Do we need the ABC? by Gunduz Kalic

Why do we need the Australian Broadcasting Corporation anyway?  Media issues writer Julianne Schultz (Perspectives, April 24) says that the “bottom line of the ABC’s role in national life is its independence”.

The notion here seems to be that because the “national broadcaster” is publicly funded, it automatically is a shining beacon of impartiality.  But is this really so?

In this post-Cold War era, what we should be looking at in democracies such as Australia is whether public institutions such as the ABC really, in day-to-day practice, serve the public.

A cynic might argue that the ABC does not have much to worry about anyway as Prime Minister John Howard and his colleagues probably will leave it essentially unchanged, apart from lopping its budget a bit.

Yet surely the reason the subject of the ABC so readily fires public debate at this time, in the aftermath of the Coalition’s sweeping victory, is that it was such a noticeable - and irritating - participant in the recent “Keating era” political culture which so ferociously attempted to remake Australia via direction from above.

How much of the election swing was a vote against the ABC?  In the days after the election ABC radio announcers were openly, on air, despondent about the result.  This is impartial coverage from the nation’s broadcaster?  The same public which so resoundingly threw the former PM out of office feels betrayed by “its” ABC.

The question that the ABC’s own practice raises is whether or not such a beast as genuine public broadcasting actually exists.  Through government, society provides itself such straightforward services as hospitals and schools, roads and self-defence forces.

But broadcasting is a powerful entry into the delicate realm of culture space (to misquote William Gibson).  And should we, society as a whole, really attempt to provide ourselves a significant part of our own culture?  Certainly, through the ABC we making such an effort.  But the pitfalls are starting to become apparent.

In America and elsewhere, established arts and cultural institutions are matter-of-factly described as “the official culture”.  It is understood that official culture reflects a narrow artistic and political status quo and even argued that there is a proper role in their so doing.

But in Australia in 1996, how dominant do we want our official culture to be?  The denizens of the ABC, who are somehow meant to walk the tightrope of being, at once, both servants of the public and fearless and independent broadcast journalists and artists, end up being accountable to no one - except their own bureaucratic structure, which is by all accounts nightmarish.  And left free to pursue righteous and trendy hobbyhorses which, in a bizarre twist, somehow exist in the social arena as the public’s voice.

When mass communications were new and the country still forming itself, government did a proper and valuable service by taking a lead role in the inauguration of broadcasting.  Yet now, decades later, the ABC seeks still to justify itself, in the words of its Chairman, Professor Mark Armstrong, as the "pioneering, challenging, trailblazing part of the Australian broadcasting system”.

A few minor - and debatable - programming or style innovations by the ABC constitute important social “trailblazing”?

The $500 million ABC budget is a large and important sum of money.  If the nation wishes to invest this sort of cash in “pioneering”, would it not nowadays be much better spent in solar energy or aquaculture or space research , to give only a few examples of the possibilities?

Indeed, if we juxtapose the ABC budget and arts and cultural spending generally with the public money spent on health, education and the environment, for example, the two kinds of expenditure simply do not sit comfortably side by side.

Can a TV programme or a concert or play ever be more important than shortening hospital waiting lists for important operations?  Or increasing the number of nurses per patient?  Or improving pupil-teacher ratios?  Or giving learning-disabled students more access to support teachers?  Or cleaning up the local waterways?

Who among us is god-like enough to know that any given bit of cultural spending is more essential to society than extra hospital beds?  The two kinds of expenditure do not belong in the same realm.

When money is spent on health and the like, it is possible to identify what we are actually getting.  But who can calculate the value of culture?  How can an ABC symphony or news programme be quantified and valued relative to, say, government-funded youth refuges?

Public money is not just printed paper.  And the place of art and culture on the list of things the taxpayer absolutely must fork out for has been unquestioned for too long.

The cultural lobby and its apologists bear responsibility for self-interestedly fudging - and narrowing - many aspects of the public broadcasting debate.  Perhaps the most insidious rationale in their armoury is this assumption that, self-evidently, the ABC provides cultural broadcasting excellence.

That most people do not watch or listen to very much of what the ABC has on offer is apparently of no significance.

Everyone who is anyone - except Jeff Kennett  - knows  that the ABC programmes “quality” above and beyond what the mere commercial stations are capable of.  But all this is most intimidating to the ordinary man or woman in the street.

How are people supposed to feel that “our ABC” is their own when the impression given by the cultural elite is that anyone not “recognising” Aunty’s obvious excellence is automatically disqualified from serious discussion of the broadcaster?

Could it be that much of the ABC’ self -advertised greatness in providing “quality drama, innovative services of  high standard” (Sandra McLean’s words, C-M April 27) is not so much an excellent performance but a performed illusion of excellence?  In other words snobbery for those with a taste for it, paid for by the public purse.

The ABC loves to play the victim - always a good technique for closing discussion.  Yet its enormous budget obliges the broadcaster and its supporters to stop playing defence and go beyond sales pitches in communicating with the public.  

This article appeared in the Brisbane Courier Mail, May 1, 1996.