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Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 02:28 pm
Proving that the ABC is utterly without any lefty bias, lefty activist group GetUp! is campaigning for an increase in ABC funding:
We are at a turning point in the future of a fundamental and cherished Australian institution, the ABC.
It’s adorable when leftoids rave about “fundamental and cherished institutions”. They sound so … conservative. At least it’s a change from them talking about cherished mental institutions, with which they tend to be not unfamiliar.
As it stands, the ABC is $264 million poorer in real terms today than it was 20 years ago.
They still haul in about $750,000,000 per year. The ABC is “poorer” in the sense that Bill Gates is “poorer” after his wife goes on an eBay binge.
The programs we rely on – from independent news and current and affairs to quality children’s content – are under extreme pressure.
Tell me; why should Australian taxpayers fund GetUp!’s ABC dependency?
In a very real sense, the integrity of the ABC is now at stake.
Integrity depends on money? I’m disgusted to hear this.
Sign this petition to restore the ABC’s funding. We need to act now before it’s too late.
I’d be fine with acting after it’s too late, but whatever. Please sign it, everybody. Sign it with your signiest signatures.
Let’s show politicians in Canberra that the ABC’s owners – the public – are prepared to stand up and defend it.
If we owned the ABC, we’d be able to sell it.
For this to work, every signature counts. We’ve set a goal of 10,000 signatures. Will you – and your friends and colleagues – help us get there?
The goal is only 10,000 signatures? I guess that reflects the current buzzless state of GetUp!, which launched last year to a media frenzy; the New York Times even ran a piece on GetUp!’s 7000-signature David Hicks petition. The hype hasn’t helped. Latest Alexa traffic rank for GetUp! is a get-down 535,920.
UPDATE: Excellent.
- I didn’t hear the interview but Keating, (remember him?) was on the Trioli show this morning on ABC radio. He was referred to as if he was God. One bloke thanked her for getting “the ghost” to talk to us plebs, he didn’t care what Paul Keating said, his voice was satisfaction enough.
Reverence given by the unbiased ABC.
- is GetUp! still runing?Posted by WeekByWeek on 2006 03 23 at 08:27 PM • permalink
- Don’t try and leave a contrarian opinion on their “We love the ABC” page.
The heavily moderated content is predictably all glowing in its reverence for Aunty and her place as a cynosure of Australian society.
Posted by Jay Santos on 2006 03 23 at 08:50 PM • permalink
- They’re going to make a fortune selling anti-capitalism ads and merchandisePosted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 23 at 09:30 PM • permalink
- I signed their petition, pleading with Minchin and Costello not to give them a penny, but to privatise the ABC as soon as possible and sell it off to the highest bidder. Well, the human capital wouldn’t be worth much, but they might get something for the broken-down equipment.
Get up is just a fuck-up.
- I’m thinking of getting up my own petition to John Howard, Nick Minchin and Peter Costello, calling on them to show some spine and confront the ABC. My group Fed up wants Chris Carrigan installed as the next MD of the ABC, with a charter to do what he did to the waterfront. Plenty of balaclavas and batons available for anyone who wants to join me and my mates fom the gym down in Harris Steet outside the Winter Palace, in support of Chris.
- Quarter of a billion? Fine.
Provided they change the name.“The Australian Sheltered Workshop For
Feeble-Brained Leftoids.”“The Grand Commissariat Of Aging Marxist Boofheads.”
“Our Cabbage Patch.”
Take it from there, people…
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 03 23 at 10:10 PM • permalink
- Where the bloody hell are the trolls? It is Friday afternoon and I would like to type some swear words.
Miranda? Gustie?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 23 at 10:21 PM • permalink
- Seymour Butts added his name to the petition and called the ABC a sheltered workshop for whiney babyboomers.
If anyone happens to have the email address sbutts@buttsville.com, I’m sure they’ve been inundated with crap from every leftie site on the net.
Slightly OT: spotted in Canberra – a guy driving a Mitsubishi Magna Executive with the obligatory “no HoWARd” bumper sticker and also a Che sticker. I don’t think he could work out what I was laughing about.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 03 23 at 11:06 PM • permalink
- #2 – lol!
Unions say the decision, which means all directors on the ABC board will be government appointed, is politically motivated.
About time. I can’t imagine what will happen to all those lefties sucking on the teat of public money, though… And I don’t give a shit! Go die in a gutter, you socially inept elitists.
- #4 is right. Someone Down Under should look around to see what the ABC’s ad revenue is like; our lefties complain about supposed cuts to the CBC but leave out that ad revenue increases more than compensated for the “vicious” cuts of a few years ago. But what’s $1B Canadian per annum (other than $1.1B Australian) for 7% of viewership?Posted by andycanuck on 2006 03 23 at 11:35 PM • permalink
- All their Get Up and go, got up and left a long time ago.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 03 23 at 11:42 PM • permalink
- I don’t think our ABC has much ad revenue, certainly not paid ads between shows anyway… so it maybe a bit different too other overseas national broadcasters….
so unfortuantely its left to us taxpayers to fully subsidise this bunch of superannuated arseh*les fantasyland… although i notice they have started showing one or two series from the US, when usually historically they stuck more to british sitcoms and series like Eastenders, The Bill and Dr Who and stuff…
but just to demonstrate their complete lack of bias, that US series would have to be The West Wing…. :o)
- Koval is just the last in a long line of employees elected a Director of the ABC by the staff, who have never understood a fundamental rule of corporate governance:that they are accountable to the Board, not to the group who may have elected them; and that they must act in the best interests of the company as a whole and not in the interests of any sectional group such as the employees, even if in so doing, this brings them into conflict with the latter.
