Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory) (15:20): I want to touch on a few issues in the five minutes I have. One is the need to be making savings across the board. The Labor Party is now putting an argument that the ABC should be immune from savings—in contrast to all other government agencies that have to find savings. Under the former Labor government, agencies right across the board had to find savings. Yet the Labor Party's argument now is that the ABC should not have to find savings. It is not often that I quote a Canberra Times editorial, but I will. I will quote a couple of Canberra Times editorials on this. Senator Conroy: I could read some out about you! They are not very complimentary about you. Senator SESELJA: There are a lot of bad ones, I can tell you! But I do occasionally quote them. The Canberra Times, a few days ago, said: However, the Coalition also promised, first and foremost, to restore the budget to surplus. Given the cuts that have been visited on other public sector institutions, it's only reasonable the ABC should be asked to bear its share of the burden, and to do so in such a way that preserves programming as much as possible. I think that is a very reasonable point and I think it is something most people would agree with—that savings should be able to be found in the ABC. We know in fact that there are many savings to be found. Senator Abetz quoted a little bit from a Fairfax article by Louise Evans, a former manager of Radio National, that appeared yesterday. She was talking about some of the waste at Radio National. She says that she was: … shocked by the culture, waste, duplication and lax work place practices exercised in some pockets of Radio National. I was even more shocked by the failure of the executive to want to do anything about it. She goes on to say: One problem … was the so-called lifers, a pocket of predominantly middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon staff who had never worked anywhere other than the ABC, who were impervious to change, unaccountable, untouchable and who harboured a deep sense of entitlement. They didn't have a 9-5 mentality. They had a 10-3 mentality. They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch and popped out to Paddy's Market to buy fresh produce for dinner before going home. There is waste to be found. We saw recent examples. We have two public broadcasters getting, between them, billions of dollars over the next few years. In fact, even under the changes, the ABC will still be receiving $5.2 billion over the next five years. So let's not pretend that for $5.2 billion over the next five years they cannot fund women's sport. Let's not pretend that they cannot do that if they really want to. They are refusing to make the savings in other areas. One example is outbidding SBS for Asian Cup rights. We have SBS—publicly funded but able to actually get advertising revenue when they bid for the football—being outbid by another public broadcaster, upping the price to taxpayers. Do taxpayers really care whether it is going to be on SBS or ABC? I would argue that SBS is well-placed to deliver very good football coverage as it is something that they have been doing for a long time. So that is the kind of waste that we see. Let's be clear on this as well. We have seen it said today— Senator Conroy interjecting— Senator SESELJA: Senator Conroy can interject all he likes. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Ignore the interjections. Senator SESELJA: I will ignore the interjections as I highlight this. ABC board member Dr Stanley today, on Radio National, I think, this morning defended the cuts despite being anguished about them, saying that the regional newsrooms were 'probably going to be cut anyway'. So the ABC was already planning on making these kinds of cuts, and they are now using these savings as an excuse to make the kinds of cuts that they wanted to make anyway. Instead of looking internally, instead of looking at Ultimo, they have gone out to the regions and made the cuts, because presumably they judge that somehow they will therefore be able to blame the government for the cuts that they wanted to make any way. The room is there to cut in other areas. Mark Scott has made these decisions. I believe that many of them are unreasonable decisions, but they are for him to take responsibility for. (Time expired)