Some past and future challenges for publishing Australian cultural content

The ABC had sought $250 million over the next three years to keep these channels going and to develop digital broadcasting across the organisation. These are issues of real significance but just about completely lost in looking for traces of alleged bias in the ABC.

The closure of the ABC's digital channels delivers a heavy blow to the national broadcaster's capacity to be a catalyst for the rich creation and widespread use of digital Australian content. It is a barricade in the path of the ABC establishing an innovative infrastructure for digital broadcasting across the country.

The ABC's tremendously diverse online presence was secured by acting smart in the face of miserly government funding. What others have and are doing at the costs of hundreds of millions of dollars to operate on a scale the ABC is doing, the national broadcaster has achieved by efficient and imaginative use of its radio and television resources nation wide at a mere fraction of the cost.

The severe impairment of the ABC's ability to repeat this success with digital is crucially important, because of the Australian content that won't be created and broadcast.

The government's digital policy is in notorious disarray. It is paralysed as a result of ceding the main ground to the vested interests of major media players. Millions are being spent on an information highway that is closed to traffic because the multi channels are lying vacant. The government is reduced to operating on the margins exploring cluster development of new-media operations.

The issue is not whether the government should be assisting the development of new media - it should - but it should be doing so in tandem with policies that also develop the world of traditional communication.

A visionary approach is needed. It will be one that accepts convergence in all its implications and sets policy lines that take an integrated approach to regulation and content development. An approach that recognises that boundaries are blurring and the walls dividing the delivery of content are tumbling down.

This approach demands sustained rethinking of telecommunications and information technology policies as well as re-examination of familiar territories like the broadcasting and print media.

Don't hold your breath for that intense policy work to be done in Canberra or its bureaucracies. It is not simply a matter of will although that also is involved in these days of small government.

The politicisation of the public service has been accompanied by a steady leeching of its talent. Nevertheless, constantly emerging technologies will help bowl over economic self-interest of the old media players and government short-sightedness provided the knowledge, talent, creativity and investment housed in familiar industries are released.

The publishing industry is equipped to explore and develop the reservoir of creative talent that will make social sense of the rapidly developing digital technologies. Publishers are well placed to embrace new markets with new products and services that exploit new technologies.

The education sector, for example, is a powerful resource and a well-trodden ground for publishers. It is only the reach of educational publishing that has to develop.