Fourteen cents a day—restoring ABC funds
Last year budget shortfalls forced the ABC to close its two digital TV channels, Fly TV and Kids TV. It also abandoned the long running educational TV program Behind the News.
The ABC had hoped to get the funding for programming initiatives and for extended transmission in the 2004–06 period. The requested increase amounted to about $245 million over three years, about 30% of the ABC’s base funding. What it received forced the cut in much-loved programmes, as well as putting an end to the hoped-for innovations.
Friends of the ABC has developed a proposal to restore the ABC to a reasonable and affordable level that is consistent with past practice, public opinion, and international standards. This requires an immediate increase of 30% in the ABC budget. With a significant surplus predicted, the government has the opportunity to restore ABC funding in the context of the election campaign, or the next budget. The same goes for Labor, should it win government.
- Since 1985 ABC operational funding has declined by 30.2% in real terms.1
- A study commissioned by the ABC and carried out by Macquarie Bank in 2001 found that on a per capita basis the ABC was the second most poorly funded of public broadcasters in eighteen developed countries.2
- An independent opinion poll found that 60% of those surveyed believed that the ABC should be better funded.3
- On average, Australian taxpayers are prepared to pay 30% more for the ABC.
Professor Glenn Withers analysed data from the National Social Science Survey in 2000 and found that in contrast to expenditure on ‘areas such as family assistance, defence, unemployment benefits, general government, general industry assistance and the like, where decreases were indicated, taxpayers were willing to pay more for the ABC.’ The data indicated that the average willingness to pay for the ABC was an additional 30%.4
A thirty percent increase in ABC funding would:
- Restore the ABC budget to its 1985 level
- Be consistent with the public's willingness to pay
- Bring the ABC from 17th on the Macquarie Bank funding scale to 13th, still well behind the average for the eighteen developed countries.
- Cost Australians 14 cents a day.5
1 ABC Annual Report, 2003
2 ABC Annual Report, 2002
3 Newspoll, February 2001
4 Professor Withers’ findings were contained in a study titled National public Broadcasting Benefit and were reported in the Australian Financial Review, 22 March 2000.
5 For those who remember the ‘eight cents a day’ campaign in 1987, where adjustments are made for inflation using the consumer price index, 8 cents a day in 1987 equates to 14 cents a day in 2004
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