Liberal Party council votes to sell off the ABC (Australia) - Polidicks

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/liberal-party-council-votes-to-sell-off-the-abc-20180616-p4zlut.html The Liberal Party’s peak council has voted almost 2:1 to privatise the ABC after hearing calls from members to save taxpayer funds by selling the public broadcaster in the same way icons like Qantas were sold decades ago. Council delegate Mitchell Collier, the federal vice president of the Young Liberals, said he had enjoyed ABC programs such as Bananas in Pyjamas during his childhood but he believed there was no economic case for keeping the broadcaster in public hands.

muh taxpayer money checkbook balancing publicly funded broadcasting is always a good thing. It doesn't have the constraints of trying to be purely profit driven and can venture out in different types of content that can different, niche appeals. BBC has funded many documentaries over the course of its life while something like the History channel, which used to do a lot of documentaries, has shifted to low effort reality TV. PBS has some of the best news coverage in America and has been a host of many good shows. This is a terrible move.

You stupid fucking conservative fucks

Oh Shit this is gonna be received SUPER POORLY if it actually happens.

PBS is the only respite from all the fucking commercials jesus, they ask for money but that's way less annoying than commercials. PBS has Nova, concerts, BBC, kids shows with no fucking commercials, Aussies better raise some hell about this.

I swear to christ these clowns had better not get voted back in. I'm tired of reading about their fuck ups.

At least Labor isn't in charge, THEY PUT US IN DEFICIT!!!!

Oh Trust me they will, The ABC is well loved by almost everyone and each time they cut it's funding the Liberals ratings go down. They're not in a winning position as it is already and actually going through with something like this would be political suicide.

This is fucked if it goes through, what most people don't realise is that the ABC is the only form of media for those people living out in rural areas of the country. If it does get sold off, there's a pretty big chance that they'll lose these services entirely. Not to mention it'll make our TV even more shitty than it is now

I have to post again I am so fucking mad about this They fucked up our NBN and now they want to pull this shit those stupid fucking cunts better get kicked to the fucking curbed in the next election, next thing you know they're going to actually succeed in fucking up our healthcare cause fuck poor people right? Who ever votes for the LNP in the next election deserve a good fucking slap in the nuts

The ABC is getting the death by a thousand cuts treatment and not an outright privatization. The Liberals are fuckwits but they're not dumb, they wouldn't risk their re-election chances by bringing this to the table in their campaign. Guaranteed they will just continue cutting funding to the ABC in the name of 'efficiency savings'. And when the ABC is providing a poor service because of said cuts, they'll use that as an excuse to cut more because the public isn't getting 'bang for their buck'. Repeat ad-nauseum with all the different government-funded services they don't like. Straight from the neo-liberal 'let it atrophy and then reap the profits' playbook.

Fortunately this isn’t party room policy. For the Liberals at the federal level, party policy is decided by votes among only Liberal party MPs and Senators elected to the parliament iirc. While these votes indicate what rank-and-file Liberal party members want, the Turnbull government are not beholden to them. And there has been opposition to at least several of these measures by members of the cabinet.

the nbn was doomed from the start, it was meant to be a coop between telstra to maintain the monopoly. Now the liberals come along with the mtm to save cash, did the opposite but at least telstra isnt such a big player as they were meant to be. Honestly, voting for liberals or labor im gonna get a slap in the nuts. But hey at least they caved to legslizing gay marriages, as much as they didnt want to. At the end of the day ABC wont be privatized, even though its a wet dream for the liberals. I dont think anyone would stand for it.

Yeah Looking into this further, looks like it was a suggestion from some wanker from the "Young Liberals" who are basically a group of ultra-conservative rich trust fund kiddies who think Ayn Rand had good ideas. Still pretty scary so many people voted in favor of selling the ABC off. The Liberal party is going through a bit of an identity crisis right now with (ironically) conservatives members still pissed Tony Abbott got the boot and more moderate members trying to stop the crazies from taking over.

It's not even about balancing the checkbook, the Liberals could easily balance the checkbook by, I dunno, collecting more than pocket change in taxes from mining companies and not throwing taxpayer money at them constantly? But nah, gotta protect the interests of the billionaires who run those companies, so let's just cut everything else. Cut healthcare, cut education, cut the ABC, cut everything we can, so we can continue throwing money at people who already have more money than they could spend in a lifetime. Australian conservative politicians can all go die in a fucking fire. Last time they were in power here in my state, they cut so much federal funding that 14,000 people lost their jobs, all so they could spend $9.5 billion funding more mining projects that employ maybe a tenth of that number and would've happened anyway, then tell the media "Look, look at all those mining jobs we created! Aren't we great?"

The Liberal Part are a bunch of cunts.