Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) and the Assistant Minister for Health (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by Senators Lundy and Peris today relating to funding for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I move this motion with some incredulity because what is going on here is that the government is now saying that the ABC is responsible for the distribution and impact of their cuts. That is like cutting off Aunty ABC's arms and then getting cranky at her for bleeding all over the floor. You cannot do it like that. You cannot make a cut and then blame the organisation that you are applying the cuts to for the damage that is caused. And yet that is exactly what we saw across the chamber today from senators Nash and Abetz in their answers to questions from Senator Peris and me.

The hypocrisy is quite galling. I do not think it is lost on anybody listening to today's question time. They would be shocked and appalled by what they heard coming from the mouths of government ministers today. We know that there have been unprecedented cuts made to our national broadcaster. We know that we were promised, prior to the election, that these cuts would not be occurring. So this is, formally, a broken promise by the Abbott government. It is, formally, a betrayal of the trust placed in the Abbott government by the people of Australia when they cast their votes in the days following that statement. And what we have seen around the country in the last few days is, I believe, just the beginning of the outrage being expressed by Australians to this decision.

I want to take the ministers to task on a number of issues, but particularly one that is dear to my heart—and I know that Senator Peris will follow up on this—and that is the broadcasting of Australian women's sport. Now, most people in this chamber, if they have not been living under a rock, would know that this is a challenging topic. We know that there is a profound inequity in the way that women's sport is presented in the Australian media, and we know that the commercial television broadcasting statistics show that it is still in single percentage figures—despite us being half of the population.

Various interventions, including a consensus report during the Howard government era on what we needed to do to support the coverage of women's sport, involved creating a program that allowed sports and broadcasters to work together.

Now—surprise, surprise!—many Australian sportswomen found themselves working very closely with the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, to put women's sport to air. What we have now, after years and years of partnership—and, frankly, a battle against some of what I think are the poorer decisions of our commercial broadcasters in choosing not to broadcast women's sport in this country—is that women's sports find themselves now being cut. We find the WNBA, the Women's National Basketball League, being cut; we find the W-League, the women's football league, being cut. We know that netball, which screened on the ABC, was able to develop an audience following—so much so that they now show their product, if you like, their national league on Foxtel. Obviously, their final is on free-to-air. We know that their success would not have happened without the relationship they have had the ABC. I like to think that the W-League and the WNBL would be able to find a place on a commercial television station, but the evidence to date is that is not occurring. So to cut them off at the knees like this, through these cuts, is a greater travesty than perhaps what first meets the eye.

These things cannot be fixed overnight. These things have been shaped in our community over a long period of time, and they have culminated with the coverage we had during campaign after campaign by many people in this place—men and women alike—over many, many years. So to undo it at this point does far more damage than the mere fact of the cut as it is being applied.

Sport in this country is part of a continuum, a circle. If we do not have our role models on our national television broadcasters, if we do not see women excelling in their sports, then we do not have that continuum that inspires the next generation of young girls and women to keep playing. You start to break what is great about Australian sport when you unpick the ABC's ability to provide that coverage, when you break that continuum of what is great about Australian sport. And you do it in a way that targets women, because it is only the ABC that has shown a willingness to provide that coverage. How dare this government break that continuum for women and their sports in this country? As Lauren Jackson said, this is the passive disenfranchisement of women in yet another way from this government, and it is completely unacceptable. (Time expired)