And the question before the Committee: Why has Quadrant had its funding cut?
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No excuse for the ALPBC now, a Billion a year spending cut…
That will cause a future historian some real difficulties.
Other than being Howard’s mate and one time headkicker, is there a reason Heffernan is still on the Senate ticket? Abetz always seems to give a pretty good account of himself, something of a change given the amount of damage Tasmanian senators have done over the years.
I suppose you could say that the cut to Quadrant’s funding is political, in one way. After all, Quadrant is a fascist magazine, that spouts inane far right views in nearly every issue, and particularly on its website. Windschuttle particularly is a shocker with his anti-aboriginal views, which in my opinion amount to racism. I’m appalled that this filthy mag gets any funding by taxpayers at all. The late McGuinness was at least as bad.
They sacked the only good, rational editor they ever had.
Vile slurs from Hammy. Ugh. Why cant we have a better class of troll?
“Why cant we have a better class of troll?” or at least one with some sense of originality.
If Labor gets back the hammyleft will get to prosecute all speech it finds “offensive”, Windschuttle is certainly looking at gaol time if he continues publishing …..bad news from the front, possum, your comrades are toast and Rudd won’t help. Two term toast.
The thing that I find hilarious, is that they aren’t even trying to have a veneer of fairness.
Perhaps with the change of government, they should do what the public servants and board members have done here – cut all lefty grants – you’d have another epithet from Mr Marr saying how free speech is being murdered by criminals etc….which would provide us all with a laugh for a good minute or two.
Pretty simple, cut funding for all of them by 1/2, or even better defund all of them.
As much as I like Quadrant I dont see a compelling case for taxpayers subsidizing any magazine/media.
Spot on, Frollick. However, while funding is being granted to other lefty enterprises, then the question remains as to why Quadrant has been singled out for cuts.
You will never see a more thorough vindication of Windschuttle’s scholarship than the post made by the HamsterAmygdala at 11:39 am.
Well done, sir.
Hammy, I bet if the government funded Fairfax’s Daily Life you’d be fine with it. A bunch of fat chicks talking about their fannies is empowering but one of the calmest and most rational journals you’ll read anywhere is fascist.
Tell me about it – I wish they’d quit the “Viva Mussolini” stuff already! And all that ranting about how Aborigines are sub-human and the government needs to institutionalise genocide – it gets tiresome.
Why would Quadrant want to take taxpayer money in the first place?
This is the problem when you have any government funding…. The socialists grab all of it…That’s their job. To exist off of any pool of money set up for the “public good”
If you don’t want the socialists grabbing all the money… Then don’t make it available to them. Force them to compete not for funding, but for market share instead…. and you will separate the goats from the sheep.
Compete for funding… What a nonsense remark. Competing for financial assistance. So what assistance?… and who decides who is worthy of what?
Reverse Darwinism if you ask me…. What are we paying for?… The best of the worst?
Given that the election-date HAS been announced by the Prime Spin-ster, and that the A.L.P.B.C. HAS been gifted another $10 million by the A.L.P., have the people behind “Quadrant” got legal grounds for taking the matter further?
We are in the run-up to an election and the A.L.P. is reaching into the taxpayer’s pocket to fund its own propaganda arm to the tune of $10 million, while “Quadrant” is cut.
The sooner the fleet of paddy wagons roll up to Parliament House, the better.
Towards the end of that slow-filleting Senator Abetz explains that the money goes strictly to the literary component of the magazine. Are you advocating no literary funds to anyone, Chris?
Why are we funding any of them?
Also, the idea that the number of pieces of writing published should be the way we judge a magazine worthy of subsidy is just bizarre.
There is a positive to come out of this.
This is a green light to cut lefty funding everywhere. I’m certain Quadrant will survive far better than its lefty competition in the absence of taxpayer funding.
Bring it on.
Program Grants
The Australian Society of Authors Ltd (NSW) $38,000
Towards a National Writers’ Congress & professional development programs
Express Media Inc (VIC) $38,000
Publication of 4 print and digital editions of Voiceworks and 12 launch events nationally
Island Magazine Inc (TAS) $40,000
To publish 4 issues of Island in 2013
Quadrant Magazine Ltd (NSW) $20,000
Towards fees for literary contributors in Quadrant in 2013
Queensland Writers Centre Association Inc (QLD) $25,000
Support for Australian writers to create work & experiment with books/technology on if: book Australia
The Small Press Network (VIC) $20,000
Towards the Small Press Roadshow in 2013: Australia-wide showcase of independently published authors
The English Association Sydney Inc (NSW) $35,000
Publication of 3 issues of Southerly in 2013 and website upgrade
The Literature Centre Inc (WA) $30,000
Expenses for Australian writers to participate in Celebrate Reading National Conference & touring
Writing WA Inc (WA) $40,000
Towards an annual program of activities to support and advance the literary sector in Western Australia
So Jarrah would agree to defund the ABC. Good to know.