Perhaps ASIC should be asked to look into the workings of the ABC Board.
- Miranda and Gustie are staying away deliberately to make me spend more time with my family – they truly are the worst of the worst.Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 24 at 01:23 AM • permalink
As it stands, the ABC is $264 million poorer in real terms today than it was 20 years ago.
Yes, but what are they still buying in 1986 except their threadbare ideology…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 24 at 02:07 AM • permalink
- #4 yojimbo; #20 andycanuck
No ‘paid’ ads on the Oz ABC (plenty of ads for the ABC itself and the ABC retail outlets though).
Whenever advertising is suggested, there are howls from the ABC thatthey would ‘compromise editorial integrity’. Those howling apparently haven’t yet realised that every time they claim this, they are acknowledging that the ABC’s integrity can be bought!
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 24 at 03:55 AM • permalink
- Re the abolition of the ABC Staff Director.
I bet JoHo just threw this one in because he was bored and needed a laugh (at the mouth-frothing ABC-luvvie response).
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 24 at 03:57 AM • permalink
- hope they only read the first bit of this
Dear Mr Costello & Senator Minchin
Please give the ABC more money when left-wing bias is eradicated from its programs & it becomes capable of presenting more than one point of view.btw the canadian
idiotspeacekeepers are rejecting emails headed you ungrateful morons
- There was a time when I would have been a friend of the ABC. I was raised on it.
Listening to Sandy McCutcheon’s program on the UN this week (for the first time in quite a while) showed yet again why they do not deserve our support unless they can be more even-handed. Perhaps they should be sold off if reform is as difficult there as in the Middle East.
Sandy had two main “experts” – both seemed to think that the UN was just fine and that John Bolton was a messenger from the devil. Given our own John Dauth’s comments on the UN, I don’t think it’s just rabid RWDBs who find the organisation a bit of a bad joke. Sandy was so solicitous of all those who rang in with a viewpoint to match the general tenor of the panel, it was sickening – and that was most people, since right thinkers have given up on him and his following.
If the government can find a way to heal the ABC without killing the patient, well and good. But an organisation which so repeatedly shows that upgrading the federal opposition to government status is more important than looking after Australian interests will get no sympathy from me if it dies from surgical trauma or complications like rejection, after the brain transplant has been attempted.
- #22 1.618
Bring back Molly Meldrum
You mean, like, as Chairman of the ABC? Now THAT would be worth watching!
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 24 at 06:02 AM • permalink
- #31 blogstrop:
I’m a regular ABC listener, I usually listen to the wireless on the Sydney station (2BL or 702) … many might think it’s light weight but that’s what I want to listen to. Angela Catterns made me happy before lobbing into work, but she has gone. I gave up AM and PM long ago. My replacement morning presenter Alan Jones on 2GB can be a bit overpowering. I turn off Alan when he gets on his high horse over things that he finds important but I don’t necessarily do. I still listen to Richard Glover when I can, and also James O’loghin. The last two are pretty good. Tim Blair is often a guest on Richard’s show. All of this is when I’m driving to and from work, over an hour each way.
Do I have an answer? … not really. Apart from turning the dial often. There are dozens of stations wanting your ear.
The ABC have always been a haven for socialists and fellow travellers since I remember. But I don’t mind listening to differing viewpoints. But I rarely get that on the ABC, it’s skewed one way. As I said, I turn off Alan Jones too. Yes, the ABC has a place in society blogstrop, you said you were brought up on it like many Australians. But how do you keep the good bits and get rid of the obsolescence and entrenched bias that keeps the ABC back or backward?
- I visited the Kremlin a fortnight ago … I’m standing in the top LH corner of this photograph … can you recognise me?
- Oz columnist ,Simpering Errol sums up Aunty..Part of column…
“It has long been the case that the corporation’s constant wailing about better funding annoys not just politicians but senior Canberra bureaucrats.It’s been this annoyance, sometimes close to fury, which triggers proposals for the ABC to garner revenue without laying entire departmental budgets to waste.But the fact is there are those in Canberra who look at other needy sectors and wonder why the ABC’s case for additional money is so often made to sound so agonisingly special and overwhelmingly compelling. In our non ideal world there must always be a limit to the amount of money the ABC receives. Shrill calls for more, over many years, have probably done the broadcaster more harm than good.
