"The ABC is an investment in Australia's future because a revitalised ABC will be a source of great national strength" Kim Williams, Chair ABC, 20 June 2024.
Australians trust and value the ABC. The need for a strong and effective source of Australian news and Australian stories has never been greater.
When Australians needed it most, the ABC suffered a decade of damage: its funding was heavily cut, its ability to operate at a time of rising costs destroyed and its independence and integrity threatened and undermined.
Steps taken by the current Federal Government to reverse this damage are positive signs.
But they have not come close to restoring the ABC’s funding to the level it was at when Labor lost office in 2013. For the National Broadcaster to be able to fulfil the requirements of its Charter and the ABC Act, much more needs to be done.
This document provides some facts and figures concerning the funding the ABC has received in the past, what it receives now, and why there is an urgent need to invest more at a time when truth is more contested than it has ever been.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. How big is the problem?
Despite ever-increasing output, on an ever-increasing variety of platforms, analogue and digital, ABC funding has declined steadily, in real terms, for 40 years. To give the ABC’s operational budget the purchasing power it had in 1984 would require an additional $210 million per year.
2. Funding reductions 2013 to 2022
The steepest decline in funding occurred under coalition governments between 2013 and 2022. Cumulatively, over that decade, the ABC lost $1,200 million in funding. We provide the detail.
3. The impact of the funding cuts
In a word, the impact was severe. For example, our original research shows that the hours of first-run, original Australian content aired on the ABC’s main TV channel (other than news and current affairs) has declined by a staggering 41%
4. The Albanese government’s increases – thanks but we need more
The current government plans to restore $360 million to the ABC’s budget over seven years (2022/3 to 2028/9). We provide the detail. However, it would still require an additional $100m per year just to retore the ABC’s operational budget to its level in 2013. To achieve anything like the goals announced by the new Chair, Kim WIlliams, would require an additional $140 million per year.
5. Can Australia afford it?
Yes. As a proportion of the federal government’s total spending, the ABC costs five times less than it did in the 1970s.
6.Why does the ABC matter?
The ABC becomes more important every year. More and more, ‘legacy’ commercial media rely on opinion more than ‘straight’ news to attract readers, and social media platforms on algorithms that often funnel misinformation to their users. The ABC is trusted, and truthful.
And in an age when international streamers serve up a diet of high-quality American and British drama, the ABC tells Australian stories to Australians – both adults and children.
1. HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
Despite occasional increases under Labor governments, the ABC ‘s operating budget has been reduced steadily, in real terms, for 40 years. In 1984-5, the ABC budget was $306 million. Expressed in 1984 Australian dollars, in 2024-25 it was $253 million.
Put another way: for the ABCs operating budget to have the same purchasing power as it did in 1984/85, it would need to be $1.2 billion (2024/25 dollars). In fact, it will be $990 million, a shortfall of $210 million.[1] Yet the ABC’s output, broadcast and online, is incomparably greater than it was 40 years ago.
It is evident from Fig 1 that the steepest decline in funding occurred during the nine years of coalition government between 2013 and 2022.
2. FUNDING REDUCTIONS 2013 TO 2022
Cumulatively, the total amount stripped from the ABC’s base operating budget since 2013 has been calculated at more than $800 million, even allowing for increased funding since 2022.
This chart gives a detailed breakdown of the cost of the Coalition’s cuts
If you include the cancellation in 2014 of the 10-year contract to provide the Australia Network (which broadcast Australian news and other content into the Asia-Pacific – green columns) and the removal of funding relied on for digital delivery and other projects (“tied funding”, blue columns), the cumulative total is more than $1.2 billion.
All of this happened at a time when the ABC had to ensure its relevance to all Australian audiences by developing new content on streaming, mobile and online platforms and podcasts, while servicing a growing number of radio and television services.
3. WHAT HAS THE IMPACT BEEN?
Review after review has established that the ABC is constantly searching for, identifying and implementing efficiency savings so that it can do more with less. But inevitably, funding cuts of the magnitude imposed since 2014 cannot be absorbed through efficiencies. The impact on ABC programming and coverage has been there for all to see.
Since 2014, we have seen:
- The end of state-based television current affairs on ABC TV
- The end of Lateline on ABC TV
- A 41% decline in ‘non-news and current affairs’ first release Australian content on the main ABC TV channel since 2014 (including original Australian drama, documentary, and children’s programs – see chart below)
- A 27% decline in ‘non-news-caff’ content on multi-channels and iview since 2015
- Cuts to specialist radio programming and live music recording
- Cuts to sports coverage
- Closure of some international bureaux
- The end to shortwave broadcasting to the Pacific and to remote parts of Australia.
4. THE ALBANESE GOVERNMENT’S INCREASES: THANKS BUT NOT ENOUGH
Taking the March 2022 Coalition budget as a baseline, the Albanese Labor Government has allocated an extra $360 million to the ABC’s operational funding, spread over seven years (2022/23 – 2028/29).
- $126 million over three years from 2026/27 to “provide ongoing funding stability to the ABC”
- Returning the cost to the ABC’s budget of the Coalition’s indexation freeze: $84 million over four years.
