Since 2014, when the ABC stopped broadcasting state-based weekly current affairs, there’s been no consistent platform on ABC TV for holding state governments to account – even during the pandemic, when they wielded almost unprecedented power over our lives.

As for local government, traditionally that was the job of local newspapers.  But too many of them have closed, and the few local journalists who survive are starved of time and resources.

For the ABC to restore its coverage of state affairs, and increase its scrutiny of local government, would need a lot more funding than it currently gets.

But as Virginia Haussegger, who was one the ABC’s most experienced and respected news and current affairs presenters, points out in our latest campaign video, that’s what’s needed, urgently.

Almost exactly two years ago, the Australian Federal Police executed a search warrant at the ABC’s headquarters in Ultimo, Sydney. That raid, and the search the day before of News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst’s home, produced an outcry. But what has happened since? Two inquiries, two reports, and precious little else, reports ABC Alumni’s press freedom spokesperson Jonathan Holmes. Australia still suffers from ‘excessive and unnecessary secrecy’.

The three-part investigation of the 1979 Luna Park Ghost Train fire by the ABC’s Exposed team reminded Jonathan Holmes of the time almost forty years ago when Four Corners took on NSW Premier Neville Wran. In this special article for ABC Alumni, Jonathan recalls the challenges to investigative journalism posed then, as now, by Australia’s defamation laws – and asks whether new amendments, which come into force in some states in July, will make any difference. Perhaps, he writes, they will. But don’t hold your breath.

The ABC is rightly proud of the profound trust from audiences evident through the bushfire and pandemic national emergencies, but its paymaster, the Morrison government, has not responded to ABC Board pleas for respite from defunding. In this comprehensive article, Quentin Dempster discusses the fallout from ongoing staff and program losses, and serious challenges still facing the public broadcaster.

In February 2020 the ABC suffered a crushing defeat in the Federal Court, in its challenge to the validity of an AFP search warrant on its Ultimo headquarters relating to a series of stories known as The Afghan Files. Jonathan Holmes has been following the case closely and offers these observations of the judgment.

In trying to defend the ABC as an institutional pillar of a fearless free media in Australia’s robust democracy, first, we have to confront paranoia.