Page 4174 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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He goes through many of those details. I would suggest you have a look at his website to read that. He goes on to talk about program cuts and changes:
Ever since the prospect of these savings has been raised the ABC, or people claiming to speak for the ABC, has suggested that the programme will be a casualty.
At one point even the beloved Peppa Pig was said to be facing the axe! And then when that strained credulity, Tony Jones and Lateline were substituted for the pig only to be followed by the Stateline versions of 730 on Friday evenings.
Let me be quite clear—
this is quoting Malcolm Turnbull—
The savings announced today are not of a scale that requires any particular change to programming. All of the savings can be found within operational efficiencies of the kind canvassed in the Lewis Efficiency Study.
That is the main point here. The subject of my amendment that I will be moving shortly is that these are savings that have been looked at judiciously. There has been a study. These are efficiency dividends of the like that federal Liberal, federal Labor and ACT Labor locally have done consistently. Managers of departments, managers of directorates and the management of national institutions are required to find those efficiency dividends without cutting front-line programs, and they do it. They do it despite ongoing efficiency dividends that have been applied by Liberal and Labor federally on an ongoing basis. The ABC has been immune. The ABC, which has been immune from efficiency dividends for years, has a small efficiency dividend applied comparative with health, education and other national institutions. What we see is Mr Rattenbury in here with outrage about eight jobs.
I do not want to see a single job go from the ABC. I say that very clearly. I love the ABC 7.30 Report. I am a big fan of the ABC. We want to see all of its programming maintained. But Mr Rattenbury is coming in here with concerns about eight jobs that have been stripped by ABC management when they did not need to be while he was mute while thousands of jobs went in health, education and across other departments.
Let us not pretend that this is anything other than it is. Cuts are being made, and it is disappointing. I am sure that no-one in government wants to apply efficiency dividends. No-one in government, any sort of government, wants to apply cuts. But governments do it—federal Labor, federal Liberal, ACT Labor. Consistently with their efficiency dividends they make cuts. It is disappointing when that is going to flow down into an organisation. I think it is a real shame when we see any staff cut at all.
What is playing out here is a decision by ABC management. ABC management have made the decision that, rather than apply efficiency dividends back of house without cutting programming, as has been demonstrated can be achieved by the Lewis efficiency study, they will go after the soft underbelly, the easy, low-hanging fruit that
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