Cutting out sport is the ABC’s solution

THE solution to the ABC’s government-imposed financial trouble should be straight-forward. It should just apply the sort of principles that the conservative side of politics in Australia has been preaching for decades.

The principle is that the public sector should not do things that the private sector can do adequately.

The public sector, they have argued, should only do things that the private sector cannot, does not or will not do.

In short, the public sector corrects market failure and fills gaps.

The ABC’s critics at News Ltd and among commercial broadcasters argue that the ABC does nothing the commercial’s cannot do. They are wrong on that. The commercials do not cover in depth serious news and current affairs well enough.

Nor do they cover niche interests.

But the commercial and free-to-air broadcasters do cover an enormous amount of live sport adequately and all the commentary and “news” that goes with it.

The ABC would be better to cut all major live sport, maybe just doing some sport the commercials do not do – women’s and regional.

The ABC might cover all the impending cuts with just this move, rather than attacking shows like Lateline; the state and territory 7.30 reports and niche Radio National shows.

The public would be better served. The ABC does not have to report team selections, injury details (other than life-threatening ones which are news), and all the sports babble associated with the four main football codes, cricket, racing, the Olympics and so on.

It could just drop the sports section from its news bulletins.

Anyone interested in sport can turn to a commercial channel or go online. After all, much major sport in Australia is a commercial operation. Why does the public broadcaster have to give oxygen to these businesses?

DOT DOT DOT

WHY would Defence Minister David Johnston say he would not trust the government-owned ship-builder ASC to build a canoe unless there was some truth in it?

He cannot dismiss it as a rhetorical flourish.

His comment is quite timely because it invites a closer look at Australia’s military spending. Other countries, including the US, are certainly doing that.

We need to ask the question: are big weapons systems a useful way to spend defence money when the security position has changed so radically.

The prospect of a nation-to-nation war involving Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain or the United States with another nation is extremely remote.

The idea of lining up with big weapons systems against an open nation-state enemy is almost laughable.

Rather, our main security threats come from terrorism, climate change and infectious disease. In these instances low-level systems – even canoes – might be more useful than huge submarines or jet fighters.

The military-industrial complex is out-living its usefulness. Big weapons systems are almost entirely useless against counter-insurgency or lone terrorists.

Australia has two big weapons purchases on the horizon: the joint strike fighter aircraft and the submarines to replace the Collins class.

Both are hideously expensive. Figures vary according to whether you include maintenance, staffing and training. The submarine project will cost $20 for the vessels and maybe double that again in maintenance, training and staffing them. The aircraft project will be at least $12 billion for the aircraft and again maybe double that again for the training, staffing and maintenance.

The germ of truth in Johnston’s rhetorical flourish is that Australia has a bloated defence acquisition bureaucracy which spends too much money on its own administration and on some weapons that are no longer suited to meet the real threats.

The Defence Materiel Organisation spends about $10 billion a year – 40 per cent on administration. Its staff has doubled to 7500 in the past 10 years with no significant increase in weapons purchases.

The Government has outlined a plan to do something about it, but there may be a more fundamental problem, which the Americans are suffering from, too.

The problem is an adherence to the acquistion model of the old military-industrial complex in which a few defence-devoted companies dominate supply and in which too many military officers add requests for functions thus driving costs up.

The process has become too complex. Accounting, auditing and anti-corruption rules are too cumbersome.

Meanwhile non-defence companies – especially computer companies – are pushing ahead with things like 3D printing, cloud computing, cyber-security, nanotechnology, smart phones, robotics and drones. These have been developed for non-military use, but have obvious military uses.

As it happens, these companies might be forcing a welcome change in military procurement. They are simply not interested in the weapons-procurement process which would require them to change their accounting, security and intellectual property models. And they are not interested in having people (like military officers) meddling in projects by asking for more capabilities and functions.

Rather they invent and produce according to what they think they might market. If the military want it, they will just have to take it as is and pay the ticketed price – usually much, much lower than any purpose-built military product.

The salient lesson for Australia’s weapons procurement which hangs so dependently on US coat tails, is that as the US has developed ever more powerful, more capable, more technological advanced weapons, its place in the world and its capacity to shape events has become more impotent.
CRISPIN HULL
This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 29 November 2014.