ABC to grapple with budget freeze, 200 redundancies expected
smh.com.au/business/companies/abc-to-grapple-...
smh.com.auPosted Dec 9, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC
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smh.com.auABC budget freeze while we are headed towards surplus.
Let's see if Ita stands up for the organisation.
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She won't. The Liberals are many things but they're rarely foolish when it comes to political appointments. They give them to people who will capitulate. Shell fall into line and there won't be much reporting of any dissent.
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She'll fall into line
She was appointed because she was so comprehensively in line a banker could snort her
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Soon you won't even know as you get plastered with news about terrorists, immigrants and evil greedy and lazy union workers.
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I fucking hate what the government has forced them to do.
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Fuck the Libs, seriously
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To reuse an old comment from a previous related thread:
Their strategy is more sinister: freeze or reduce funding for services (ABC, Medicare, NBN, you name it) to such a degree that eventually the service offerings are so poor that the general public will naturally loathe them and, eventually, demand they be scrapped themselves. They can't get rid of these services outright, because doing so is poison - they'll just do everything they can to make them unpopular. It works - ask random people what they think of the NBN, or even notice how the ABC's journalism recieves a lot more criticism around these parts than in the past. They almost completed a huge phase of this process R.E Medicare with their proposed "$7" GP levy - but that didn't survive Abbott. Oh well, as long as the public doesn't notice the continued freeze on Medicare rebates, they'll still get it done.
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All I want for Christmas is the death of the neoliberal order🎄🎁🔪📈
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The only thing that may save the ABC is kids programming. Kids shows written by early learning specialists Vs those made by toy companies are quite different.
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Treason with extra steps
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LNP doing us slowly.
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This comment doesn't have coherent grammar and who knows what it means, yet it garners more upvotes than a carefully thought-out alternate point of view ever has a chance at on a platform like this.
This is what self-regulation looks like when you apply it to an ABC-obsessed online discussion community that self-certifies itself as intelligent without apparently practicing the definition of the word.
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I've edited the typo.
Those who lived through the Keating era know what I meant.
You mentioned grammar, how about using some punctuation and reviewing your first paragraph, it doesn't really make any sense.
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You're aware its a direct reference to a rather famous line from Keating in parliament right?
Bit rich of you to go off about people being stupid and completely miss that.
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[deleted]
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It's a quote.
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Hang on, I see you wrote as most downvoted comment "lol suck" and yet here you claiming a lack of intelligent discourse?
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Look at you trying to be clever and completely missing the cultural reference.
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Given the ABC has been targeted for destruction by the LNP since Abbott then the remark makes perfect sense.
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I bet Scomo had a laugh about this situation at Rupert's party.
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How many people work on Landline?
On the one hand it’s a vital service. On the other, perhaps the cuts should be directed at the audiences that voted for them.
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...there's 200 people about to lose their jobs and livelyhood. Most of which are probably behind the scenes, low level staff who aren't responsible for the election outcome. Have some compassion.
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The ABC are being forced into a corner and forced to make some tough decisions. Why shouldn’t some of those cuts effect the people who time and time again vote to tighten the screws on what the ABC can provide. I think most of the commenters here would rather there be no cuts and are angry to even be in this situation, but feel if regional voters love the idea of small government and less public funding so much that they also need to pay the cost.
Bare in mind they’re not the only people in favour of them, but they directly benefit from the service and at worst remain silent when shit like this happens, and at best actively support the party making the changes.
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But the effect on the audience who voted LNP is minimal compared to literally losing your job and income. It's not gonna be Leigh Sales who's getting fired, but some underpayed sound engineer or set designer.
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Yes. What’s your point? These cuts are happening regardless of how much compassion you demonstrate.
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What a disgusting pig headed attitude.
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Why? Should we not give people what they voted for?
I mean, sure...it might not be what they want but, after all, leopards will eat your face.
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You're a bitter and hate-filled individual with complete disdain for those who don't view things the same way you do. It's shameful.
In one breath you'll speak about how virtuous you are with your views, but in the next you'll seek to inflict punishment who dare to vote differently.
You should never complain about how divided the country is, when you're just as guilty at driving that wedge as anyone else.
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It is literally what these people voted for. It was part of the policy platform.
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The Liberal Party had a vote Re defund and sell the ABC, that includes landline. They get what they voted for. What about this is hard for you to comprehend?
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“I never knew voting for the party who said they cut the ABC meant they would cut the ABC! I voted against political correctness and for forcing my grandkids to respond to my Facebook posts!”
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I think the Libs have similar feelings about the public service as they do public broadcasting (and as Dutton does about democracy).
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That all three should be privatized?
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The electorate has been brainwashed into thinking surplus over everything that they're willing to destroy all our institutions.
Like you always hear the stereotypical Australian carry on about how politicians are liars, dodgy but they go straight ahead a vote for the party that's not gonna fund ICAC.
Theres a whole lot out there that complain about their low pay, how the shit they buy is dodgy, how they hate the banks and yet they vote for the party that hates unions, hates ASIC and cuts the legs out of ACCC.
I mean we all hate the Libs here but this is totally expected. They're never gonna fund ABC or anything really properly and yet people still fall for how they're better than the dozens of other parties we have.
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Wow I'm really loving all these jobs and growth!
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“No cuts to the ABC”. What utter bullshit from this terrible Liberal government.
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How good are cutbacks
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Fran Kelly, Annabelle Crabbe and Leigh Sales.
Boot them out and I bet you can save at least forty of those other jobs.
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Well that will teach them for saying bad things about they government when they do bad things.
