Greens Senator Scott Ludlam is suggesting Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is behind the Abbott government plans to kneecap the ABC.
Senator Ludlam addressed the Save The ABC rally in Sydney on Saturday and made comments about the influence he says Murdoch’s company has over the current Australian government.
“Can you think of a Government at any time in Australian history that has been more thoroughly and more transparently owned by the top end of town?,” he told the crowd of ABC supporters. “The ‘no policy’ agenda of its own other than that grafted on from the other side of the world and the self-appointed policy geniuses, the Institute of Public Affairs. If there is one thing that these people hate more than public education, public housing, public health, public transport, public ownership of essential services, it is public broadcasting”.
Rallies are taking place all over Australia this week as the Abbott Government has once again been outed for broken promises. Abbott was clear in his statement the night before the last federal election that there would be “no cuts to the ABC, no cuts to SBS”.
The Abbott Government has been ferocious in its cuts to the ABC despite assuring the Australian people that it would not do so.
“Item 50 of the Institute of Public Affairs handed to the Government after the election was “Break up The ABC and put out to tender each individual function’. Item 51 ‘Privatise SBS’”, Senator Ludlam told the crowd.
Senator Ludlam also accused News Corp of being the true power behind the Abbott government. “These ideas are tremendously popular within that tiny Narcissistic clique of News Corp columnists who tell the coalition frontbench what to think. Its pretty damn unpopular everywhere else,” he said.
