>"There were some there who would sell it off, some who would just abolish it, some who are just angry with it but don't have a solution, and some who would sack the CEO."

I heard an interesting idea today. Split the ABC into two organisations. ABC #1 would do politics and current affairs and ABC #2 would do music, sport and all the stuff that is not political and for which the ABC is highly valued by many Australians. Since children's programs are politicised they'd have to be in ABC #1. The funding for ABC#1 would be reduced until it demonstrates it has eradicated political bias.

"""
There's only one solution: appoint Rupert Murdoch as Controller Of All Media!
"""

What a load of codswallop! Murdoch is going the way of the dinosaurs like all the other lame stream media outlets. The net will kill them all sooner than later. And as for the ALPBC, sack the lot of them, they're all BS artists using their positions to destroy this country, it's as plain as their bias!

You really start to wonder about the grey matter of some of the friends of the ABC when you see comments like this, from Ojnab.<<I pay to read the garbage of Andrew Bolt in these papers, the same as you are paying and obviously watching the ABC>>

WTF!

The last I heard Bolt & co were not the recipients of govt funding --you can choose whether or not to pay Murdock (for his newspapers) but sure as hell if you're a tax payer you cannot choose not to fund the ABC.

I guess it harks back to that central tenet of lefty thinking: the community has an obligation to fund me and mine.

The ABC is the perfect example of why we need voter initiated referenda in Oz.

The ABC would not last past the first vote.

I am happy for my taxes to be expended where a news and information service does not exist.

However, while that may have been the case many years ago that necessitated expenditure of taxpayers' money on the ABC and later the SBS, it would be ridiculous to argue that the public, including ethnic people who cannot understand English, do not have such information available to them through other broadcasters and the internet.

In fact there is so much news, views and entertainment available that media outlets are restructuring to remain viable for their shareholders.

Two separate publicly-funded national broadcasters is an extravagance where governments quibble over funding for aged pensions and care. Many Australians are presently going without medical advice and treatment because they cannot afford to visit the doctor.

At the very least, the SBS and the ABC should be combined, NOW!, to remove some of the redundant management overheads of public broadcasting.

Sorry to double-up, but on my morning walk today I noticed another closure of a hereto successful local business.

It reminded me of Howes the union heavy who recently said that 'mums and dads' should get out of farming because they are not part of the future as he saw it.

<AUSTRALIANS want farms run by families, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said as he rejected as "dopey" a call by union boss Paul Howes to end the nation's era of "ma and pa farming".

Mr Howes ignited a firestorm of criticism across rural Australia yesterday after he suggested the agricultural sector needed to look to the US -- "where you have large-scale conglomerates that can diversify"-- if farmers were to transform Australia into the food bowl of Asia.

"It essentially means the day of ma and pa farming in Australia needs to end," the Australian Workers Union national secretary said.>

http://tinyurl.com/Howes-and-family-farms

It is interesting that union boss Howes reserved his criticism for hardworking farmers on wretchedly low incomes, but he doesn't criticise two separate highly-paid management structures and all of the doubled-up technology and facilities to maintain the public broadcasters that are a constant drain on the Budget.