There are rumours that the ABC is about to hold another review into its complaints system. The last one, in 2009, recommended the abolition of the Independent Complaints Review Panel, the ICRP, because it was an expensive and time-consuming duplication of the role of the regulator, the ACMA.

One of that review’s authors was then ABC Chairman Maurice Newman – now a columnist at The Australian and one of the ABC’s most trenchant critics.

Eleven years later, here we go again.  News Corp Australia is in the forefront of calls for a more “independent” ABC complaints system.

Meanwhile, what used to be “recognised standards” for all journalism, public or commercial, are nowhere to be found at News Corp’s own Sky News.

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.