Carol Stuart, ABC Friends National Vice President, reports on the ABCF election campaign rally held in Sydney last weekend.

More than 150 supporters and ABC Friends gathered at the NSW Teachers Federation conference centre in Surry Hills on Sunday 13 April to hear from the Minister for Communications, the Hon Michelle Rowland, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young, activist Thomas Mayo, ABC Alumni President Jonathan Holmes and Sydney barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC.

The Opposition spokesperson on Communications, Melissa McIntosh, was invited but did not attend.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, said Opposition leader Peter Dutton had started the campaign threatening cuts to ABC funding, at the worst possible time. She said:

“We need a strong ABC to sift through fact and fiction,”

The Albanese Government was committed to stabilising funding and supporting greater efficiency of the ABC. She said:

“I believe in a strong and independent ABC,”

Late last year the government committed to additional ongoing funding for the ABC, and to legislate a five-year funding term, as demanded by ABC Friends.

Geoffrey Watson warned about complacency. “Australians tend to take things for granted,” he said. “One thing we take for granted is democracy itself.” But democracy is always fragile and always vulnerable, as we have seen in the USA, he said, and can be corrupted very quickly.

He said while he was not predicting a democratic collapse in Australia, it was “fraying at the edges”.

“I depend on the ABC as an essential element in protecting our democracy.”

He said. In thanking the guest speakers ABC Friends Chair, Cassandra Parkinson, said it was clear that the ABC is a pillar of our democracy which must be protected and its future guaranteed.

The Friends are campaigning for a strong vote for candidates who support a free and independent ABC at the upcoming election.

You can watch a recording of the full rally speeches here