A new kind of interference in the future of the national broadcaster

p>Our broadcasting system is unique – and I use that word in its strictest sense. In no other country have the national and commercial broadcasters grown up together. Overall our system has delivered us the best broadcasting in the world.

Australia's broadcasting system, however, is under threat. The ABC is most vulnerable. Ironically, this is happening at a time when it is at its strongest in the public appeal of its programs and its community support.

The ABC has its failures and failings, but it is loved and appreciated almost everywhere it seems, but in Canberra's corridors of power. It is not enough to put this aberration down to the usual adversarial relationship between government, indeed politicians, and the media.

It seems to me that intense government dissatisfaction with the ABC has a base in an unease with courses of Australian intellectual life more widely flowing than politics. Hence the reaction that ABC attention to ecological issues, race and gender, and social justice amount to "the ABC running its own agenda".

The litany of complaint makes it highly unlikely that the Government will be of a mind to deal constructively with the ABC's future.

So far, public concern has focussed mainly on the adequacy of funding and whether the ABC will be able to remain committed to quality Australian programming, especially independent, searching, and relevant news and current affairs.

As important as this debate is, it essentially has been about preserving the ABC as we know it: the much-loved public institution with an established place in our hearts and minds over decades.

Rightly, the debate has gone to issues of government interference and corporate governance by the Board as the custodians of the ABC’s independence and charter. Those championing the ABC have been spurred by the fact that its independent voice is crucial in a situation in which that ABC voice is now the only media alternative in most of Australia.

I want to suggest that the threat to the ABC has moved to a new order beyond those sadly familiar issues. Now the ABC's very place in Australian broadcasting is threatened.

The ABC is being starved of funds at the same time as it is expected to move into the new, exciting era of digital broadcasting which will be the gateway to the information economy. This combination is a fatal cocktail.

And what is happening to the ABC should not be seen in isolation. It has to be looked at in relation to the new broadcasting environment and the emerging information economies.

Taken together, these links provide a measure of the true extent of the damage being wrought by the failure to conceive an overall policy framework and a Board ill-equipped to recognise the challenges and responsibilities it holds for ALL Australians.

It may come as a surprise from one who as Managing Director of the ABC had to contend with the most swingeing funding cuts from government in the ABC's history, but I am convinced that the lack of vision in Canberra about the purpose and relevance of public broadcasting is the crucial problem.

We are indeed in the midst of an information revolution in which we are contending with a so-called convergence of forces. We need more than ever to value the quality, the richness, and the diversity of the information and entertainment which are the commodities of this new revolution. And public broadcasters will be essential if this is to be achieved.

Technology is merely a means of distribution. For there to be substance to this revolution there must be content – content relevant to Australians which adds value to our lives and expands our horizons.

The content must help to bind us as a nation as well as satisfy our individual tastes. I believe that there must be looms to support this extraordinary fabric of content.

As long ago as 1994, the Broadband Services Expert Group, appointed by the Keating Government and which I chaired, declared that the national focus should be on content.

The report was a pioneer document in and beyond Australia in stressing the importance of content rather than technologies, concentrating on what was to be delivered rather than the means of delivery. Later its recommendations were implemented with funds provided by the Keating Government's Creative Nation strategy. But these funds have petered out.

We are now in very real danger of repeating the mistakes of the past.

I could traverse a long sad journey of the struggles we have had in my time alone to establish Australian creative content – in films, in television, in books – indeed across the whole spectrum of creative activity in this country. We recognised in 1994 that the key to avoiding repetition of these struggles and further decades of mistakes was to build what we called a creative infrastructure. Above all, the creative effort was to be mobilised by coordinated and linked funding and patronage.

Obviously the public broadcasters, the ABC and the SBS had roles to play in establishing the critical mass required to generate Australian content that could contend with overseas material on our home ground and compete with it overseas which is why in my first months at the ABC, despite the funding harassment, we set about establishing ABC Online.

The success of that is fairly well recognised with the ABC spending a mere fraction of the tens of millions outlaid by the commercial players. The real basis of that success however was the way the ABC at the time embraced the logic of convergence by proceeding with a fundamental reshaping of the organisation.

Others placed their net initiatives outside their existing structures. We built ours in the very midst of the existing ABC so we could leverage off all the resources we had.

Under the banner of the One ABC we drew on content across the whole organisation which was one of the reasons why we did for a few million what others did for scores of millions. I emphasise that I make these points only to identify the tasks so that there can be an intelligent and aware response to future challenges. I want to convey the shape of the information environment, the environment in which Australia is operating and the ABC's strategic response.

I have said that no one in Canberra has envisioned a proper role for the public broadcaster in today's information economy. The ABC sought a net funding increase of $194 million for the current triennium.

During that period it aimed to increase Australian content across the networks, engage in multi-channelling and data broadcasting and expand production and programming resources in local and rural Australia. The government response was to provide $36.8 million which the ABC has to match for capital equipment!

