bernardi, cut abc funding.

Cut ABC funding, urges Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, as Coalition ramps up attack on the national broadcaster

The ABC's funding should be cut and the national broadcaster forced to sell advertising and paid subscriptions online to compete with commercial newspapers, according to Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi.

"I don't want to see a state run media effectively dominating this landscape," the South Australian senator said.

Senator Bernardi's call for ABC funding cuts, which he made in an interview on ABC radio on Wednesday morning, comes amid widespread anger within the Coalition about the ABC's collaboration with The Guardian Australia to report on the alleged phone-tapping of the Indonesian president, its perceived left-wing tendencies and its $1.2 billion annual budget.

Senator Bernardi's call for ABC funding cuts, which he made in an interview on ABC radio on Wednesday morning, comes amid widespread anger within the Coalition about the ABC's collaboration with The Guardian Australia to report on the alleged phone-tapping of the Indonesian president, its perceived left-wing tendencies and its $1.2 billion annual budget.

Such is the ABC-directed anger within the government that in a rare move, Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly condemned the CEO of the national broadcaster, Mark Scott, for exercising "very very poor judgment" by publishing the Indonesian spying revelations, leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"The ABC has grown exponentially over the years," Senator Bernardi told ABC radio on Wednesday. "And now it's basically encroaching into the newspapers of the 21st century, which is the online space."

Senator Bernardi said he was happy for the ABC to keep its radio and television stations, but not for it to publish free news on its websites. This would destroy newspapers published by Fairfax Media and News Corp, Senator Bernardi said.

So strong are the feelings within the Abbott government against the ABC, that a joint party room meeting on Tuesday was dominated by criticisms of the national broadcaster, led by Senator Bernardi.

In the party room meeting, Senator Bernardi described the ABC as a "taxpayer-funded behemoth". He was joined in his attacks by the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and MP Ian MacDonald, among others.

Senator Bernardi also criticised the ABC for what he characterised as muddled priorities which, he said, saw the board go to extraordinary lengths to withhold the salary information of its senior broadcasters while showing no such reluctance to reveal information detrimental to the national security interests of the country.

He said there was a compelling case to consider breaking the ABC into two entities with the traditional television and radio operations protected to ensure services in the bush and regional Australia, while the online news service could be disposed of.

''It is in the national interest, the budget interest, and the competitive media interest, that the broadcaster be separated,'' he later told Fairfax Media.

According to multiple sources in the meeting, the trio of Ms Bishop, and senators Bernardi and Macdonald, received ''warm'' support for their assessments that the broadcaster had failed to maintain political balance, and was using its annual $1.1 billion tax-payer funding to crowd out commercial news organisations in breach of its charter.

Senator Bernardi described its behaviour as ''cannibalisation of commercial media''.




Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/cut-abc-funding-urges-liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-as-coalition-ramps-up-attack-on-the-national-broadcaster-20131204-2ypet.html#ixzz2mSH5OVAJ