The ABC Might Be Axing Some Of Its Best Shows To Meet The Government’s Budget Cuts

Yesterday news broke that the ABC is considering cutting some of its flagship TV and radio programs to meet the government’s budget cuts. Besides slashing radio news bulletins and current affairs, as well as several Radio National programs, the highest-profile cuts include the ABC’s weekly state-based 7.30 programs and Lateline. 7.30 NSW host Quentin Dempster lent credence to these reports on Twitter this morning.

It seems ABC Board likely to announce the axing of 7.30 Friday local TV current affairs (NSW, QLD, VIC, SA, WA, TAS, ACT, NT) + Lateline.

— Quentin Dempster (@QuentinDempster) September 22, 2014

Lateline, you may remember, is the show that directly led to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, when former NSW Police Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox went on the program and exposed the vast extent to which institutions like the Catholic Church were protecting child abusers in a way that couldn’t be ignored anymore.

That twenty minutes of television are some of the most important to ever go to air in Australia; four days after that episode of Lateline, Julia Gillard announced the establishment of the Royal Commission, which is likely to run on for years. It’s not like Lateline‘s everyday programming is screwing around either; a quick breeze through Lateline‘s archives, which you can find here, is like a crash-course in outstanding Australian journalism. From Children Overboard to the AWB oil-for-wheat corruption scandal to fascinating interviews with people like far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders and a dying Christopher Hitchens, Lateline has been one of Australia’s best and most important TV shows for keeping people thinking and keeping the powerful accountable.

The eight state-based 7.30 programs, which go to air each Friday, aren’t far behind; 7.30 NSW, for example, has been stellar in keeping the public informed about what’s likely to come out of the various inquiries before ICAC at the moment. The presenters of the state shows include some of Australia’s best journalists, some of whom will presumably soon be out of a job. They’ll join the eighty or so ABC employees who’ve already lost their jobs thanks to the government cancelling the ABC’s Australia Network contract, as well as the dozen or so Lateline reporters whose work brought you a Royal Commission.

Still, losing Australia’s best investigative current affairs programs is a small price to pay if the government’s high-school-playground-fight agenda against the ABC is satisfied. Team Australia!

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Feature image via GetUp. To sign a petition to help save the ABC, click here.