Tuesday, 20 June 2023

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (21:21): (295) My matter for the adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Creative Industries, and it concerns the announcement made last Thursday by the ABC board and managing director. They announced a series of cuts and a series of significant impacts on Victoria – on the arts in Victoria and on employment. I hasten to add here that the top-line thing for most Victorians is the end of the ABC news service on Sunday nights. That service will cease in a few months, never to return. It will be produced in Sydney, so we will have the Sydney broadcasting corporation beaming out and telling us about things on the harbour bridge and so forth. Not least the jobs that are involved in that, I think this is a major error by the ABC; I think they have misunderstood what is going to occur. I am also concerned at the announcement made about dedicated arts programming ending on the ABC. The ABC has often run very good arts programs that have actually had a significant positive impact on the sector, and they plan to end that formally, forever, according to the plan.

The idea is that this is all about digitalisation and so forth. Well, I think it is about cuts. I think it is about savings, because the ABC is top heavy. Fifty per cent of its staff are based in New South Wales. Only 18 per cent of its staff are based in Victoria. They are slicing hard into the staff in Victoria. Remember it is not our ABC if it is run out of Sydney; it is our ABC if it is run out of here in Melbourne and country Victoria. They need to focus on that. It is a slicing up of dedicated arts programming and the end of dedicated arts programming. The idea is that Sunday night TV news at 7 o’clock on the ABC will cease from Victoria and it will all come from New South Wales into the future. I think this is outrageous, and I think the Minister for Creative Industries should join me in opposing this. I ask him to make contact with his federal colleague Michelle Rowland to make clear that he opposes this and makes his views as a Victorian known. I do not believe it is satisfactory. We pay 25 per cent of the taxes, we have got 25 per cent of the funding and we have got 25 per cent of the population. We want just a reasonable 25 per cent of the funding back here. We want to make sure that we get our share of ABC funding, including for news and including the important funding into arts programming areas. I think this is a major mistake, and I call on the minister to make contact with his federal colleague and explain the impact on Victoria. The idea that we would never have a 7 o’clock Sunday news service again is extraordinary.