As a political football the ABC’s pretty tattered

When Pauline Hanson put the ABC on the table as a bargaining chip to negotiate Mitch Fifield’s media law reform changes, the government grabbed it with both hands.

Hanson’s requirements — that the ABC be “fair and balanced”, that it be forced to focus on regional areas, that there be a competitive neutrality inquiry — seem to be clear retribution for journalism at the public broadcaster investigating Hanson’s One Nation party. Hanson has been railing against the ABC since a Four Corners episode on the ABC aired in April, exposing the backroom politics of the party.

After the ABC’s Insiders program the following week revealed she was part of a delegation to Afghanistan, which was then cancelled, she announced she’d boycott the ABC in a Facebook video,  and said she would only support the media reforms if the ABC and SBS budgets were slashed.

The use of the ABC as a political football is not new.

Last year, Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm won changes to the way the ABC conducts its board meetings in exchange for his vote on the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Leyonhjelm negotiated for the ABC to hold public forums with some of its board meetings, and two of those to be held in regional areas. 

The second forum this year was held last week, in NSW’s Riverina region. The first was in Alice Springs in July, and another will be held in October.

Historically, it’s more common for politicians to try to interfere with the ABC with board appointments and budget cuts.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott oversaw severe budget cuts to the ABC in the 2014 federal budget, after a pre-election promise there would be “no cuts” to the ABC. Earlier in the year, Abbott had told 2GB’s Ray Hadley that the ABC “takes everybody’s side but our own“. The comments followed an ABC and Guardian Australia investigation that found Australia had tapped Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s phone. Abbott has made no secret of his distaste for the ABC, calling the ABC’s Q&A a “lefty lynch mob” after a man accused of threatening Commonwealth officials appeared on the program. It was under Abbott’s tenure as prime minister, too, that two friends of the Liberal Party — Janet Albrechtsen and former Fraser government minister Neil Brown — were appointed to the board nomination panel.

Under John Howard, the ABC was subject to cuts of more than 10% of its budget in 1996. Then-chair Donald McDonald was a longtime member of the Liberal Party, and was criticised as a political appointee. It was during McDonald’s tenure that Jonathan Shier was managing director, a tumultuous period at the broadcaster that included sacking then (and current) Media Watch host Paul Barry over a tough interview he did with McDonald. Shier stepped down in 2001 under pressure from the board and staff.

Malcolm Fraser also showed his disdain for the ABC with budget cuts. As former ABC reporter Tim Bowden told the Brisbane Institute in 2002 that in 1970, when Bowden was working for This Day Tonight, Fraser had tried to cut the ABC’s budget by $500,000, with $250,000 to come from the current affairs budget, with the Post Master General writing to the ABC chair advising of the cut:

“The letter was leaked, and the ABC Staff Association called a mass meeting to protest against this political thuggery and to stiffen ABC management’s resolve to resist this utterly improper interference in the way the ABC could spend its budget. No doubt buttressed by press and community outrage and by the mass meeting of ABC staff, the then Chairman, Sir Robert Madgwick, did take a principled stand and Hulme had to pull his head in … the Post Master General’s directive was potentially a gross act of budgetary censorship which would affect the quality and integrity of programs transmitted to our viewers.”