Those grants would barely keep an author in lentils and airfares to writers festivals.
No I’m happy for some government funding of literature. I’m even happy for them to go to literature in Quadrant. It just seems a bit contrary to Quadrant’s general view on government funding and that they would have preferred instead to get private funding.
“So Jarrah would agree to defund the ABC. Good to know.”
The ABC doesn’t get funding from the Australia Council, but you’re not exactly wrong about my view. Privatise by giving shares to every citizen, more accurately.
Let’s assume that government support for the Yartz is desirable and that funding decisions should be arms length from government.
Rather than entrust such decisions to industry insiders who by definition are luvvies, the Yartz budget would be best disbursed by voucher. However the current annual budget of $170 million per year would entitle each Australian adult to a little over $10 pa which would be useless and adminstratively inefficient.
Instead one million adults could be randomly selected each year to receive vouchers which they could spend on the arts events or publications of their choice.
I’ll see you at the Gympie Muster.
Yep. Best this government has done so far. This will now give the libs the excuse to rip the shit outta leftie funding in a huge way.
University chairs held by leftists … Cut to zero.
There should be no government funding of course.
Jarrah – that is a very interesting comment. It would appall both the ALP and Greens party hierachies though. To pay for costs you would need a revenue stream, which would have to be generated somehow. PBS model?
Steve – or you could have kickstarter like system for arts funding. Projects that want government funding put the details up on the website. People can just login (re-use auth systems used for medicare etc) and direct their voucher money wherever they want. That would also make it a lot easier for projects to acquire private funding.
Any money not used by the end of the financial year either goes back into general revenue or towards larger allocations per person the following year.
Don’t forget about those writers festivals where “heroes” such as Chomsky and Muhammed Dawood receive cash prizes which ultimately come from the taxpayer.
A very sound viewpoint
As per the unidentified female bureaucrat’s testimony, this is one of the key mechanisms used to ensure the left controls who gets Australia Council funding.
In a perfect world, those on this thread who wonder why we at Quadrant take any taxpayer dollars would be quite right to do so. Sadly, this mortal plane is a cesspit of favouritism and corruption, and if we at Quadrant didn’t take the cash, reduced though it has been, it would go to fund another couple of decibels from the left’s perpetual megaphone.
This is a purely personal opinion and should not be taken as Quadrant’s position, but a sweeping reform of the entire arts funding racket is much needed and long overdue.
Consider this example: Anita Heiss bags $90,000 to write a pair choc-chic lit books. Her publisher, Random House, is relieved of the need to provide her with an advance, and she of the obligation to sell enough copies to cover it before she can stash any further royalties into designer handbag. She’s in the black, so to speak, from the get-go.
How does this help Australian arts or writing? When I write a book, my Australian publisher slings me a few bucks and hopes he can flog enough to make a return on investment.
His direct competitor, Random House, has no overheads as a result of that grant, can afford to discount as a consequence and also spend big on advertising and promotions. Random is, of course, a multinational, but somehow Australian publishers being screwed by taxpayer-subsidised overseas giants doesn’t seem to worry the left, at least not when it is one of their own sharing the trough.
And one final note: We are in the process of re-vamping Quadrant Online. The work is being done at mate’s rates by a lovely techie, but it will still represent a substantial drain on the bank account.
In the same tranche of grants that saw Quadrant’s halved, in addition to its other funding, Meanjin is getting $30,000 just for its website — 50% more than we scored for everything we do.
Whether government should fund the arts is, for the moment, moot. What isn’t is that the system we have is an insult to transparency, impartial decisions and the taxpayers’ pockets.
Chris
Maybe not an ‘or’ but an ‘as well’.
“PBS model?”
There are any number of models for a privatised ABC to use, including straight-up commercialisation. But given the core business, corporate culture, and the public expectation of the ABC, something along the lines of a hybrid non-profit subscriber/cross-subsidised method would be likely.
Could you elaborate on that? What is “corporate culture” and “the public expectation” in particular.
Tom, that Register of Peers is certainly interesting and very open to the sort of corruption that occurs in the academic refereeing process.
Political parties should be able to nominate their ‘peers’ in the Arts fields, and possibly in the Sciences also, with votes on a weighted index of the partiies’ share of vote. Consultation with ‘peers’ across the nominated spectrum should be mandatory before any funds are granted.
That’s if the whole charade is to be continued. Selection processes for anything are inherently subject to biases. I’m with those who want to cut all such funding and let the market for ideas and good writing sort it out.
