Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I stand by my statements, including statements to this parliament. As for the ABC, what this government is doing with the ABC is applying for the first time in 20 years an efficiency dividend. That is what we are doing. We are applying an efficiency dividend to the ABC. Members opposite thought that the ABC was the one institution that should not be subject to an efficiency dividend. We think it should be subject to the efficiency dividend. The ABC should not be exempted from the kinds of measures that are being applied to almost every other part of government. When we inherit debt and deficit disaster from the Labor Party, when we are faced with $123 billion of cumulative deficit and $667 billion of projected debt, no-one is exempt from the search for savings, including the ABC and SBS.

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