You get your friends where and when you can

Russell Grenning

Will the outrages inflicted on the caring and sharing sector by the crypto-Nazi Abbott Government ever stop?

Sensitive, aware and caring people are still in shock at the savaging the ABC got in the 2014 Budget – a massive 1% (yes a whole one per cent!) cutback has been inflicted on our treasured national broadcaster and Managing Director Mark Scott has issued a grave warning that this will mean redundancies and service cuts.

Also axed in the budget was the ABC’s $233 million 10-year contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to run the Australia Network which broadcasts to Asia and the Pacific and that, according to Mr Scott, “sends a strange message to the region that the government does not want to use the most powerful tools available to it to talk to our regional neighbours about Australia.”

One of the sensitive, aware and caring people who immediately recognised the real reason for this unpardonable behaviour is the Russian Ambassador to Australia, Vladimir Morozov.

Through an interpreter, Mr Morozov told it like it is – the Abbott regime had sacrificed freedom of speech to protect its own interests.

In a thoughtful and measured statement, this esteemed diplomat said, “We are well aware of the constant criticism over freedom of press in Russia though I doubt the situation is really as serious as presented. There is no problem for the domestic audience as well as for people abroad to access the materials of opposition media. On the other hand, I’d like to draw to your attention that in some western countries the freedom of speech is easily sacrificed under the pretext of the protection of national interests.”

Really hitting his stride, the Ambassador continued, “There are fresh examples here in Australia. The fact that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation portrayed the government policy on asylum seekers unfavourably made the government consider the fund cutting of the ABC Asia broadcasting and dropping the ABC 10-year contract to broadcast Australian news to the region.”

Oddly enough, the ABC itself somehow overlooked this statement of support. Perhaps Ambassador Morozov’s clear implication that the ABC in Australia was the “opposition media” was a tad too close to the bone for the sensitive, aware and caring people who run the ABC. After all, they absolutely insist that they run a balanced, decent and principled outfit.

Such is the devastation caused to the ABC by this extraordinary budget cut that Mr Scott has grimly warned that it will take the ABC board some time to decide what staff and services will be sadly dumped.

I don’t want to appear picky but I’m pretty certain that one of the savings that the ABC board will not contemplate is a pay cut or even freeze for their MD’s salary. Mr Scott now struggles by on well over $800,000 a year which is $300,000 more than the PM gets from the public purse.

But this is entirely justified because Mr Scott cares deeply about things like climate change, refugees, education, health and public accountability while Abbott is a lying, vicious, cold-hearted fascist. There is no debate about that self-evident truth among sensitive, aware and caring people. Mr Scott might be channelling Mother Teresa and Dr Albert Schweitzer but there is no need to have to live like them, is there?

Perhaps I go a little too far when I say that Mr Scott cares deeply about public accountability – at least on the home front. He went ballistic late last year when “The Australian” published a leaked internal ABC document showing what their executives and on-air folks got. It was just terrible and a gross invasion of privacy and well, just terrible. Awful actually.

It takes an inspired big picture man to create innovative, cutting edge, trail-blazing programs in which ABC sensitive, aware and caring lefties talk to other sensitive, aware and caring ABC lefties about how awful the government is.

Now here’s a tip for Mr Scott to go even more cutting edge with current affairs – invite the PM to appear live on the 7.30 Report at 7.25pm and, when he doesn’t front, start the show with a picture of an empty chair and a shocked, grave announcement by the presenter that “This is where the Prime Minister would have been sitting if he had had the courage and the decency to accept our invitation to answer some serious questions about the wreckage his disgusting regime is causing. Instead, we cross to our Canberra correspondent to reveal even further abominable, outrageous and unforgivable sins against civilisation by his regime. ”

Apart from these sensitive, aware and caring current affairs shows, quite a good deal of ABC programming is full of elderly BBC shows which I really enjoy because it makes me feel 15 again. I inadvertently started watching one recently on the ABC and was mightily impressed by the high production values – the settings, the music, the fashions (lasses in pill-box hats, chaps wearing paisley ties just to mention two) indeed everything really. I wondered where the creators of this screen classic had got hold of a gleaming, seemingly new Bristol 411 and I’m sure I glimpsed somebody who looked like a young Martin Shaw.

