Democracy in a time of plague The ABC and universities

Professor Judith Bessant & Professor Rob Watts Global, Urban & Social Studies RMIT University

The COVID-19 crisis seems to be wreaking havoc on public institutions like our universities and the ABC.

Our 37 public universities have taken a huge hit to their revenues leading to talk about the need for severe job losses. As for the ABC, it announced recently that 250 jobs will go along with the 7.45AM radio news bulletin. This, however, is not the full story. What we face now is not just an effect of pandemic.

For decades Australian governments have systematically cut funding to public universities, forcing them to chase additional revenue by selling degrees to international students. COVID-19 dried up much of that supply in February with a hit to the Budget of between $3 billion to $4 billion for 2020 alone. Curiously, when most other industries were getting billions of dollars of government support, public universities were denied access to the JobKeeper allowance just when vice-chancellors began talking of redundancies.

While Prime Minister Morrison claims there have been no funding cuts to the ABC, a few inconvenient facts suggest otherwise. Morrison’s predecessor Tony Abbott cut $254 million from the ABC in 2014, while Malcolm Turnbull imposed a funding freeze worth $84 million taking effect in 2018–20. All told, $783 million has been cut since 2014.

As with all crime stories, there is no such thing as a coincidence. The savage cuts to both the ABC and universities are no coincidence. The ABC and universities produce valuable public goods which governments tend to dislike. The Morrison Government prefers the market idea that everything should have a price rather than the idea that public goods such as knowledge, clean air, news and information should be freely available to all.

In an age when governments rely on spin, universities and the ABC produce public goods like information, critical commentary, and ‘inconvenient’ facts. Apart from providing feebased professional education, our universities create public goods such as knowledge, critical thought, and scientific research. The ABC produces free-to-air reliable, trustworthy news, critical public affairs commentary and cultural resources like drama, entertainment, and music.

The ABC (and the SBS) and universities have long been essential to the public sphere, something fundamental to any democratic culture. Our universities and the ABC are doing what they are meant to do: inform, critique and encourage debate. Subjecting the ABC and public universities to death by a thousand cuts is like ‘burning the books’, a tactic often adopted by invading armies or authoritarian governments.

At a time when many governments are declaring a state of emergency and suspending basic rights, we need to ensure that democratic practices that involve speaking truth are not disappeared. It is important we remain ‘alert’ to what is actually happening.

Recent moves by ANZ, Australia Post, KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, regional newspapers, the ABC, QANTAS and so on to cut jobs, may well be blamed on COVID-19. For decades we have been undertaking a social-economic transformation and digital disruption that is reshaping what it means to be human.

We face the prospect not only of needing to ask whether work has a future, but of what purpose is education, culture or life itself. And while these questions need urgent address so too does the climate change which will make recent bushfires look like small beer.

In these ways COVID-19 is bringing forward much of what would have happened anyway. A year ago, the Commonwealth Bank announced it would slash 10,000 jobs and close 300 branches as it moved online. In March, ANZ got rid of 230 jobs, while HSBC is pressing on with plans to slash 35,000 jobs.

This had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and much to do with artificial intelligence-based algorithmic processing. Meanwhile, some university leaders dream of the day when ‘expensive’ teachers are replaced with ‘online delivery’.

The current attacks on the ABC and public universities are taking place in the midst of an unprecedented political-health crisis that is being used to rationalise what has been on the horizon for some time. What is missing amid all the talk of urgency and emergency is well-informed public discussion.

Now is the time more than ever that we need universities and the ABC, whose business it is to generate well-informed public discussion. At stake is the health of our democracy, and of our capacity to navigate what may prove to be one of the more challenging times humans have ever confronted. •