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Did Justin Milne give weight to argument to sell off ABC?

"You can't go around irritating the person who's going to give you the funding," concedes outgoing ABC Chairman.

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Amongst some of the messy, back-pedalling statements by outgoing ABC Chairman Justin Milne this week was this quote he gave to 7:30‘s Leigh Sales:

“The relationship between the government and the ABC is a difficult one, because on the one hand the government provides the funding, the ABC is supposed to be independent of the guy who’s providing the funding.

“You can’t go around irritating the person who’s going to give you the funding again and again and again if it’s over matters of accuracy and impartiality.”

In June rank-and-file Liberal Party members called on the government to privatise the public broadcaster, but then-Treasurer Scott Morrison indicated there were no plans to consider that.

Morrison, however, has not ruled out merging ABC with SBS and is awaiting the results of a review.

“I mean those sorts of ideas have been floated before … I’ll wait to see what the review says, I think that’s the fair and sensible thing to do,” he said on radio.

However the terms of that review make it clear it will not consider a “merger of ABC and SBS”, or privatisation.

SBS managing director Michael Ebeid finishes at SBS on Monday, leaving both public broadcasters with acting bosses.

PM Morrison speaks to Insiders tomorrow on ABC.

4 Responses

  2. Hands off!!…..as an avid viewer of both…they are completely different….It would be like trying to mix oil and water…one would suffer …and I suspect that would be SBS…they would totally lose their identity…..And we need our public broadcaster…we do not need yet another privatized one…

  3. Merging the SBS could open up much debate from the non English speaking groups who naturally want to preserve the SBS’s multi-cultural origins, a similar movement to save the SBS started a few decades ago before the present era of SBS on Demand, an inspired idea which has demonstrated in a small scale the potential of VOD streaming, something which its big brother the ABC have been slow to adopt and improve upon. A merger could turn back time for the SBS which is probably the point of the exercise by the government anyway, as privatising or commercialising either channel is a politically charged subject especially for the left of politics.

  4. Merge the ABC and SBS then sell off the the assets of the former SBS to a new commerical TV/Radio operator. Australians are moving away from traditional media so it would be the best time to sell. As proven by ABC and SBS they are both capable operating multiple channels so the merger would mean little to the public apart from reduced management and a cut to staffing. We cannot just continue to run two broadcasters just to keep workers, unions and those who hate mergers happy.

    Glad to see Ebeid gone as I feel he done more at the SBS to serve his own needs and background rather than Australian immigrant’s.

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