Dozens Of ABC Journalists Are Getting Fired For No Reason

In yet another one for the “That’s Fucked” Policy Rolodex, a good eighty or so people are set to lose their jobs for literally no reason other than the government’s weird and nasty vendetta against the ABC after the government cancelled the broadcaster’s ten-year Australia Network contract yesterday.

Most of the job losses will be in the ABC’s Melbourne offices, where the Asia Pacific News Centre will be targeted, and will hit journalists, producers, techies and communications staff in both radio and television.

 

Community and Public Sector Union president Michael Tull said the job losses were “all part of the Abbott Government’s plan to attack and neuter the ABC” and described the news as “an appalling way to treat hardworking staff”.

“The first casualties in this Government’s war on the ABC are the staff who have less than a fortnight before they are sacked.”

In May the government announced it was cancelling the ABC’s $223 million contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to run the Australia Network, an Asia-Pacific television service that broadcasts to 46 countries in the region and became the first-ever Western broadcast service to be granted extensive access in China back in April. The ten-year tender was awarded to the ABC in 2011 after a heated bid from Sky News Australia was rejected by the Gillard government.

It’s not the only way the government’s taken a razor to the ABC in recent months — the ABC will have to tighten its budget by one percent, a decision ABC managing director Mark Scott said would cost the ABC about $120 million over four years.

While all this is going on, it’s worth remembering that Tony Abbott promised “no cuts to the ABC or SBS” the day before the last election, and that the cuts are going ahead despite over 260,000 people expressing their opposition to them. It’s also worth remembering that there is absolutely no reason for the ABC’s budget to be slashed, considering Nobel Prize-winning economists have declared the government’s made-up “budget emergency” to be a fly-riddled pile of cowshit.

Still, at least we still have fearless, impartial journalism from the likes of the Australian‘s Paul Kelly to tell us the government is wonderful and everything is going to be fine so long as we close our eyes and lower our collective IQ by a good sixty points. No doubt there are good reasons for the government’s dislike for the ABC other than a wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-jowls madness that turns Peppa Pig into a secret Communist agent.

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