Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to highlight the unnecessary and misguided disinvestment by the ABC in rural and regional Australia. When it comes to interpreting their own charter, their duty to the taxpayers of Australia, their duty to regional and rural Australia, the ABC board and its managing director have failed dismally. Most prominent is ABC mythmaking about the relatively modest efficiencies being imposed by the government and the quite duplicitous linking of those efficiencies to ABC program and personnel cuts.

In Tasmania they have closed the TV production unit, they have reduced staff in news departments, cut radio and TV resources, and heavily diverted regional programming. Meanwhile, resources are being centralised in Sydney and Melbourne in direct contradiction of the ABC's duty to regional and rural Australia.

Over 50 per cent of the ABC staff is based in New South Wales, centralised in Sydney, and nearly half of its reporters live in mutually left-leaning supporting enclaves in either New South Wales or the ACT. What this centralisation of resources in Sydney shows is how far the ABC board and its managing director have drifted from their most important purpose. It is a breathtaking failure of leadership and they should consider their position urgently. The ABC needs someone to correct that failure of leadership and Mark Scott is not that person. His address to the ABC last Monday confirms he intends to continue reducing regional services, and my home town of Launceston is being particularly impacted by the downgrading of these services.

In radio, the regional content director position is being downgraded. Statewide Afternoons programming is moving to Hobart, and the ABC in Tasmania has become Hobart-centric at the expense of the north and the north-west. Mark Scott has also said there will be a restructure of state directors and that office will also likely be affected. On a daily basis, between the Breakfast show and the Drive program in the afternoon there will be nothing coming out of ABC Launceston.

It is also interesting that, of the five regional offices being closed, all five are in coalition seats: Nowra in Gilmore; Gladstone in Flynn; Port Augusta in Grey; Morwell in Gippsland; and Wagin in O'Connor. Rockhampton, Newcastle and Launceston all will have job cuts and service reductions. So my questions to Mr Scott are: what is the specific dollar figure being saved by the closure of these offices and why is it not being re-invested in saving other regional services; and how will he fund the new regional division, yet another ABC bureaucracy?

I want to know how the Tasmanian director of the ABC board, Jane Bennett, allowed this to happen in her own backyard. When did she find out about the cuts to Tasmanian services? More importantly, I want Mr Scott to put a specific number on the percentage of the ABC budget that is actually spent by the ABC on the regional networks. It is time for answers from Mr Scott.