For almost 90 years the ABC has been at the centre of Australian cultural life, providing a range of much-loved programming and services. It’s our country’s most trusted news source (across all platforms – radio, television and online) and where we turn in times of crisis like bushfires, floods and the current pandemic.
But the ABC is under threat. Budget cuts and massive staff redundancies over the last eight years are well known.
That’s why ABC Alumni was formed – we’re a group of former ABC staff and others who support a well-funded and thriving public broadcaster. And we want to see the ABC flourish.
But there are those like the Institute of Public Affairs – the IPA – who want to privatise the ABC, or abolish it completely.
Recently the IPA published the first of five episodes in a new podcast series, “Their ABC”. Its preposterous proposition is that the ABC – in the words of the podcast’s anchor, the IPA’s Director of Communications, Evan Mulholland – is “a bloated, out-of-touch, biased broadcaster”.
ABC Alumni has today published a short video on social media taking on the IPA’s “research”.
The video – Your ABC vs Their IPA – is presented by ABC Alumni chair Jonathan Holmes, former presenter of the ABC’s Media Watch.
Some of the IPA’s evidence is “ludicrous”, says Jonathan, and some is “even older and shonkier”.
And he challenges the IPA’s claim that the podcast’s participants – people like former PM Tony Abbott, Liberal National Party MP George Christenson, One Nation’s Mark Latham, The Australian’s Chris Kenny and Sky News’s Rowan Dean – represent “mainstream Australians”.
“The mainstream”, says Jonathan, “thinks that the ABC is the most trustworthy source of news in Australia.” The IPA wants to abolish it.
The video Your ABC vs Their IPA is funded by ABC Alumni and the ABC Friends. The ABC itself is not involved in any way, and has neither funded nor approved the video.
The IPA will not reveal its own funding. Many years ago, it decided that the risk to its corporate donors of harassment by the public justified keeping their identities confidential.
With the ABC facing ongoing hostility from organisations like the IPA, the Murdoch media and the federal government (Liberal Party policy remains to privatise the ABC), we urge you make your support for the national broadcaster known.
Your ABC vs Their IPA is available on most social media feeds and on YouTube here. Please spread the word!
1 November 2021
Your ABC vs Their IPA was written by Peter McEvoy and Jonathan Holmes; camera and sound – David Marshall; Matilda Films – Piers Grove and editor Joe Kiely; production team – Helen Grasswill, Quentin Dempster, Shaun Hoyt, Peter Marks, Suzanne Smith, Janet Clayton and Kay Powell.