The Federal Parliament has yet to pass a law ensuring five-year funding for the ABC.

If it doesn’t get passed, it leaves the national broadcaster open to cuts and threats should the government change.

Would a Coalition government return to crippling ABC budgets? Most likely if it follows past practices – and the Trump manual.

Last week, the US Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr ordered an investigation into public broadcasting writing:

“To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for-profit endeavour or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund [National Public Radio] NPR and [the Public Broadcasting Service] PBS with taxpayer dollars.”

In the US the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit organisation created by federal law in 1967. It distributes funds to public media organisations like National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

NPR syndicates its programs to about 1000 stations mainly owned by local non-profits, school boards and universities. The PBS runs a free-to-air TV service concentrating on news and documentaries.

In Australia, the Liberals, goaded by News Corp mastheads, have never been fans of government-funded public broadcasting.

At a Senates Estimate meeting last year, ABC managing director David Anderson was asked: “News Corp are obsessed with the ABC, aren’t they?” He replied: “Yes, they are.”

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Is this just about ears and eyes wandering elsewhere seeking quality away from commercials? Not according to Crikey’s Bernard Keane who reckons “the ABC and News Corp aren’t merely competitors — they are motivated by contradictory ideologies around national identity.

“Since the ABC was established more than 90 years ago, Australia’s commercial media incumbents have hated and tried to undermine it … The dominance of self-serving, oligopolistic incumbents is the permanent theme of media and media policy in Australia,” Keane said.

Peter Dutton has a reputation for clashing with ABC journalists and lambasting the broadcaster for having an “ideological position” against the Coalition’s policy to build seven nuclear reactors by 2050.

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Earlier he’d accused the ABC of having “double standards” for not interrogating a Labor minister about his behaviour towards a female journalist.

In the US, Carr has threatened the licences of other broadcasters, including affiliates of mainstream networks like ABC, CBS and NBC, for airing stories that angered Trump.

The CEO of activist group Free Press, Craig Aaron, responded that the “bogus investigation” was a “bungling attempt to bash public broadcasters and further weaken their resolve to question the extremism, corruption and cruelty of the Trump administration”.

Funding for the ABC in Australia was cut by the government of Tony Abbott though he made a pre-election promise that there would be “no cuts to the ABC”.

In 2014 he told the media: “I accept what we are doing with the ABC is at odds with what I said immediately before the election, but things have moved on, circumstances are different.”

In the 2018 budget, there was a “pause” in ABC funding under Abbott’s successor, Malcolm Turnbull.

The ABC told Senate estimates of $526 million in budget cuts since 2014 resulting in the loss of 640 jobs and the trimming or closing of programs.

Before the present government took office, an Australia Institute poll found most voters supported increased ABC funding:

“Coalition voters narrowly favoured increased funding, with 43 per cent in favour and 36 opposed, whereas Labor and Greens voters presented solid majorities”.

“The poll found that 61 per cent of respondents agreed that ‘a strong, independent ABC is critical to a healthy democracy’ with only 19 per cent disagreeing.”

The ALP Government’s 2022 Budget restored almost $84 million lost through a freeze on annual indexation and gave extra to expand services into the Indo-Pacific.

It also pledged five-year funding against the previous three-year cycle (since 1989), though the AI added: “This falls a long way short, however, of fully restoring ABC funding.”

The five-year term that has yet to be legislated prompted the Greens to urge Anthony Albanese to “Dutton-proof” new funding for the ABC in law before the election “to protect it from future Coalition cuts.”

The Liberal Party’s website has a Priorities of a Dutton Coalition Government plan. It doesn’t mention the ABC.

A Google search for “Australian Liberal Party policy on public funding for the ABC” produced no results, other than a 2018 news story claiming the government was in “damage control after the Liberal party peak council voted overwhelmingly to privatise the ABC”.

“Delegates at the national council voted to support the Young Liberals’ motion to sell all parts of the ABC that did not service rural regions.” No one in the room spoke against the non-binding motion.

Any Coalition erosion of the ABC would have to be handled carefully and not as a full-on assault as in the Trump administration. Months of softening up voter land through bombing stories of real and imagined ABC waste. Mistakes and omissions would be needed.

There’s not enough time for that before the next election – and party gurus would counsel caution. That doesn’t preclude inquiries and budget cuts, but even right-wing ideologues need to be pragmatic on some issues.

That’s because the national broadcaster remains popular even among country conservatives, despite the Murdoch media’s unwavering hostility. Voters would remember Abbott’s promise backflip and discount any Dutton pledge.

The ABC was the number one ranked broadcaster in 2022-23, with a reach of 38 per cent or 6.8 million people across the five-city metro population.

ABC News Digital reached an average of 53 per cent of Australians aged 14 and above each month.

These figures don’t spring out of a PR release commissioned by a biased broadcaster. They’re from the Federal Government’s Transparency Portal.

The ABC isn’t just another perceived wastrel on the government teat. It’s part of Oz culture.

Veteran journalist Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print work. He is the author of People Next Door.

This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations. Read the original here.