ABC MUST BE PROTECTED FROM COALITION'S FUNDING CUTS
I join with many other fellow citizens who treasure the huge role that an independent and highly professional body like the ABC has played in Australia for many decades.
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The severe cuts planned will have a huge negative impact on the whole of Australia, and especially regional areas, and are to be decried by all thinking people who wish to be well informed.
I cannot improve on the summary points made below by the Get Up organisation which are trenchant, essentially apolitical, and spot on.
I cannot support every single campaign that Get Up has run, but on this issue I am in full agreement.
As a resident of Wagga Wagga for nearly 40 years, a retired general practitioner, and active in retirement serving my community broadly through Rotary, community radio, Sunflower House and the Anglican Church, I wish to urge as many as possible to make our dissatisfaction about these facts known to the government in no uncertain terms.
- The ABC is the most trusted news outlet in Australia, according to multiple polls and surveys. It is essential to our democratic process, keeping Australians informed and united.
- The ABC saved lives during the bushfires, the bushfire royal commission has heard. This would not have been possible without the ABC's ability to have regional radio.
- A thousand jobs have gone since 2014. Many were senior journalists and producers, with centuries' worth of combined knowledge and experience.
- The ABC no longer covers local sport on TV. Its local production units (other than for news and current affairs) in Adelaide and Perth have been closed, along with five regional local radio newsrooms.
- By 2022, the total funding cuts to the ABC since 2014 will be over $783 million.
The ABC is there for us. Whether it is in times of crisis, childhood, social change or personal life stages.
It gives us access to the issues that matter most to us, and the issues we need to know in order to participate fully in our democracy.
Peter Keith, Wagga
ABC INFILTRATED BY 'FAR LEFT'
There has been recent discussion relating to the funding and news/current affairs reporting in relation to the ABC.
The ABC is a publicly funded organisation which among other things has a charter which requires that it address news/current affairs expressed simply in an open and non-biased way.
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For probably 20 or so years now there has been an infiltration of ABC news/current affairs by the far left and this has led to the point where I believe it has finally (hopefully) been called to task.
We have seen in recent months the removal/retirement of the hosts of both Q&A and Insiders which has led to the audience of both programs increasing as the far left bias has to a large degree been reduced.
In relation to Q&A, it is notable that prime ministers from both sides of Parliament refused to appear on the show due to its bias - and this extended to the audience.
All this in relation to a publicly funded organisation supposedly recognising and adhering to a non-partisan dictum in its charter.
John Flynn, Kooringal
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