Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are a lot of bad ones, I can tell you! But I do occasionally quote them. The Canberra Times, a few days ago, said:

However, the Coalition also promised, first and foremost, to restore the budget to surplus. Given the cuts that have been visited on other public sector institutions, it's only reasonable the ABC should be asked to bear its share of the burden, and to do so in such a way that preserves programming as much as possible.

I think that is a very reasonable point and I think it is something most people would agree with—that savings should be able to be found in the ABC.

We know in fact that there are many savings to be found. Senator Abetz quoted a little bit from a Fairfax article by Louise Evans, a former manager of Radio National, that appeared yesterday. She was talking about some of the waste at Radio National. She says that she was:

… shocked by the culture, waste, duplication and lax work place practices exercised in some pockets of Radio National. I was even more shocked by the failure of the executive to want to do anything about it.

She goes on to say:

One problem … was the so-called lifers, a pocket of predominantly middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon staff who had never worked anywhere other than the ABC, who were impervious to change, unaccountable, untouchable and who harboured a deep sense of entitlement.

They didn't have a 9-5 mentality. They had a 10-3 mentality. They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch and popped out to Paddy's Market to buy fresh produce for dinner before going home.

There is waste to be found.

We saw recent examples. We have two public broadcasters getting, between them, billions of dollars over the next few years. In fact, even under the changes, the ABC will still be receiving $5.2 billion over the next five years. So let's not pretend that for $5.2 billion over the next five years they cannot fund women's sport. Let's not pretend that they cannot do that if they really want to. They are refusing to make the savings in other areas. One example is outbidding SBS for Asian Cup rights. We have SBS—publicly funded but able to actually get advertising revenue when they bid for the football—being outbid by another public broadcaster, upping the price to taxpayers. Do taxpayers really care whether it is going to be on SBS or ABC? I would argue that SBS is well-placed to deliver very good football coverage as it is something that they have been doing for a long time. So that is the kind of waste that we see.

Let's be clear on this as well. We have seen it said today—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Senator Conroy can interject all he likes.