The $254 million in cuts to the ABC budget, outlined today by ABC Chief Executive Mark Scott after Malcolm Turnbull's statement on Wednesday, have been coming for a long time – at least since the Lewis review which proposed efficiencies to reduce the ABC's annual budget requirement.
Since then, there have been numerous rumours of the steps the ABC will take to implement the cuts, including axing or trimming Stateline and Lateline, and closing its international bureaux in New Delhi and Tokyo (with the result that no Australian media outlet would have a correspondent in Tokyo).
The Minister's statements last week yet again emphasised his view that the cuts would not require programming changes, and could be implemented by driving back room and administrative efficiencies. Mark Scott's announcement today to the ABC staff is in stark conflict with the Minister's view. As rumoured, Stateline is gone, Lateline moves to ABC24, and several regional bureaux are cut.
As for the international bureaux, they will undergo a euphemistic 'shape readjustment'. The Auckland bureau will be entirely closed and others thinned down, with 'multi-platform hubs' installed in their place. London, Washington, Beijing and Jakarta reportedly remain, with no mention yet of the fate of the Tokyo bureau.
This is 'highly contentious', as Crikey points out today, 'as some believe it exposes journalists to greater risks in hostile environments, but is increasingly becoming the global standard as media companies cut costs'. [fold]
According to some in the ABC, budget surgery on the scale required by the Government could not possibly have been achieved only in administrative efficiencies, so programming changes were inevitable. While the Lewis review set out five broad areas in which, in its view, those administrative efficiencies could be achieved, it did not quantify or itemise those efficiencies. Given the heavy blows inflicted on the broadcaster today by its management and board, it's hard to believe that the cuts could have been made solely by reference to the Lewis recommendations.
One available conclusion, then, is that the Minister has relied on something of a fiction to lay the responsibility and the blame squarely on the shoulders of ABC management, rather than accepting some responsibility on behalf of the Government which is mandating the cuts.
Regardless of where responsibility lies though, the reality of $50 million plus cuts per annum for the ABC — coming on top of the axing of the Australia Network and the massive restructuring of ABC International which resulted in swingeing cuts to Radio Australia and a decimation of its programming to the region – is a severe curtailing of the ABC's ability to cover international news.
Thinner representation of journalists across international bureaux, with leaner resources, will mean more sparse news coverage, more perfunctory reporting and less analysis. This is to Australia's detriment in a century where everything is global, and where we need to be vigilant that our geographic remoteness doesn't render us geopolitically isolated.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sarah_Ackerman.