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"Redundancies". George Carlin weyouwat we need you over here
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[removed]
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All they have to do is promote the Liberal party, in the same way the Sky News does. None of this unbiased crap.
Seriously though. It wouldn’t surprise me if they are trying to squeeze the ABC to make it look unviable a not worth spending any money on. So that it can be privatized.
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"Oh no, we can't afford to do political coverage anymore... luckily we've replaced it with the much cheaper CLIMATE CHANGE coverage!"
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This country is fucked. Why the fuck have we not been declared third world status yet? r/collapse is here
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According to Noam Chomsky: "That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."
A textbook example of this is happening to the NHS in the UK. God help 'em.
The Medicare rebate freeze is doing the same thing here. Freezing funding in the face of a rising population is tantamount to a funding cut, but a lot easier to sell to an uncritical media.
That’s BS we need to defend Medicare. How do we make them critical?
Clicks and ad revenue. That’s how immigration is front and centre.
Sadly, unlike franking credits and carbon emissions trading schemes, Medicare doesn’t impact the rich that run the media.
Also inflation will rapidly gobble this up.
why do you think there are so many here now?
This analysis is, ironically, beyond the abilities of any of the most prominent ABC journalists, who were last week calling Morrison's department cuts an 'efficiency dividend'.
I don't think we can expect good journalism until an equal platform exists without being financially forced to propergate bullshit like a tabloid for views.
Funny enough that was the original intent of the ABC.
We need to stop it from being killed by a thousand cuts.
It's well on the way mate. They shot me all the time, to the point I don;t care too much if it's cut (JJJ is indistinguishable from a commercial station).
Which is right where the LNP want me.
The policy of reducing a Federal Government agencies budget by a certain amount per year as an Efficiency Dividend was implemented by the Hawke Labor government in 1987.
This isn't a partisan issue, both Labor and Coalition governments have supported this policy for over thirty years. All government agencies have received funding cuts apart from the ABC and a tiny number of other agencies. Also keep in mind that these 'cuts' are actually a result of not increasing the ABC's budget in line with inflation (or other expected price rises), the amount of money they are being given is more or less the same.
We used to pay 8 cents a day. Does anyone have any idea what it is now?
Also, maybe when the public service can't do anything very well, it's time to review?
It actually started under Fraser, the term being coined by John Howard.
Not according to our Parliamentary records.
Footnote 9 reads as follows:
That's what the cut is called. 2 or 2.5% annual budget reduction for every department every year.
So, you're all okay with shit policy as long as it has a pretty name?
The APS can't even run a census any more. The fucking Romans could do that.
Nope, anyone that understands exponents or compound interest can easily agree that it's a shit policy (especially over 30+ years).
The issue I have is that both major parties (Labor and Coalition) follow this policy. The extremely "shit" part of this is that the "efficiency dividend" cuts to departments is higher under Labor governments but the Coalition is blamed for it (i.e an additional temporary two year efficiency dividend under the Rudd/Gillard government, a 4.5% cut per annum over two consecutive years instead of the usual 2.0%).
It's a shit policy, but it's also a bipartisan shit policy (with Labor historically making more cuts than the Coalition).
Both major parties need to cut this crap out and stop blaming it on the other. The Australian taxpayer also needs to be aware of who supports this policy (and the extent to which they do).
Or 4.0% to 4.5% under the Rudd/Gillard exceptional circumstances 'efficiency dividend' for two years.
I can fully buy that the LNP want to do away with the ABC. In fact I'm fully behind that conspiracy theory. But privatise it? Get real. The ABC doesn't have a revenue source. It makes no money. Not only that but it's "propped up" every year with a billion dollars worth of public funding. Who the fuck is going to buy something with no revenue stream and requires an investment of $1 billion dollars every year? No one. That's who.
Their API on streaming and reputation as content providers would be worth a shit load of money.
The technology behind ABC iView is neither technologically advanced nor commercially viable. There are better, more accessible content delivery services out there that are both more technologically advanced and far cheaper to run. I doubt that the technology behind ABC iView would be worth anything on the market.
As for reputation as a content provider, that reputation has never been monetised beyond some dinky ABC retail shops. And I think a large part of that reputation is that the content is commercial free which is the antithesis of turning it into a commercial entity and assigning monetary value to it.
Perhaps instead of content provider you meant content creator. It's been a long time since the ABC has been a content creator. It primarily commission's content from production studios external to the ABC. The value there is with those production studios and not the ABC.
I am not for a second trying to argue the ABC is worthless. I believe it is invaluable culturally to our society. But that doesn't translate into it being worth something economically. Its economic value is $0.
They are already privatising it.
Most of the content being produced by the ABC is contracted out to LNP mates. This includes content arrangements with News Corp for news content on ABC24.
This is simply false.
The majority of ABC News (it hasn't been called ABC 24 for years) is produced by the ABC in Sydney. Other content is sourced from the BBC, SABC, TVNZ, PBS, NHK and Al Jazeera English. Such arrangements are typical for 24 hours news services.
Across all channels ABC continues to produce news services in-house but it has been moving away from producing general content since the early 1980s. Since then they have been largely commissioning external production studios to produce content. To suggest that these production studios are LNP shills is preposterous.
of course, they want to privatise it. it doesn't matter that it makes any money it gets a narrative out to the people.
if the Murdoch press could have another mouthpiece to say " coal is great better economic managers" you think he wouldn't do it?
Who would put more money into free-to-air, biased news?
Yep.
If there is one thing better than owning 80% of the news, it is owning 100% of the news
(note 80% is just a figure I pulled out of thin air, but you get the idea)