed in the non-broadcast space.
A short list of outsourcing and partnerships reveals that the core of the ABC’s technical infrastructure is now captive to commercial operators. These include a lucrative deal with Maquarie Group’s Broadcast Australia for transmission services, a partnership with the privately owned WIN network for centralised TV presentation and an almost exclusive deal with Microsoft Australia for server and desktop solutions.
Fundamentally these arrangements undermine the independent nature of the public broadcaster. However a direct consequence of these outsourcing and partnership deals is to transfer significant amounts of the ABC’s annual budget to a small number of favoured private businesses. This in turn raises questions regarding the decision making and motivations of those dispensing such favours.
Furthermore the impetus for a highly technically centralised ABC based in Sydney is counter to an earlier philosophy of a regionalised ABC and by its very nature one more susceptible to spectacular failure as demonstrated by the new Media Hub’s effort on the recent night of the ALP’s long knives.
Mark Scott has long been at pains to paint this scenario in glowing terms as one that will transform the ABC into a 21st century media powerhouse yet his direct interference with editorial policies combined with decisions which make the ABC captive to private industry players and a wholesale attack on the internal culture of the ABC suggests that your ABC is so only in name and slogan.
Even more worrying is the broader implication of a elitist ABC managed in such a way that bestows as much money as possible into the coffers of private interests while at the same time restricting the actual content of public information in the interests of avoiding contentious or dissenting opinions. The one voice that speaks with authority that is quietly milking the public public purse for the benefit of mates in business. The new ABC model is classic partnership of government and big business combining to manufacture consent, paid for by the very people it supposedly serves.
That’s your ABC.
