Privatise the ABC
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the national, non-commercial broadcaster of the Australian Government. I enjoy the ABC. I listen to NewsRadio, and enjoy watching television programs such as Lateline, Yes Minister and Grassroots on ABC television. However I would like to see the ABC privatised (turned into an organisation based on voluntary association) or the assets given to private citizens1. This is primarily because the ABC is funded by taxation, a compulsory payment to the government, rather than by voluntary payments from advertisers or viewers. In the financial year ended June 2005, the ABC received $808 million from Australian governments2.
The ABC could be privatised by allocating shares to Australian taxpayers, or by allocating shares to the employees of the ABC. Revenue could be obtained from advertising or even donations from viewers. Broadcasters such as the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio in the USA welcome donations from corporations, viewers and listeners. There are also radio stations in New South Wales that solicit donations from listeners such as 2RPH – Sydney’s Radio Reading Service and 2CBA – Christian Broadcasting Association. Alternatively, the ABC could be turned into a channel for cable television, or a production house providing programming for multiple cable television channels. There are many possibilities based on voluntary association where coercion and compulsion are not involved.
Some may object to privatisation with arguments such as this: But the ABC provides programming that would not be provided by other broadcasters! There is market failure! Some may cite the program Landline as a program that would disappear if the ABC were privatised. Clearly, there is ABC programming that rates well. There is a profitable market for some ABC programming, including the sale of CDs and DVDs and other merchandise. Knowing this, private broadcasters would happily broadcast these well-rating programs. But why would they do so now when the ABC is already serving this market? Regarding programming that doesn’t rate so well, why should we insist that the bulk of Australians be taxed so that some niche audience can watch their favourite show?
On my bookshelf, are many excellent works including, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek, and Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard. Another book, standing in contrast to these other works, is my own personal copy of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I am proud to call this work my own very personal private property. In the beginning of chapter two I read, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Later in chapter two, Marx and Engels present ten planks of the Communist platform. The sixth plank is, “Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.” So those in favour of keeping the ABC as the state-owned broadcaster should understand that they are standing shoulder to shoulder with their comrade Karl Marx3.
Support a civilised society based on voluntary association, support private property, and support the privatisation of the ABC.
1 This article is a modified version of a speech, originally delivered at Young Liberal Council, 25 July 2006, in favour of a motion to privatise the ABC.
2 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Annual Report 2005, page 153. This included some funding from state governments as orchestral subsidies.
3 In the original speech, this sentence was, “so for those against this motion, your Communist party membership card is waiting at the door.”
© Danny Haynes
David Corless, 24 August 2006, 10:31:
I dunno, I’m happy to pay my $40 per year to ensure that the current high quality of the ABC is maintained (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it). If the ABC wasn’t kept public, doubt it would improve the quality of the programming.
And I don’t know if your final paragraph (which can be paraphrase to “if you want ABC kept public then you are a dirty communist”) is a particularly strong argument.
Pete, 24 August 2006, 10:56:
Hey Danny, I expect there are lots of people who would reject your ad hominem argument regarding Marx. I am not a communist but I think an independent publicly-owned broadcaster adds to diversity. I would never argue that there should only be the ABC.
Did you see last week’s episode of West Wing where the whitehouse correspondents all refused to report on a story that would reflect badly on their corporate masters? That is the problem with completely private media.
From the quote it sounds like Marx was arguing for a state-controlled media as did exist under Communism and Facism – a propaganda machine. He does not sound like he’d support an independent, publicly-owned broadcaster.
BTW both NPR and PBS (or their affiliate stations) receive state and federal contributions.
NeilA, 24 August 2006, 11:37:
I hope the Young Libs have got a sense of humour. What silliness.
J, 24 August 2006, 18:33:
Yavol Comrades…
My worry is the ABC programmes that definately do not rate well, but are still a marked cut above the rest of the drivel out there. I doubt things like Spicks and Specks or even the old Seachange would have had a look in on commercial networks (maybe if they added an SMS poll to see if Diver Dan leaves or not…)
Danny Haynes, 25 August 2006, 11:57:
David, I am not against you supporting the ABC if you like it. My point is why should others be compelled to pay for it through their taxes. I worked out the cost to be around $82 per year per employed person, that’s 32 cents per working day ($808.153 million in funding, divided by the 2004/05 average of 9.845 million working Australians, divided by 260 working days; RBA Bulletin Table G07).
