Comment

Kim Williams
The case for investment in the ABC

Increasingly in this current, strange era, nothing is more empowering than ignorance. Ignorance is unburdened by knowledge and an understanding of and respect for history. It has no fidelities, no sense of social commitment. Ignorance is indifferent to a sense of obligation to others and to the truth. It invariably serves personal whims, too often fed by narcissism and fantasy.

The best policy to counter ignorance is to tell more of our own stories, which celebrate and interrogate the rich diversity of our nation and its humanity. Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum. We need to fill the void before others do. Most of all, we need to help Australians come up with our animating ideas.

I write to defend and promote the national urgency for investment in the ABC. If we do not renew and invigorate it, we will increasingly tell ourselves stories that are not really about us but rather part of an extended global imaginary – our own story disappearing under a tsunami of overseas content.

It’s already happening.

The waves breaching our information shores are now capturing the affections, hearts, minds and aspirations of our people. Most dangerously, they are targeting the next generation of Australian children, teenagers and young adults, compromising their confidence about and knowledge of Australian history, Australian accents and Australian values in ways that may irreparably harm our future.

Our first line of defence must be to create an environment in which facts from credible sources predominate, with a strong, reliable national news resource.

The ABC’s news output is already impressive, with 16,000 original news items published monthly, and with scores that exceed all others in volume and trust. Yet we must make it even stronger, which requires investment, matched with a commitment to the most important element of quality journalism: objectivity.

According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report, Australians are the most concerned about misinformation of the 48 countries in the survey, at about 74 per cent. About the same number say it’s becoming harder to tell if news is from respected media or an individual trying to deceive people. We must improve our skills in exposing misinformation, correcting disinformation and arming Australians with the skills needed to counter both.

Just as the founding of democracy in the industrial age required an aspiration to universal literacy, its continuation in the digital age requires broad media literacy to give us strong defences, but defence can only get you so far in the battle against disinformation and misinformation.

Everywhere we look across the world, national stories are being contested.

What is our national story? In a world of increasing hostility, we need a confident sense of who we are, knowledge of the society and political system we want to maintain, a strong grasp of history and science, and an understanding of how our great political, legal and educational institutions work to keep us free.

We need to believe in ourselves, express ourselves with confidence, be creative in our response to big problems. We need a set of common values that can bind us as citizens, regardless of where we live, what colour collar we wear to work, what our culture, gender or family origin may be.

We will find it through news and discussion but also from documentaries and, on occasion, in great drama and, being Australian, from original comedy.

We must renew the ABC into the best public broadcaster it can possibly be.

It is still a formidable organisation, serving Australians by producing a spectrum of news, documentaries, children’s, educational, drama and other programming per year in broadcast, streaming and on-demand across a profusion of digital platforms.

The ABC has the highest level of public engagement, with its online news services touching almost 14 million Australians in May. In our region, the ABC’s International Services reach audiences of more than 11 million people a month across our television, radio and digital services, playing a major part in our nation’s soft diplomacy.

Despite all it does, however, the ABC is in need of attention and care.

When I was younger, a wise old publisher said something that has always stuck with me.

There are three kinds of people in the policy and commercial world, he said: “Those who make things happen. Those who watch things happen. And those who stand back and say: what happened?” The maxim reminds one of British prime minister Lord Salisbury’s 19th century dictum: “Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.”

What happened here was this: Australia stood back for more than three decades and allowed the ABC to lose one third of its funding, at a time when its services were needed more than ever.

In this century we have declined from an overall share of Commonwealth outlays of 0.31 per cent in 2000–2001 to 0.13 per cent today. In the past decade, ABC appropriations from government have fallen by 13.7 per cent in real terms – a recurrent annual reduction of $150 million.

Moreover, the ABC once operated much fewer services, with little comparison to the service diversity now available.

As our need to create national coherence and unity has increased, our capacity to build and project it has been diminished. To reverse Salisbury: it is in our interest to make change happen.

The Albanese government, much to its credit, has stemmed the decline, stabilised funding and restored the cuts from the indexation pause. Additional investment in ABC International under the government’s Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy has enabled it to double its transmission reach and increase first-run content in the Pacific, restoring serious connection in the region.

Nevertheless, across a range of genres there is much more to do.

Fine Australian content, once produced in abundance for children and young people, has been reduced, as has educational programming. Content development and programming in documentaries, science, drama and religion and ethics have also declined.

Great networks such as Radio National, Classic FM, the metro capital city network, triple j and a wide range of specialist audio services have been squeezed tight.

To put my case most simply: the ABC needs more investment for much-needed renewal.

Investment will enable Australians to access what they really crave. It will allow for trusted, high-quality news services, with an expanded fact-checking capability across all platforms. It will allow for more and better children’s programs and additional educational content.

More investment will allow for stronger diverse audio offerings, including sustaining the only national regional delivery; more and better documentaries, arts, drama and comedy programming; and, crucially, a viable strategy to engage with younger audiences.

With an increase in serious television documentaries, we could reinforce Australians’ levels of historical and scientific literacy – two things we could use a lot more of currently. We need Australians to think widely about the world and respond with delight and imagination. This is something crucial to Australia’s intellectual credibility.

More ambition, too, is required to refresh popular understanding of Australia’s great national institutions – our parliaments, our courts, our regulators and public policy processes and, of course, the security offered by the world’s best electoral system. Australians simply don’t realise how good our democratic institutions are. The ABC, as a proud servant of our democracy and our freedoms, needs to celebrate these things.

Some say we can never compete with the United States and United Kingdom on quality programming because our population is too small. At 27 million people, however, our population is reasonably large by world standards. The Scandinavian countries punch like heavyweights in entertainment, while we, with a far larger population, are currently bantamweights. Australia needs to win back its reputation for gripping storytelling. We can, if we believe in ourselves and invest in that belief.

We are fortunate here in Australia. Our mainstream media is far less polarised than in many other countries. While editorial directions are disputed – usually with passion – the facts are still generally accepted by all sides.

This is an important distinction. It means disinformation and misinformation are yet to completely overwhelm us. We still believe that there is something called objective truth.

Australia still has trusted sources of news. Most importantly, it still has the ABC, which is trusted by nearly 80 per cent of Australians.

We have standards to adhere to and objectives that must be set high. Here is an institution that has evolved as the most reliable national delivery agent across the breadth of Australia, with an almost umbilical link to the heartbeat of the nation.

This makes the ABC one of the most precious assets we have. Because of that, we must invest to keep it strong. Our people deserve it and our democracy is worth it.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 5, 2025 as "The case for investment in the ABC".

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