And who is Meanjin’s publisher? None other than Mrs Jonathan Green, Sally Heath, best friend of gay feminist publisher and author Sophie Cunningham, the chair of the Literature Board, which decided to cut Quadrant’s funding and increase Meanjin’s. The incestuous leftwing mafia regards the Australia Council as its own bank account.
and former Meanjin editor.
Lol.
It’s grown in a test tube, cohenite.
The ABC’s is a “rich tapestry of diversity of opinion”.
“What is “corporate culture” and “the public expectation” in particular.”
Corporate culture is the organisational culture specific to a group. It’s an emergent property of the type of people in the group and the type of work they do (both of which are co-dependent). I think we can all agree that the ABC’s history of doing what it does means that it has employed people who tend to think that is what the ABC is for.
Decades of the public seeing the ABC as non-commercial, as local, as quality-driven rather than ratings-driven, etc, means that generally people’s expectations about the ABC are that it will continue doing what it does. Or at least the bits that they like.
If after privatisation all Australians have a say, through their shares, in how the ABC evolves, I suspect the large majorities that approve of the job it’s doing will vote to maintain significant similarities with its former government-funded self.
You contradict yourself Jarrah; you say this:
And then you say:
.
The ABC is undisputably left and Green in its choice and presentation of programs and news; that is the “emergent” property you are talking about which is no more than the bias of the employees which now constitute the abc culture.
But since the majority of people in Australia are not of the left/green persuasion it is a contradiction to assume the majority will support a different funding mechanism for the abc which is still based on a continuation of that bias which is different from the community majority.
I really think the abc has effectively been subverted and no longer represents the community which funds it. In that respect the communitys’ expectations have been thwarted by at least a decade of the abc not giving a fair exposure to community views on such crucial issues as AGW, aboriginal rights, immigration, illegal and legal, community censorship and freedom of expression.
The abc is currently not answerable to anyone; I have first hand experience of that; after a regime change at the Drum I am now unpublishable despite a lengthy publishing history prior to that regime change; that applies to many of my fellow travellers and sceptics. Complaints through the inhouse system are a joke and no attempt at self-remediation by the abc is evident.
If the coalition get in at the next election and do not root and branch the abc then they deserve everything they get thereafter.
I feel a bout of cognitive disonance coming on. I was sure that a defining characteristic of lefties was self delusion. Not in this case.
Here’s a good funding model:
Cut all public arts funding, cut taxes accordingly, and let 20+ million ‘peers’ fund their own literature.
Because it depends on subsidy and to cut it would harm or even end what is a longstanding marvelous contribution to Australian intellectual life. Still, I suppose it is in line with Australia’s general momentum and trajectory towards becoming a total cultural toilet.
Good on the senator.
Be nice if rather than spunking a couple hundred mill on Fairfax or whatnot some rich bastard with a conservative bent dropped their parking money in Quadrant’s tin.
Too right!
Because Gina wants to spend her money where she can influence opinion.
How many people here actually have a subscription to Quadrant or buy it off the shelves more than once a year. I am sure there are a few of you, but I am betting most people here never read it.
I think Jarrah’s forgetting that an ABC that’s privatised would soon crash, and the shares become pretty much worthless. It’s kept on the drip by government funds, like meanjin and all the other lefty groups/publications. Quadrant, if it lost the government/arts council grant would survive. Has everyone else renewed their subscriptions?
I think subscriptions are well down – they never really recovered from that Dr Sharon Gould debacle.
Perhaps if they received more government funding they would be able to create more convincing fake CVs?
Oops, my google-vestigate skills tripped up on Sharon Gould. It was a hoax played against Quadrant not by them
I think Quadrant are ripe for picking for a similar hoax with climate science. Trouble is when you publish Lord Monckton it is hard to work out what is a hoax and what is not.
Poe’s law, I believe it is called.
” After all, Quadrant is a fascist magazine, that spouts inane far right views in nearly every issue, and particularly on its website. Windschuttle particularly is a shocker with his anti-aboriginal views, which in my opinion amount to racism. ”
Should read:
” After all, Hammygar is a fuckwit, that spouts inane views in nearly every thread, and particularly on its website. Hammygar particularly is a shocker with his anti-reason views, which in my opinion amount him/her being a drooling vegetable. ”
There – fixed it for you.
“I think Jarrah’s forgetting that an ABC that’s privatised would soon crash, and the shares become pretty much worthless.”
How can I forget something that hasn’t happened? Your sentence only works if I’m an amnesiac time traveller. Besides, how do you know for certain they would crash?
I don’t see why the ABC couldn’t survive as a subscription channel. Sky news can.
Do ABC 24?
That is the only comparable channel to sky news.
“But since the majority of people in Australia are not of the left/green persuasion it is a contradiction to assume the majority will support a different funding mechanism for the abc which is still based on a continuation of that bias which is different from the community majority.”