Pete, I am aware that PBS, NPR and 2RPH receive government money. I am not aware of how much government money 2CBA might receive but I would guess they don’t receive much at all. I didn’t cite those broadcasters as examples of purely free market funding, but just as working examples of alternative voluntary funding systems. On your other point, channels 7, 9 and 10 are all independently owned by shareholders, just as the ABC is independently owned by the Australian government. The channels are all independent of each other.
Joel, regarding your concern about the death of quality programming, some people may not like the programming that you do. Again I ask, why should we insist that the bulk of Australians be taxed so that some niche audience can watch their favourite show?
The purpose in using the Communist Manifesto was not an argument in favour of privatising the ABC, but merely bringing to the attention of the audience where they stood on the political spectrum, that the position of a publicly owned ABC was very compatible with the communist position.
J, 25 August 2006, 16:29:
Because there is such a thing as ‘culture’ that shouldn’t be dependant on a purely economic basis. There are some substantial contributions to what little literary and visual development Australia has seen in the past century that wouldn’t have happened without government (or taxpayer however you want to phrase it) backing
Danny Haynes, 27 August 2006, 15:50:
Joel, if I understand correctly, I take it you are not happy with cultural products being dependent on monetary considerations, that the artist should be free to create without concern for monetary affairs. However, I would say, cultural products require resources to be produced, they don’t emerge out of thin air. The question is one of the rightness of the acquisition of those resources: compulsory, or voluntary?
I agree that there are, excellent cultural contributions that come about from government funding. At the beginning of the article, I acknowledged that I enjoy some of the fruits of the ABC. But to say that government funding is good and only point to the great literary and visual developments that have come about through government funding is to ignore the Opportunity Cost, that is the value of the benefits of the opportunity forgone. In this case, the resources that go to the ABC would be spent on other goods and services. The cost is that we are going without these other goods and services.
Another way the government hampers diversity and creativity in television and radio culture is by their nationalisation of the television and radio spectrum. That is, the Australian government (through the Australian Communications & Media Authority) asserts ownership of the entire spectrum and licenses use to a limited number of broadcasters, not allowing potential broadcasters with fresh new ideas to homestead a slice of spectrum and offer their programming to the public, programming that you may enjoy such as Spicks and Specks or SeaChange.
David G, 28 August 2006, 07:41:
I agree that the ABC should be privatised.
However, Danny, your opponents do have a point about the weakness of your argument re Marx. There are many shades of political theory between Marx and Rothbard.
Joel, I don’t think you should be putting Spicks and Specks up as a justification for the ABC in public hands. I like the show but I would not willing pay to produce it. :)
Stephen Milgate, 24 September 2007, 10:54:
It always amuses me that people think that public ownership equates with non bias. We are all biased. Given that a lot of news and entertainment will soon be downloaded and watched over iPods at the user’s convenience, plus the fact that a lot of information is now received below the line, perhaps it’s time to privatise the public broadcaster while it’s worth something.?
Lionel Chan, 11 March 2008, 12:44:
I have to agree that the last bit about Marx didn’t really make any sense. Correlation is not causation (necessarily), and it just comes off as an ideological slander to try to make it appear otherwise.
My view at the moment is that decentralisation is the only way to retain “unbiased” media. Centralised power, whether that be in the hands of public broadcasting or oligopolic corporate media, will always tend to skew the reporting of the world that is not quite in the interests of individuals and communities, but rather towards that of one special interest/ideological stance or another.
The impact of the internet information revolution in helping people remember that we are actually sovereign individuals first, and that this recognition actually aids spontaneous social cooperation, has yet to really hit the political arena. Perhaps we can see Ron Paul’s “success” as an early indicator of things to come.
Scott Briggs, 1 May 2008, 14:37:
Possibly, just possibly, it is sometimes required of the government to provide services to citizens (not everyone is or can be a taxpayer).
Sure the ABC is an easy target. Its not always nice to politicians, interest groups or corporations. However, commercial television is bound to be nice to these groups, as advertising revenue would fall if a program aired an item that was critical of an advertiser.
I challenge all to watch ‘Today Tonight’, ‘A Current Affair’ and ‘Sixty Minutes’ then compare the content to that of the “7.30 Report’, ‘Four Corners’ or ‘Lateline’.
I also ask where in the mainstream Australia Broadcast media is there any coverage of politics when parliament isn’t sitting, or when the PM is on tour?
We need our ABC
We own our ABC, as we do our Armed Forces, Public Health Systems and Education Systems. When we start privatising the ABC, do we end up privatising the Social Security System, Outsourcing Taxation Revenue Collection or even the defence force?