CANBERRA is an ABC town. The rally outside Aunty’s Northbourne Avenue HQ and the turnout at Parliament House show just how much we care for the national broadcaster.
And PM Tony Abbott’s unequivocal declaration that there would be “no cuts to SBS or the ABC” will haunt him for as long as he occupies The Lodge.
Malcolm Turnbull’s attempt to deflect the issue on the “7.30” program was sad to watch. Does he really think a $254 million reduction in ABC funding can be passed off as an “efficiency dividend”? Malcolm, a cut is a cut is a cut.
The SBS situation is worse. Not only have they taken a $25.2 million hit, they are compensating with ever more commercial breaks. The “First Contact” series confronting white Australians with the Aboriginal reality would have been even more riveting had the emotional spell not been broken every five minutes.
WE are also, it seems, a city of cricket fans. Fabulous turnout at Manuka oval for the day-nighter against the South Africans; and the ground looked a picture. Time for the ACT administrators to get a team into the 20-20 Big Bash!
THE week produced an embarrassment of riches in international leaders led by China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, both of whom engaged the Parliament with thoughtful speeches. The Chinese leader, it seems, included Tasmania on his itinerary to complete an ambition to visit every Australian state. Apparently he’s been coming here regularly during his rise to the top of the Chinese government.
Who knew?
KATY Gallagher took the opportunity for a tete-a-tete with Mayor Anshun Wang of our (big) sister city Beijing. “There is a lot our two cities can learn from each other,” she said, not least in public transport. Now there’s an idea – the Chinese could build that tramline down Northbourne Avenue in a weekend with time left over to punch a tunnel through the Clyde Mountain to the coast!
SPEAKING of the coast, wonderful news that deaths and injuries from car crashes along the Princes Highway north of Jervis Bay have fallen by almost 90 per cent in the last five years mainly because of road improvements. However, the NRMA’s ACT director, Alan Evans, says: “This indicates that the safety of the Kings Highway could also be improved, especially during the summer period.”
But better roads are not a panacea. “Something just happens to people during this time,” he says. “They take risks and pass one or two cars [at a time] but only end up a few metres ahead when they reach the Bateman’s Bay turnoff.”
ABC rallies outside parliament are one thing, the planned demo of up to 6000 bikies from around Australia for November 30 quite another. They are protesting against laws that, they say, “ban meetings of bikie gang members”. Oh, really? Some of us would also ban their wretched bikes unless they used proper mufflers.
ON a happier note, warmest congrats to young Aboriginal achievers, Jordan Savage, just accepted into the ANU’s graduate medical degree program, and Kale Moore, of Queanbeyan, who won the Health Workers’ Association’s Young Warrior Award, as “the most helpful person you could imagine”. Nice one.
robert@robertmacklin.com
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