If I can unpick that confused sentence correctly, you’re conflating inherent ABC bias with what people actually value it for.
Anyway, lots of people will just sell their share as soon as they can, because they don’t want anything to do with the ABC. The ones who hold on to their shares, or buy more, are largely going to be people who like it already.
You’re also making the mistake of assuming your opinion about the ABC, and your political views, enjoy the support of the majority.
Regrettably the current state of electrical pedagogy is still very transphobic
There is an unfortunate emphasis on polar opposites of +ve and -ve and continued focus on male and female sockets. Naturally this is extremely upsetting and alienating our queer and transsexual class-mates.
We had a sparkies-consciousness raising session and some of the testimonies very moving, scarcely a dry eye in the room.
sigh – wrong thread
No, what I said was the abc is a left/green mouthpiece and that such a view is not representitive of the Australian community as shown, for instance, by political voting patterns.
If the abc is a left/green mouthpiece what do people actually value it for; other then those who share left/green values?
Nice to see someone running a left-wing luvvie through a woodchipper.
A lot of older people value the ABC purely because it was the only source of television when they were younger.
Particularly in regional areas where commercial channels were not broadcast (and still aren’t in some areas).
That is the main reason why the liberal party has never done anything to dismantle the ABC. A very large of proportion of their base are big fans of it, despite the bias.
OK; then it will have to be broken up into bits with one such bit catering for where commercial doesn’t go; which is where?
That’s true. My old man is a typical Liberal voter (quite an insult I know) and he has a conniption when I talk about selling off the ABC or turning it into a pay per view gay channel.
They like Poirot and Gardening Australia.
And a bunch of BBC generated content.
You were the one saying that shares should be given to all Australians. Isn’t that privatisation?
But I’m forgetting that you’re only here to be an adversary. Not to inject sense.
People will pick the eyes out of the ABC viewing because (a) the imported content can be quite good, and (b) there are no ads during the programs.
Local drama has been debased into preaching and approved stereotyping by the ABC, and their news and current affairs is, as is often commented on, a propaganda freeby for left/green political forces.
This means that much of their local content is suspect if not ardently partisan.
Another classic example of abc bias.
Now Kruszelnicki is a prominent abc rep and advocate for the scam of AGW; he had been reminded of a basic error the other day and deleted his tweeter references to this; but at the first opportunity Kruszelnicki repeats his error.
Kruszelnicki is a well educated man; he must know his error but has repeated it; he must know what he is doing and therefore he is a liar being indulged by the abc.
As for the abc the first port of call would be to abolish their news services and rebuild them from scratch. But the ‘news’ bias of the abc is not entirely their own fault; the abc relies heavily on academics and sponsors the Coversation where a hard left/green academic viewpoint is presented. The abc gains authority from these academic sources and other scientific sources such as BOM and the CSIRO, and any review and rebuild must look at these academics and other authority sources who have lied repeatedly.
It’s a big job and I’m not sure the softcocks in the coalition are up to it.
blogstrop – and also iView which has been leading the way that “free to air” TV is being consumed in Australia. None of the commercial TV alternatives come even close in comparison (ease of use, range of platforms supported, not counted towards download quota etc).
“No, what I said was the abc is a left/green mouthpiece and that such a view is not representitive of the Australian community as shown, for instance, by political voting patterns.”
Thanks for proving the first point of my sentence.
“If the abc is a left/green mouthpiece what do people actually value it for; other then those who share left/green values?”
A profoundly ignorant question, ably answered by Yobbo, CL, and Chris, but one that shouldn’t need asking by anyone presuming to know enough about the issues to comment.
“You were the one saying that shares should be given to all Australians. Isn’t that privatisation?”
Yes. However, I don’t see what that has to do with your assertion that I’m “forgetting” something that hasn’t even happened. It also doesn’t help you show why privatisation will lead to a crash.
But I’m forgetting you’re only here to insult others, not to debate policy.
Took out a subscription to Quadrant today.
Long time subscriber, here.
Jarrah, head of clay and feet to match. Your record of insistent antagonism stands, and it is just a mind game for you. You’re happiest when making obscure points that you think will discomfort us, while contributing nothing but your vision, Jarrah World, scenes from some weird shape-shifter movie.
You are just one extended ego trip.
Well done, subscribers!
Hey Jarrah,
You said:
“Anyway, lots of people will just sell their share as soon as they can, because they don’t want anything to do with the ABC. The ones who hold on to their shares, or buy more, are largely going to be people who like it already.”
Could you clarify for me please. Are you saying that people will buy or sell shares in a public enterprise based on what they like about that enterprise? Are you saying that is more important to their decision than how much profit that enterprise will make?