Promise check: Provide the ABC and SBS with five-year funding periods

Promise check: Provide the ABC and SBS with five-year funding periods

At the 2022 election, Labor promised to provide the ABC and SBS with five-year funding periods. Here's how that promise is tracking.

The sign at the entrance to the ABC Southbank building

Australia's government-owned broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Special Broadcasting Service are both currently funded on a triennial basis.

This means that every three years, the government announces how much each organisation can expect to receive in government funding for the subsequent three years. The current triennial period begins in the 2022-23 financial year and runs until the 2024-25 financial year.

In 2020, following the announcement of up to 250 job losses due to an indexation pause imposed upon the organisation by the Coalition government, ABC Managing Director David Anderson called for greater funding certainty:

"We believe a five-year funding cycle would take the ABC out of the politics of the three-year federal electoral cycle and further safeguard its independence," he said.

In November 2021, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese announced a policy to do just that for both the ABC and SBS.

"We will grant them the certainty that they require to make investments to go forward in a way that maximises the output that they have and the services they provide, by providing five-year funding rather than every three years," he said at a press conference.

In response to a question at the National Press Club in January 2022, Mr Albanese included the promise in a list of those which he said would be completed "in our first term".

"We'll have five-year funding for ABC and SBS," he said.

anthony-albanese-address-npc-960x640.jpg

Anthony Albanese, Federal Opposition Leader, addresses the National Press Club

Watch Mr Albanese make the promise at the National Press Club.

Watch video on YouTube

The pledge was also contained in Labor's policy platform, which promised to "Protect the ABC and SBS as independent public broadcasters":

"An Albanese Labor Government will provide certainty for the national broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, by providing them with five-year funding terms."

Assessing the promise

At the end of each triennium, the government typically announces how much will be spent on the public broadcasters, over the next three years.

If the government announces a five-year funding figure before the next election for both broadcasters this promise will be considered delivered.

The government must not deviate downwards from its funding commitment during the electoral cycle.

Here's how the promise is tracking:

19 May 2023

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19 May 2023

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