Earlier in the campaign, on April 2, Dutton demanded the public broadcaster demonstrate “excellence” to show taxpayers it deserved its annual funding of more than $1 billion.
The sign of cuts to the ABC if it were revealed to have inefficiencies were seized by Labor as proof the Coalition would make future cuts to the broadcaster.
According to the broadcaster’s latest annual report, there are about 4500 ABC workers in cities, and 600 in regional and rural areas. About 2470 are in NSW, 980 in Victoria, 610 in Queensland, 330 in South Australia, 270 in Western Australia, 190 in the ACT, 150 in Tasmania and 120 in the Northern Territory.
Last October, the opposition leader also lashed an ABC reporter who asked what determined militant group Hezbollah to be a terrorist organisation.
ABC reporter Anushri Sood told Dutton her question was: “If you could just explain what determines something is a terrorist organisation?”
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Dutton took the opportunity to slam the ABC, saying the broadcaster appeared not to support parliament’s bipartisan decision to list Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
“Now, if the ABC doesn’t support that, they should be very clear about it because I think that’s quite a departure,” Dutton said.
In September 2015, Dutton said there was a “huge move by Fairfax at the moment to try and bring the government down” and this was “being helped” by the ABC. Abbott lost power later that month when Malcolm Turnbull defeated him in a Liberal leadership spill.
In a sign of the Liberal Party’s concerns about the ABC over many years, the party’s peak federal council voted in 2018 to privatise the public broadcaster despite warnings against this stance from the party’s own federal leaders.
The discussion among the 110 council delegates, representing Liberal branches from across the country, ended with the group voting 2:1 in favour of privatisation. This was not binding on the Turnbull government, which held office at the time.
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