No amount of hand-wringing, petitions, letters to Mark Scott or feigned outrage from Coalition MPs will change the fact they have ripped over half a billion dollars from the ABC and SBS after being elected on a promise not to cut the public broadcasters.

All Coalition MPs are guilty of inflicting cuts that will see amongst other things, 400 ABC employees lose their jobs, the Adelaide ABC production studio close, regional ABC radio posts in Wagin, Morwell, Gladstone, Port Augusta and Nowra shut, Radio National’s Bush Telegraph cease and The Newcastle Afternoons show axed.

Christopher Pyne, Barnaby Joyce, Bridgette McKenzie, Anne Sudmalis, Darren Chester, Sarah Henderson and all Liberal and National MPs were elected on a platform of “no cuts to the ABC or SBS” and all of them have now betrayed their constituents.

Tomorrow the Abbott Government Joint Party Room will meet and all MPs and Senators who have expressed their concern about these cuts on their local communities should stand up to Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull and have these cuts overturned.

If they do not, their protests will be nothing more than hollow and duplicitous stunts and they will have failed their local communities.

MONDAY, 24 NOVEMBER 2014