Members at ABC Shops:
ABC Is Withdrawing the Discount given to FABC Members at ABC Shops:
At the moment, FABC members can claim a 10% discount on purchases from ABC Shops. ABC Retail (presumably after consultation with the Managing Director) has advised that that all benefit to FABC members will be withdrawn in two stages. Until the end of this calendar year, the current discount will remain available. From then until the end of this financial year, FABC members can join the Reward scheme, and receive double the points of other participants. After that date, nothing.
Removal of the discount will inevitably demonstrate to FABC members how little the current crop of managers value our support of an organisation that has been consistently under political attack throughout its 73-year existence. This act and an increasing number of other issues unavoidably suggest a willingness by senior ABC management to distance themselves from any scrutiny or accountability by and to the public, and to defer to government policy and political aims. Democratic participation of any sort is deeply opposed by the Howard Government.
Of course, our role is to defend and promote our ideal of the ABC, not to protect or automatically support ABC managers or staff. That is why we are being increasingly critical of senior management - no doubt to their annoyance.
When statutory authorities were given more autonomy in the early '80s (usually as a precursor to being flogged-off), one immediate issue was the extent to which they could exercise real independence by campaigning against government policy.
"A serious issue [soon] emerged to test the way the 'strategic' ministerial power would be exercised. When the revitalised National Farmers Federation (NFF) sought donations to its Our Country campaign fund - obviously to be used to fight the Hawke Government's rural policies, the question of contributions by the marketing authorities arose. The NFF leadership was soon reportedly claiming that the Minister for Primary Industry and his staff were 'paranoid' about this NFF initiative. What had happened, however, was that Kerin had advised all the authorities that any contributions by them needed to be justified by a demonstration of commercial advantage in the light of their charters. One authority, the Australian Dairy Corporation, made such a demonstration, and so invested $300,000 in the NFF campaign. A reporter in the normally conservative Australian considered the charge of paranoia, in the circumstances, to be 'an unfair attitude towards Mr. Kerin's greatest achievement, the reformation of the SMAs[i]’.”
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[i] “Public Enterprise and National Development” Roger Wettenhall 1987
While the contemporary political environment is very different to that of John Kerin's time, in theory it continues to be open to the ABC as a statutory authority to cooperate with the Friends in matters that serve the interests of the ABC's Charter.
In contrast, of course, we have the Howard position:
"In 1995, after Howard regained the Liberal Party leadership, he held meetings with close associates in the party, business and various institutes. The message was simple: the key in returning Australia to a nation unsullied by Labor's years was the trashing of the reputations, followed by removal, of targeted people in the public service, academia, ABC and the High Court.
And there was a list. It may have changed from time in time but for participants at a these secret meetings there was unanimity about the targets. A single-minded, but never declared, pursuit of this list has contributed significantly in the unusual atmosphere surrounding the Government.
It was behind such eruptions as the night of the long knives a in 1996, when several heads of department were summarily dismissed, and the blood-letting turmoil at the ABC during the bizarre 19-month reign of Jonathan Shier.”[i]
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[i] AFR “Untold power: Howards Hidden Agenda” - 23-24 March 2002