Report: Tony Abbott poised to break election promise with ABC cuts
A pre-election promise of "No cuts to the ABC or SBS" is at risk of being jettisoned.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Despite his pre-election promise of no cuts to the ABC, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is set to wield the axe to the broadcaster’s current funding, according to Fairfax today.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports the expenditure review committee is considering a number of proposals for trimming the ABC’s budget, all of which involve cuts.
Prior to the 2013 election Tony Abbott promised voters, “No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.”
The ABC was allocated $1.03 billion in the 2013 federal budget. A 2.25 per cent efficiency dividend would see the broadcaster forced to strip around $22.5 million from its budget in the first year – a figure equivalent to almost half the ABC’s annual budget for TV drama.
Further cuts would then be applied in each subsequent year.
ABC managing director Mark Scott told a Senate estimates hearing earlier this year that he could not guarantee any services would be spared if the broadcaster’s funding is cut.
Behind the scenes ABC executives have been planning how they would deal with major funding cuts and the potential merging of departments with SBS.
A spokesman for Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said: “We don’t speculate on the budget”.
55 Responses
“a figure equivalent to almost half the ABC’s annual budget for TV drama.”
Nice of them to pluck an emotive area out of the entire $1 billion to compare it to.
The country is spending billions more than it gets. If the ABC can’t find $22m in cuts out of that entire budget which will have no impact on the lives of Australians I would be stunned.
@ bicks357- -ABC shouldn’t be competing with the commercial networks on salaries. There is so little high quality current afrairs on the commercial networks that most journos will happily work for less to work on quality shows on ABC. These people are public servants so salaries should reflect that.
The first saving should be trimming the salary of Tony Jones and Paul Barry. Overpaid and full of self importance.
I don’t think either would be poached by commercial tv.
I can’t help thinking it is just retribution for the ABC’s criticism of the Abbott Government. I love my ABC, and I will be furious if these cuts happen.
I agree with Maev this is terrible. I hope they are held to account if they do this. As for ads on the ABC they already have ads for products on there. Thanks to the Howard government. We don’t need anymore thank you very much.
Oh, and I forgot, will the circus that is Canberra cut the lollies wages and give no wage rises too them this year? I don’t think so.
One can only hope that Abbott and his Clown circus will be dumped at the next election
The ABC comes across as a bloated organisation top-heavy with bureaucracy and make work schemes for idle hands. There are many areas that could be cut. The indigenous inclusion officers should go as well as the extensive kids’ programs and the marketing infastructure. Also, are you aware that the ABC has a head of comedy and a unit which spends its time thinking up new concepts for comedy programming? The Australia Network should be closed down and Sky News should take over (as three independent inquiries recommended to the Gillard government). ABC News24 should go as well as ABC3 and the kids programs on ABC2 which should go back to being a catch-up channel.
Why should anyone be surprised?
Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for them !! It was obvious that there’d be cuts everywhere, regardless of their promises.
@Andrew_83..Abbott promised the ABC wouldn’t be cut..He would have broken that promise if he does cut the aBC funding.
There will be so few quality dramas produced if there are further cuts.
Independent reviews show there is no bias at the aBC in regards to reporting.The ABC went just as hard on the Gillard /Rudd governments.But Abbott and Co can’t stand a word of criticism against them if they are doing things not right or accountable.
You know, the Labor party is a little like going on holidays, your there to have a good time and spend all your money with out thinking about consequences. The Liberal party is coming home from that holiday and realising that you have to save hard so you can have a healthy bank balance…………… guess where we are now.
Good! Go for those ridiculous pay packets of some of those ABC Hosts! Just pack it with commercials to make money .
@William actually this problem wasn’t caused by Labor. John Howard cutting taxes when everything was riding high, in order to win elections is what caused the problem.
At the time it was ok because of the mining boom and global financial situation. The problem is, the mining boom went away, the GFC happened and those cuts were no longer sustainable.
Now governments are too scared to raise taxes directly. So they are cutting services and going to be raising taxes more indirectly. Increasing GST ect. Which shifts the burden unproportionately more to poorer people
This…GST…Age pensions…all is the firing line…they said whatever to get elected…*sigh*…
Cuts will mean no Miss Fisher…I suspect…and also a rethink on Janet King and maybe even Dr. Blake….just awful.
@Mark W a promise.. A promise? It’s the only network keeping this government accountable and they hate it.
If Abbott does that he will pay dearly for this.He would have broken a promise.I hope Labor mentions that every time they talk about Abbott. Abbott did that successfullywhen talking about Gillard’s breaking of the promise that there would be no carbon tax
Let the nonsense from Ulitmo begin. If the ABC spends $150m on News and Current Affairs and $44m on drama what is the remaining $836m being spent on? And why would be cuts to drama but nowhere else?
2.25% reduction in the drama budget would just under $1m which is 1 or 2 episodes of something (or more likely a bit less location shooting). The ABC has already defacto dumped Miss Fisher which was 13 episodes a year. And cut 4 episodes from The Checkout this season.
The most likely areas to be cut are the expenses highlighted in the efficiency reports. One is looking at ABC operations overall (60% of which are based in Ultimo).
The other is looking at the transmission contracts. ABC and SBS both contract these to Broadcast Australia and the contract hasn’t been reviewed for over 10 years. Given the fact that technology has gotten a lot cheaper and more reliable it could…
This is just ridiculous. I am sorry but this government is going to run us into the ground if they are not careful. The ABC and SBS are the heart of our television networks and the government should leave them alone. It will be sad if they decide that shows like Miss Fisher and Janet King won’t be coming back because of budgeting costs. Its just wrong. Drama is where the ABC excels and because Tony thinks the news department has it out for him he decides to cut. I hope it doesn’t happen. We need these 2 networks here to give us quality news and drama.
@stevew
Yep, we should reduce the salaries of all their onscreen talent so they can leave for the commercial networks. The quality of the ABC will plummet. Sounds like a plan.
ALP puts us in debt and he has to get Australia back in surplus, as ABC and SBS are the easy targets here. To me I don’t care what he does with those channels as they are government funded after all.
Unlike ABC1, the ABC24, ABC2 and ABC3 channels, should be allowed to run TV ads, but unlike how SBS run theirs, only on the condition that ads are shown at the beginning and end of programs.
Twitter is so full of this today that there will be much egg on faces if he doesn’t break the promise.
Fair enough too. They could reduce the huge salaries they pay to their ” stars ” and make that saving no problem at all. Abc should not think they should be exempt from cuts.
This is terrible. I love watching ABC drama. Clearly Abbot doesn’t watch the ABC otherwise he would realise how important drama is to this network.
Leave the programming and services as they are and get rid of all the excess and overpaid executives who will not be missed. Simple