I have listened to and watched the ABC since its fourth birthday in 1936.
The early days were as a baby, but I soon learned that the music for The News equated to lunchtime and I was hooked.
We moved on in 1944 to The Lawsons and Blue Hills, during which conversation was banned. Along with my Global Strategist, I became addicted to the Country Hour with Lorna Byrne, Fraser Parkes and then Neil Inall, Colin Munro, Shane Mahony and so many others.
Jim McNamara’s wonderful Macca’s Australia All Over also brought the inland to city listeners who had no idea.
James Dibble reading the news and then Yuanita Phillips. The 7.30 Report with Kerry O’Brien. Four Corners’ great investigations. Sport with Trevor Allen, Gordon Bray, Allan MacGilvray and Jim Maxwell. Norman Swan medical matters, Robin Williams on science. Saturday with Geraldine Doogue, The Spirit of Things with Rachel Cohn. The brilliance of Richard Glover, Phillip Adams, Patricia Karvelas, Tom Switzer, etc.
Naturally, we don’t always agree. We were angry at the women reporters’ unfair treatment of two outstanding women – Pauline Hanson and Julia Gillard – and find the current obsession with women interviewing one another on women’s rights as hypocritical.
We find the invention of indigenous history overdone. We wish they would play less US content. However, over time, we believe it to be a well-balanced and independent organisation of which we should be proud.
The recent successful motion by the Young Liberals calling for the ABC to be privatised is a sad reflection on a Party that is driven by money. They will sell anything.
While the NSW Liberal/ National coalition is flush with cash from public asset sales, over 90 per cent of the state is drought stricken, but we still have no return to the fodder and agistment freight subsidies (removed by this Government in 2014).
Queensland, with 50pc in drought and a Labor Government provides 50pc rebates. The NSW treatment of stock routes is frightening in its ignorance.
US citizen Rupert Murdoch wants to get rid of any ABC competition. His “Australian” paper has never stopped pushing the US munitions industry/war monger line from Washington to Australia.
They accuse China and Russia of interfering in elections yet didn’t complain when John Howard advised Americans not to vote for Barack Obama, or when US Secretary of State, Marilyn Albright, advised Australians not to vote for Pauline Hanson in 1998.
Try and name a country in the world that hasn’t seen the USA’s CIA exert influence on its elections? Unbounded hypocrisy.
As our youth turn to Facebook, Twitter etc. with instant, often unchecked “fake news”, we need a reliable source. A stable society relies heavily on a trusted line of communication. Our government will attack the ABC at their peril.
- By JOHN CARTER
