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

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.