Liberal Party council votes to sell off the ABC
The Liberal Party’s peak council has voted almost 2:1 to privatise the ABC after hearing calls from members to save taxpayer funds by selling the public broadcaster in the same way icons like Qantas were sold decades ago.
The overwhelming vote on Saturday morning was another display of the anger at the ABC in conservative ranks although no Liberals offered any detail on how the organisation could be sold and how much it would be worth.
The vote came in a series of debates where federal council delegates, representing Liberal branches from across the country, also voted for an efficiency review into SBS.
The council also voted, by a narrow margin of 43 to 37 votes, to relocate the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly contentious move opposed by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop during the debate. There are 110 council delegates with the right to vote at the council meeting on Sydney on Saturday.
The Institute of Public Affairs and others on the conservative side of Australian politics have stepped up their calls for the ABC sale in recent months, at the same time Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has lodged a series of complaints over its news coverage.
Council delegate Mitchell Collier, the federal vice president of the Young Liberals, said he had enjoyed ABC programs such as Bananas in Pyjamas during his childhood but he believed there was no economic case for keeping the broadcaster in public hands.
“High sentimentality is no justification for preserving the status quo,” Mr Collier told the meeting.
He named Qantas as an example of a company that remained an Australian icon after being privatised, defying critics who warned against the sale in the 1990s.
Mr Collier backed the motion, which said: “That federal council calls for the full privatisation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, except for services into regional areas that are not commercially viable.”
“There are several ways we could privatise the ABC – we could sell it to a media mogul, a media organisation, the government could sell it on the stock market,” Mr Collier told the meeting.
He also cited a recommendation from Institute of Public Affairs member Chris Berg that would see the ABC sold to a group of employees who would become shareholders.
“There is no strong economic case for a public broadcaster in 2018,” Mr Collier said.
“Privatising it would save the federal budget $1 billion a year, could pay off debt and would enhance, not diminish, the Australian media landscape.”
There was no explanation of how the ABC would have any commercial value to a buyer if the government imposed restrictions on the sale to protect rural services, forcing any buyer to continue operations that might lose money.
Mr Collier said the sale would mean other media companies would then compete on a “level playing field” against a private competitor rather than one that was funded by taxpayers.
Nobody rose from the federal council floor to speak against the motion.
In response, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield reminded the meeting that privatising the ABC was not government policy.
“We do have a range of measures that we’re seeking to implement to enhance the efficiency, the accountability and the transparency of the ABC operations,” he said.
“We have paired that with an efficiency review to make sure the ABC is the best possible steward of taxpayer resources that it can be.”
Senator Fifield also cited the fact that he had made two appointments to the ABC board – Minerals Council of Australia chair Vanessa Guthrie and Queensland rural leader Georgina Somerset – as evidence of action on the way the ABC worked.
Senator Fifield told the meeting the government was amending the ABC’s governing act to stipulate that it was “fair and balanced” in its coverage and would force it to disclose the names of staff earning more than $200,000 a year.
No other members spoke on the motion and it was carried on a show of hands from delegates, with roughly twice as many voting in favour of the motion as those who voted against. No count was taken.