Jim Rose, Mullumbimby
‘The ABC is [officially] on the endangered list’ – so began, with dramatic exaggeration, a recent Soapbox in The Echo (1 July) – a wonderful revelation of the capacity for the use of loaded language.
The ABC is given (not, be it noted, earns) over $1 billion per year. It is thus a pensioner (some pension, eh!), not a wage earner. Like all pensions, it should cut its suit to match its cloth.
The ABC is not suffering ‘cuts’, or even a ‘freeze’; it is receiving more money each year (not as much as it had hoped for). No money has been taken from what it had. A cut is a reduction in what one has, such that one is left with less than one had before. This is defiantly not the case with the ABC.
Consider some figures: in 2018/19 the ABC was given (did not earn) 1,046 million taxpayers dollars; in 2019/20 the ABC was given (did not earn) 1,062m taxpayer dollars (an extra $16m). This financial year the ABC will be given (not earn) $1,065m taxpayers dollars (an extra $3m); in the next financial year it will be given (not earn) an extra five million taxpayer dollars, a total of 1,070m.
When I started school, admittedly over 75 years ago, such figures would have mandated that I consider using the word ‘increase’.
The problem at the ABC could be seen as a result of the spending of other people’s money on something else, where value and cost becomes a matter of ‘who cares?’.
In any case, as is evident by the figures above, anyone who uses the word ‘cut’ is either wilfully ignorant, shamefully dishonest, or confoundedly stupid.
Ed note: The Australian Defence Force was given (did not earn) $38.7 billion of taxpayers dollars in 2019/20.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
