While most of the proposals contained in this discussion paper will assist the ABC and the SBS, there are both logical and historical errors in the suggestion that the restoration of a licence fee (or a broadcasting levy comparable to the medicare levy) will restore funding security to the public broadcasters.

The logical error is an example of the post hoc fallacy. The paper argues that the abolition of the licence fee by the Whitlam government had the “unintended consequence of ….. creeping political interference , through threatened or actual budget cuts and the conditional provision of new funding.” However the fact that political interference and budget cuts followed Whitlam does not establish that Whitlam’s action caused those cuts, or that it facilitated an increase in political interference.

On the contrary, there are numerous examples of cuts to the ABC budget well before Whitlam. The ABC never received all of the licence fees. In 1934, for example, the licence fee was twenty one shillings, but only twelve shillings went to the ABC. By 1940 the ABC was still only getting twelve shillings when the Menzies government, at the urging of Sir Keith Murdoch (Rupert’s father) reduced the ABC’s share of the cake to just ten shillings.

As for political interference Murdoch also succeeded, but only briefly, in taking responsibility for the main evening radio news bulletin (at 7.00 pm) away from the ABC, and bringing it under the control of his own department.

It was not until 1942, after Labor had taken office, that the ABC had some financial relief. The ABC’s share was increased to eleven shillings, still significantly less than it had been receiving back in 1932. The ABC would have to wait until the 1944-5 financial year for the missing shilling was restored.

After the war the ABC managed to establish its own independent news service, despite the opposition of Labor’s Information Minister, Arthur Calwell. In announcing an enquiry into ABC funding in 1947 Calwell attempted to pre-empt the finding by describing the ABC as “a body which wastes a lot of money”. This was a sentiment that would later be echoed by Hawke, Keating and a raft of Liberal politicians.

In was in 1948 that the Labor government abolished any remnant of a nexus between the licence fee and ABC funds. While licence fees would continue to be collected until Whitlam abolished them, they have had no relationship to the funding of the ABC for nearly sixty years.
In the first volume of his definitive history of the ABC, published in 1983, Ken Inglis writes:

“Whatever the facts and the mythology in England, finance by licence fee has never protected the ABC against interference by politicians. There was no evidence that the (1948) Labor government introduced the new system to hobble the Commission. Probably it had no other motive than anxiety, which Gallup polls showed to be well founded, that an increase in the licence fee would be electorally unpopular. Nor had the old system delivered an assured level of funds: the Menzies government in 1940 had suddenly reduced the ABC’s share of revenue from fees.”

Inglis also notes that the existence of the licence fee system in the U.K. did not prevent the Atlee Labour government reducing the BBC’s funding in 1951.

Commenting on Whitlam’s action in 1974 Inglis writes:

“The abolition of listeners’ and viewers’ licences in 1974 meant nothing to the ABC, which had been fnanced out of general revenue since 1948, except to remove the illusion, persisting in some minds, that the fees had still been going to maintain the national broadcasting system.”

Darce Cassidy

The original discussion paper can be found at   http://cpd.org.au/paper/australias-public-broadcasters