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ABC loses $254m from budget

Nov 19, 2014
Communication Minister Malcolm Turnbull

Communication Minister Malcolm Turnbull

The Federal Government is cutting the ABC’s budget by $254 million over the next five years, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says.

SBS will also have money cut from its budget but it will be allowed to change the way it runs advertising.

The SBS budget cut will be $25.2 million.

This amounts to a loss of 4.6 per cent from the ABC budget and 1.7 per cent from the SBS books over the next five years, including cuts announced in the federal budget in May.

Turnbull said it would be cowardly for the broadcasters’ management to blame government cuts for any programming changes.

“There’s a temptation for management to blame the government for some of these program changes, often changes they’ve had in mind for a long time,” he said in a speech in Adelaide on Wednesday.

“The savings I’m announcing today are not of a scale that requires any particular change to programming.”

He said the Lewis study commissioned by the government earlier this year pointed to operational efficiencies for both ABC and SBS.

READ MORE: Malcolm Turnbull’s full speech

Turnbull denied the cuts were a broken election promise.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s election-eve pledge for no cuts to the ABC or SBS had to be taken in a context of statements by Turnbull and Treasurer Joe Hockey that they wouldn’t be immune from savings applied across the board of government agencies.

Turnbull will recommend the ABC hire a “fiercely” independent chief financial officer to track where and how funds were being spent.

He will also tell the ABC board to split the role of editor-in-chief and managing director.

Transparency from both the ABC and SBS on where they spend their money and how it related to their charter obligations was vital – and both should be as transparent as possible, he said.

“The best cure for suspicion, and the best way to promote trust and confidence is sunlight,” he said.

“It’s the Australian people who will judge whether or not they are getting value for money.”

Turnbull reaffirmed the independence of both broadcasters, saying the government would not emulate Russian-style state-controlled media.

“Putin’s model of media management is no more worthy of emulation than his foreign policy.”

The minister said every organisation, public or private, had to run efficiently.

In a business where the main overheads were wages, cuts or efficiency efforts would result in people being sacked.

“Let’s be quite clear: the savings that the government is requiring of the ABC will result in a number of job losses,” Turnbull said.

“You’ll have to wait for (ABC managing director Mark) Scott to describe where they will be.”

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