A billion good reasons to sell the broadcaster

This final point is a key problem with the ABC as it now operates. It was formed as a state-owned broadcasting corporation, but in the newly converged media environment it operates as a virtual newspaper online, competes in the 24-hour news space (with pay-TV) and runs a host of other enterprises that are not based on broadcasting but that support its brand.

In short, it has overstepped its raison d'etre.

That would all be fine were the entity a private organisation subject to the same ownership rules that the rest of the media is. But as a state-owned entity, not subject to commercial pressures like its competitors (during a very difficult time for the media, incidentally), the ABC has become a media version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan.

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Is it about time we privatised our ABC?

It has hastened the decline of the mainstream media by interfering in the market and it has contributed to the retreat from serious journalism that its free-to-air commercial broadcasting rivals have engaged in. A privatised ABC would help correct these worrying trends.

Of course protections would need to be written into legislation authorising the sale of the ABC; I'll come to that in a moment. But the premise for such a sale is that the argument that once underpinned the need for a public broadcaster has been muted by the rise of the internet and the new breadth of the ABC's approach.

There are good arguments for essential services remaining in government hands rather than being privatised. But the ABC is no longer an essential service. To the extent that it provides services in some regions that a commercial provider might discontinue, there is the capacity for legislation to authorise the sale of the ABC to insist on regional services being maintained, as was written into legislation covering the sale of Telstra.

This addresses managing director Mark Scott's suggestion that the ABC operates where market failure exists. (It clearly does a lot more than that, by the way.) Legislation stipulating minimum standards for ABC broadcasting in certain regions might be complex, and would certainly stifle the sale price. But it would be worth the trouble.

It is hard to justify the ABC continuing not to run commercials, even if it did remain in state hands, because doing so would help recoup the taxpayers' dollars that go into the service. The 2012-13 budget stipulated that the ABC would cost $1.1bn to run this financial year. Dwell on that amount. That money would go a long way towards funding the DisabilityCare Australia scheme or the Gonski education reforms.

Besides, SBS already runs advertisements.

I reject the argument that the quality of the service provided by the ABC would diminish were it privatised. In fact, there is a strong argument that were the ABC to compete on a level playing field with other commercial networks, those networks would have a market incentive to lift their standard of news coverage, in a bid to steal ABC viewers.

Sections of the ideological Right often spruik for privatising the ABC as part of an agenda based on perceived bias at the broadcaster. That is not my argument. I couldn't care less where the ABC's editorial line landed. If it shifted from where it is now, commercial competitors would shift into the vacated space to steal the ABC's existing audience.

So long as there are viewers who seek content along the lines that the ABC presently provides, the market will want to provide for them. Advertisers would love to tap into the substantial ABC audience. And I reject the notion that the ABC would lower the tone of its present crop of investigative news services and high-end commentary programs.

Many of these rate very well, an incentive for any commercial owner to retain them. Not to mention the fact some of the ABC's best talent hosts and works on these programs.

The broadcaster would certainly become more efficient were it privatised. But that is hardly a reason to think that the quality of its service would be lowered. Does anyone seriously think that ABC24 covers the daily news cycle as effectively or as interestingly or speedily as its commercial rival, Sky News?

Someone could only think that if they liked watching a re-run of some dated program from the main channel when news was breaking, because that is what often airs for the first hour of breaking news on ABC24 while the paperwork to shift gears gets signed and approved by management.

Invariably, government-owned entities are less efficient than privately owned ones. That is because they can afford to be. A privatised ABC would save the taxpayer more than $1bn annually, it would inject revenue into government coffers from the sale and it would give commercial competitors a market incentive to raise their news standards to steal the (newly commercialised) ABC's audience. And a privatised ABC would need to think about whether it operated as a broadcaster or an online newspaper.

Done with appropriate legislation to protect the regions and to give the government the right to make emergency announcements, for example, a privatised ABC would improve journalism in this country.