Surveys suggest the vast majority of Australians wouldn’t want the corp’s spectrum to be given over to hucksters? seen and heard plenty often enough in other places.BUT SO NUMEROUS AND SO GARISH ARE THE CORP’S OWN TV TRAILERS,PROMOTIONS AND COMMERCIALS FOR ABC SHOP MATERIAL THAT SOME may have come to believe a few authentic commercials would hardly be noticed amid the INANE CACOPHONY OF DROSS that now greets the end of virtually every ABC television program.The volume of this tv graffiti (like ten,nine or seven) -between programming -has reached such a level in decibels,quantity and over excitement that you automatically reach for the off button when credits come up.If our admirable aunt wants wants to remain commercial free (she surely must)-she should do a little domestic house cleaning.
Lifting flirtatious commercial friendly skirts VIA ABOUT 20 MINUTES OF PROMOTIONAL-RETAIL MATERIAL each evening is inviting trouble .It also invites viewers to go elsewhere.”
- Rats leaving the sinking ship?
ABC Perth 720AM morning presenter/ talk back mouthpiece Liam Bartlett has deserted Aunty to go across to the rival morning slot at 6PR 882AM. (part of the Southern Cross Broadcasting hegemony)
Bartlett finished his last shift at Aunty this morning. 6PR has been without a regular morning shock jock since Paul Murray quit after being refused a pay rise two weeks ago.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 03 24 at 08:35 AM • permalink
- #37 crash:
Too hard to see, but I was trying to keep my two kids interested because they thought the Sunday excursion too boring. Mingling with the 702 DJs didn’t do it to them.crash … I didn’t have that t shirt on nor the boots … I had too much competition at the 2BL/702 Open Day … anyway I don’t think I’m your type …
- What?!? The Magic Hat hasn’t signed yet? How about the Singing Cheese?Posted by tim maguire on 2006 03 24 at 12:44 PM • permalink
- Here in the States, we’re “asked” to underwrite Big Bird and his fellow Muppets, one of the most commercially successful franchises of all time. We feel your pain (although it’s a lesser pain).Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 24 at 02:33 PM • permalink
- It’s only “crushing’for ABC if Australia stations some of its very nicely rebuilt M1A/2 Abrams in the employee parking lot next year.US TanksPosted by Pat Patterson on 2006 03 24 at 03:39 PM • permalink
Labor and unions said the move shows the government was determined to crush the ABC’s independence.
Wait wait wait … to crush its WHAT? A frikkin’ tapeworm has got more “independence” than this gummint sinecure!
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 24 at 03:52 PM • permalink
- I just signed as Chimpster McBushitler, called for them to start screening ads and demanded my eight cents a day back.
However, noting that they have now topped 20k and are going for 25K signatures, I must say it concerns me how organisations with the integrity of GetUp may represent the numbers of signatures they receive on their petitions. It may be that 50 per cent are fake name troublemakers but I believe they will still trumpet the total number as evidence of support. I suggest it’s vital when putting in a protest vote to be as obviously fake in the name as possible. Don’t leave them any room to fudge it.
—Nick
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2006 03 24 at 05:22 PM • permalink
- #39 Pedro – I hadn’t heard even heard that Bartlett was getting restless. Considering the length of time he’s been with Aunty that’s an interesting move indeed.
BTW my post #16 should have started “Three quarters of a billion.” Preview is my friend, but it can’t do much until my brain is switched on.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 03 24 at 07:46 PM • permalink
- Thin man Nick
50 per cent would be a very modest estimate of falsified names on lefty petitions.
Anyone who wishes to check out the contacts on Greenpeace petitions would discover it is closer to 9/10.
They also inflate estimated protest numbers x3 as a matter of policy.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 24 at 07:47 PM • permalink
- Tim — no, no, no… it’s spelled EXcellent, and it is said softly, while leering over steepled fingers…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 24 at 09:09 PM • permalink
- Is “Lateline” still pushing the kids overboard? It went on and on for years .
I would love to see unbiased reporting on OUR ABC instead of the left leaning Kerry OBrian who seems to be getting sourer and sourer.
Time to clear out the cobwebs but I do not want to see Hamburgers on Aunty.
We deserve better than that.
ps. would someone tell ABC classic that they play a lot of crap music, they are supposed to be classical and crap ain’t classic!
- Re my visit to the ABC in Ultimo, they gave me a disposable camera for me to take photos of myself listening to the wireless … it’s meant to be ABC 702. The camera is then posted to the ABC in the supplied envelope once I’ve taken all 15 photos the Fuji flash camera allows. They are going to create a montage of ABC listeners to use during presentations to ABC radio staff. I suppose I’ll have to get 15 photos of me driving my car frustrated by sitting in Sydney traffic. Or switching stations when AM or PM come on.
- I am expecting impassioned denials about my claims of falsified petititions #52 any day now. (chirrup, chirrup, chirrup)Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 03 26 at 05:07 PM • permalink
- I VEHEMENTLY DENY TH… wait… woops, no I don’t. My bad, sorry, carry on.Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 03 27 at 03:57 PM • permalink
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They exceeded 10K signatures, they now want 20K
I signed as Tax Payer and iwantmy@centsadayback.com
—Nora