But I can't say strongly enough – the real failure is the failure of imagination in Canberra. There is a growing realisation of the damage caused by the Government's new broadcasting legislation. The fundamental trouble was that the legislation was narrowly conceived.

As restrictive as it is in broadcasting terms, it is even more damaging in the scant recognition it gives to Australia's ability to participate more effectively in the information economy. This has been picked up overseas. The knock-on effects are severe.

Let's think now, though, of what might have been.

Instead of an embattled ABC, think of an expansive national broadcaster – a broadcaster valued as a creative platform for new content and seen as a catalyst for the take-up of new information services. ABC Online has provided a compelling platform for the way local content – news and a gamut of other programs – can be provided for the enrichment of Australia as a whole, as well as for particular communities.

Multi channelling and data casting represent an exponential leap in opportunities for local involvement through pictures as well as sound.

The fact is that the ABC has not only offered a blueprint for the way additional funds should be used over the next three years in its funding bid, but has shown through its online operations in explicit and quite concrete ways, what can be achieved to enable public broadcasting to take its proper place in this digital age.

This Government has as clear a responsibility to fund the ABC's entry into digital broadcasting as previous governments had to fund the ABC's entry into black and white television and subsequently into colour.

However, the transition this time is far more complex and demanding, moving beyond funds and allocations of discrete spectrum. Convergence means that broadcasting is no more an island unto itself.

Convergence and technology developments as well as globalisation are going to make resolving issues of ownership and control under the present dispensation look like a piece of cake. We will be searching in this multi-layered inter-locking environment how to ensure access and distribution – and, above all, how to ensure a place against foreign competition for our own Australian content.

There are two other elements in the ABC's struggle which I believe it is imperative to recognise.

First, the government has used the digital legislation to hobble the ABC's use of spectrum in a hitherto unprecedented way.

Until now the ABC's activities have been limited only by its Charter and its funding. The advent of digital broadcasting however, has given the government new opportunities for a makeover of the ABC.

The government has intervened directly by determining the way the ABC can use its spectrum - without regard to its charter. Instead there are limits on what the ABC can offer on its multi- channels, including in the important area of news.

It should be sufficient that its Charter, its assessment of audience needs and expectations and funding, provide a framework for the ABC.

The second alarming development - and one which the ABC is in danger of cooperating with by itself - is what looks to be "tied grants". In its search for funds the ABC is going to Canberra with detailed plans for funds to be spent in particular ways - as in education and rural programming.

Shortly before I left the ABC a member of the Board wanted to specify business and local programs it would make with the coming triennial funding. Had we done so I believe the ABC would have impaired its own independence in a fundamental way.

Instead in the triennial funding submission which was lodged with the government in December 1999 the ABC presented documented evidence of its efficiency and effectiveness in all areas of its operations, measured against the commercial industry and international comparisons with other public broadcasters.

The ABC also argued for additional funds to increase regional programming on radio, TV and online, to increase Australian content, especially on television and importantly for additional money to produce cost efficient and innovative content for the new multi-channels.

The government refused to engage with the efficiency arguments or to give serious consideration to the claims for additional funds for the three core areas – regional, Australian content and digital.

The additional digital funding would have made it possible for the ABC to have led the way in the digital age with integrated new channels. The government knew this before the legislation that allowed the ABC to offer circumscribed digital channels was passed in June last year.

When the Minister says that the ABC under my administration did not seek additional funds for digital content he seems to have forgotten this triennial funding submission. So much for the consideration the ABC’s case received in Canberra.

How long do you think it would be before it was the case that the government gives the ABC funds for, say, education but not for current affairs?

The Board’s responsibility is to ensure that the ABC is efficiently, effectively, accountably and independently run. Programming decisions are the ABC’s to make, not those of the government of the day.

Because the ABC is a public institution, operating with public funds it needs to be efficient and mindful of the temper of the times and the public policy issues confronting the nation. Clearly regional issues, maintaining a vibrant Australian production industry and active participation by citizens in the digital age, are matters of public priority.

However the individual programs that are made within this framework must be a matter for the ABC, its Board, staff and management – not for the Minister, Department or expenditure review committee.

Particular grants for particular areas of operation stand to tilt the ABC in one direction or another, especially at a time when years of under-funding have left the ABC precious little discretionary funding in a key area of operations like news and current affairs, documentaries and drama.

In all of this - swingeing cuts, political assaults, legislative manipulation - the Board has remained shamefully ineffectual and compliant.

Information will be the hard currency of the 21st century but broadcasting will be the social hinge of change. Yet our Government's efforts have been directed at ensuring that the door of opportunity swings open as narrowly a possible. No new players, prettier pictures, but content much as before.

There has been scant appreciation of what is required for the ABC to exist as an effective participant in the new digital era; and absolutely no recognition of the support needed for it to take a benchmarking role for the public benefit. Changing this will require imaginative public policy – policy-making informed by the best strategic thinkers in the country.

Which does not mean leaving it to Canberra. Universities need to pay their part. State and local government must reach out by thinking and working smart with the new information technologies.

We await the leadership of genuine innovation.