Since 1985 ABC funding has decreased by 27.7%. For almost twenty years coping with cuts piled upon cuts has been the job of the ABC board and management.

Where should the cuts be applied? There were some glib answers. So called 'middle management' has long been an easy answer. So has 'administration'.

All that was done long ago. Since 1996-7 the ABC has reduced its corporate support area from 13% to 8% of total costs. Middle management? Between 1996 and 1999 the ABC cut its senior executives by 21% or one fifth. Over the same period production, journalist, and broadcast staff fell by one per cent.

Is the ABC over funded by comparison to commercial stations or to public service broadcasters overseas? Clearly not. The Macquarie Bank found that on a per capita basis the ABC was the second worst funded of 18 public broadcasters in developed countries. Only Greece fared worse. An hour of ABC television costs less than half of that of an hour on Australian commercial television.

Each time there is a major downturn in funding the ABC has faced agonising choices. As cuts are made on top of cuts the choices get more difficult. The 'easy' reductions were made many years ago. Over the last eight or ten years the debate inside the ABC has been whether to salami slice or to amputate.

For some time the salami slicers won the debate. After making the obvious first choices of rationalising assets, cutting administration and support the approach was to spread the pain among the program areas. Program areas each took a similar percentage cut. With a lot of small cuts taking place in all areas, the damage done was not immediately apparent. When for example drama or documentary funding is cut, the full result is not seen on the screen for months, even a year.

There was more networking in radio, programs were less well researched, there were more imported programs on television. It happened almost imperceptibly. Confessing that he had gone along with this policy in the past, but praising the current board and management for their honesty, former ABC Chairman Professor Mark Armstrong told Radio National's Media Report:

I was much relieved to see that the ABC was no longer concealing the pain, just by reducing quality across the board, and by facing up to the inevitable consequences of the government cutting the money. I'm bemused by some of the people who are commenting about… Behind the News, training programs etc. being cut, that they can see the government has cut the ABC's funding and yet they object to the ABC reducing its expenditure. To me, it just doesn't compute………I confess that like many other former directors of the ABC, I sometimes was party to making across-the-board cuts, which is the least responsible thing for the ABC to do, because the public are deprived of the opportunity, if I can put it that way, to understand what's happening. You just lower the service, the quality of service, and people don't really understand that the quality of service is being lowered. I think there's an obligation for the ABC to reflect cuts made to its budget in cuts made to the programs

This time there have been some amputations. Behind the News has been dropped, as has the cadet training program. Foreign Correspondent has been cut in half. Dozens of other programs have been trimmed back as the ABC was obliged to make a little under $30 million worth of cuts.