- $40 million for international broadcasting over six years
- Extending fixed term funds for enhanced news gathering and folding into the future operational allocations (estimated extra $104 million to 2028/29)[2]
- $6 million for Audio Description
- A commitment to 5-year funding terms.
These increases, though welcome, fall far short of fully compensating the ABC for the cuts to its budget imposed by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments.
This bar chart shows what we mean:
The light blue bar is where the ABC’s operational budget (that is, its budget excluding transmission costs) was projected to be in 2024/25 by the last Coalition budget (March 2022), after 8 years of cuts.
The red bar is where it stands now, after three Albanese government budgets.
The dark blue bar is where the budget would be if NO cuts and NO additions other than inflation indexing had been applied to the budget since 2013.
And the purple bar is where it would be if the Australia Network contract had not been dumped after a single year.
The difference between the red and dark blue bars? $97m per year.
5. RESTORING THE CUTS IS NOT ENOUGH
But merely restoring the cuts is not enough. Kim Williams, appointed as Chair by Anthony Albanese in March 2024, has made his Board’s priorities clear in a series of speeches. ABC Alumni agrees with them. The ABC, Williams says, must provide:
- Genuinely impartial news coverage, especially of state and regional news..
- An increase in original Australian drama, comedy and documentary content
- More science and arts programming
- More children’s and education content
- Expanded and modernised emergency broadcasting
To achieve these ambitions, the ABC needs the federal government to take 2 steps:
Step 1: Further increase the operational funding of the ABC by close to $140 million a year on top of the extra funding it has already delivered or promised. To be clear, this would be a minimum. It would provide no real growth in the ABC budget over the past forty years. But it would undo the damage of the last 12 years, and provide a much-needed opportunity for the ABC to expand its services in areas crucial to the nation.
Step 2 would be to ensure that this basic budget is protected against the impact of inflation and rising costs into the future. This involves adjusting the current weighted cost index applied to the ABC budget to reflect the steeply rising cost of program production. Without this crucial second step, the ABC’s funding would continue to deteriorate in real terms every year.
The current government has changed the fixed funding terms for the ABC and SBS from 3 to 5 years, “to provide greater certainty”. Both ABC Alumni, and the ABC itself, called for this change. However, without a realistic indexation process – especially at a time when high inflation has returned to the Australian and global economies, and particularly to the global costs of screen production -– the only ‘certainty’ provided by a longer funding term is the certainty of diminished purchasing power over the 5-year cycle.
6. CAN AUSTRALIA AFFORD IT?
The ABC’s critics make much of the fact that the ABC costs the taxpayer over a billion dollars per year. It sounds a lot. But it is a fraction of the percentage of total government outlays that the ABC cost in former decades – and the ABC produces far more content, on many more platforms, than it did then.
The chart below shows the dramatic decline in the percentage of government spending represented by the ABC’s operational budget.
In 1974/5 it cost the taxpayer 0.6% of total government outlay.
In 1994/5, that figure was 0.42%
In 2024/5, it will be a mere 0.13%.
So as a percentage of government spending, the ABC costs five times less than it did in the 1970s.
WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT?
Some argue that a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is unnecessary in an age of digital plenty. We argue the reverse.
The business models of commercial media have taken a battering: they are finding that opinion, rather that factual news, offers the best path to profit. The ABC’s reporters are not permitted to voice opinion and are legally bound to deliver accurate and impartial news.
Cyberspace is awash with conspiracy theories, sloppy misinformation, and deliberate disinformation. Major platforms like X, Facebook and Instagram have declared that in their view fact-checking limits their users’ freedom of speech.
Australians know they can trust what they hear or read or watch on the ABC’s platforms. A vigorous, independent and well-funded ABC is the best guarantor that a healthy Australian democracy will govern a well-informed Australian people.
Cyberspace has no frontiers. Australia’s national identity is in danger of disappearing beneath a flood of high-quality drama streamed by American giants.
On ABC radio, TV and iview, and text online, Australians need to be able to find compelling Australian stories, vivid Australian comedy, revealing Australian documentary, and content for Australian children freely available.
Surely that’s worth a billion dollars a year? According to the Australia Institute, that’s about one tenth of the cost to the federal budget of the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme, which subsidises the use of fossil fuels by Australian industry and primary producers.[3]
ABC Alumni is an association of former ABC staff and program creators who believe in the importance of a well-funded, independent national broadcaster. This document is based on original research by Dr Michael Ward of the University of Sydney. The information it contains is sourced from publicly available documents (Government budget papers, ABC Annual Reports, responses to Senate Estimates inquiries etc). ABC Alumni has received no assistance, and no confidential information, from the ABC or any of its serving staff.
Footnotes
[1] Dr Ward’s calculations using RBA Inflation calculator and adjustment for 2024/25 inflation https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/financialYearDecimal.html
[2] The remaining increase in funding ($75m) is the impact of increased indexation funding due to higher inflation.
[3] https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/P1543-Fossil-fuel-subsidies-2024-FINAL-WEB.pdf - pp 18 to 20