Well, it was a young Martin Shaw as I discovered later. The show was made in 1969 and the car was brand new. But still I am grateful – I missed it in 1969 because I was probably out and I was so thankful that I was given the opportunity to watch it now.

Scott once famously observed that the ABC should be viewed as a “market failure” organisation providing what the commercial media doesn’t. Perhaps, albeit inadvertently, he got close to the stark reality of what the ABC has become when he used the word “failure”.

The ABC website predictably has a very modest entry about their innovative, trail-blazing and inspirational MD. It reflects his sincere and self-effacing personality as well as his amazing leadership

Noting that he has been running the show since July 2006 and that he is now in his second five-year term which will expire in mid 2015, the ABC proclaimed, “In this time, the structure and operation of the ABC has been transformed and the ABC’s services and reach have dramatically expanded.”

“Dramatically expanded?” Well, recent nation-wide ratings showed that the ABC, with four TV networks – ABC 1, ABC 2, ABC 3 and News 24 – managed to get 15.6% of the viewing public. News 24, their flagship news network scored a whopping 1.1% of the viewing audience which could almost be dismissed as being within the margin of error.

It’s most popular program, the UK-made “Death in Paradise” rates only 26. I suppose that critics of the ABC and its perceived bias should at least be glad that it only preaches to the converted and is ignored by the rest.

Of course, if the ABC really wanted to do a probing, investigative expose of dodgy government deals then they could examine why the Gillard Government awarded the $233 million, 10-year Australia Network contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the ABC when the expert committee appointed by Ms Gillard’s best chum, then Foreign Minister K Rudd Esq, recommended it go to Sky News. Somehow I doubt that they even considered it, program-wise.

Just one example of how the ABC under Mr Scott’s famed leadership handles complaints in a sensitive, caring and aware way was the complaint by the former ABC Chairperson Maurice Newman a couple of years or so ago. Mr Newman had a whinge about ABC science journalist Robyn Williams saying that climate change sceptics could be compared to paedophiles. Naturally the fiercely independent ABC complaints department decided that Williams was right – as any sensitive, caring and aware person would.

In a recent speech, Mr Scott had a few things to say about the commercial media in Australia which, as we all know, is run by and populated by people who are not sensitive, caring and aware. He predicted that Australian media would likely follow the USA and the UK and become “increasingly politically partisan”.

Indeed, he pointed out that the News Corporation’s Fox News in the USA had shown that “market segmentation” was “a way to make very significant money”. Perhaps there was just a scrap of envy in that comment – the ABC’s “market segmentation” policy targets sensitive, caring and aware people and the ratings sadly show that far from making money if it was a commercial operation, it would lose buckets.

There was almost an implied sense of smugness and self-satisfaction when he surveyed what the public watched and said proudly that in 2013, “not one of those Top 50 rating shows was on the ABC”

Nothing should be read into the fact that Mr Scott delivered this speech on April 1 last as I am sure he was being deadly serious.

A common theme running through the speech was how truly wonderful the ABC is and was – “by far the most trusted media organisation in the country”, and “…the ABC remains the most trusted and respected source of news and information in the country” are but two examples. Who was he trying to persuade this was true? His audience? Himself?

Mr Scott, before his ABC appointment, spent 12 years with Fairfax Media including a stint as Editorial Director where he made a huge contribution to the ever-sinking fortunes of “The Sydney Morning Herald”. We have two more years of his leadership, his care and his concern.

Perhaps he should invite Ambassador Morozov (and his interpreter) to be a guest panellist the next time there is some ABC discussion about how sensitive, caring and aware people are desperately worried – and rightly so – about commercial news organisations pandering to the puerile tastes of ordinary little people.

This mouthpiece for the enlightened, progressive and freedom-loving President Putin could outline how the Russian Government’s approach to the media is a beacon for the free world compared to the ruthless oppression of the Abbott Government.

And it would be yet another opportunity to remind everybody that Abbott trained to be a priest although there is no need to point out that Putin started his career as a KGB thug in the Soviet Union. After all, as sensitive, caring and aware people know, Putin has changed.