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“Whose ABC?”: the first 100 pages

Cover of Whose ABC?

I’ve just read the first 100 pages of Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983-2006. I’m enjoying the journey, but I’m wondering if “eminent historian” K S Inglis is talking about the same organisation where I worked from 1984 to 1991.

You see, at my ABC we used to make programs.

Inglis’ ABC is a boardroom, a managing director’s office, and the occasional brawl with politicians.

So while I half-recognise what he’s talking about — someone called Geoffrey Whitehead as MD, the re-naming of Radio Two to Radio National and all that — very little of what he’s saying seems to reflect the day-to-day reality of broadcasting.

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What hope the Liberal candidate?

OK, the Liberals have a snowflake’s chance of winning our local seat of Marrickville in the forthcoming NSW state election, so they can let any muppet have a go. But if this is the best election flyer you can come up with, Ramzy Mansour, then who are you kidding?

Photo of Ramzy Mansour's election flyer

Consider:

  • If you can’t even organise someone who can cut paper in a straight line, what makes you think you can run the state of New South Wales?
  • If you can’t raise the $3000 to professionally print the 45,000 leaflets necessary to hit your electorate, how little support do you actually have?
  • If you can’t do the basic financial management to understand that for large print runs, offset printing is a lot cheaper than photocopying, why on earth would I trust you with a billion-dollar state budget?

1 out of 10, can do much, much better.