Founders of Sydney Friends of the ABC

The Friends of the ABC in Sydney began in 1976 with a conversation between four friends in the northern suburb of Turramurra. It was the home of Walter and Corin Fairburn Bass, during a visit from neighbours Hans and Faith Bandler. Corin remembers the occasion well:

Walter Bass and Hans Bandler were Jewish refugees from Vienna – Walter’s father and Hans Bandler had been detained in the same camp in 1938. Walter Bass arrived in Australia as a child in 1939 and became a devoted listener of ABC radio’s ‘Argonauts’. Corin Fairburn Bass had come to Sydney from New Zealand to study piano at the Conservatorium and was often active in community campaigns.

Hans and Faith Bandler had met at an Australian Peace Council musical evening in the 1940s at which Hans screened documentaries about Indigenous culture. Faith Bandler was the leader of the 1967 referendum to change the Commonwealth constitution to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the census.

The shared experience of the four founders contributed to the successful launch of the group. Faith Bandler authorised a newspaper advertisement signed by eminent figures from the arts announcing the formation of the Friends of the ABC. Walter Bass urged the public to write to government to oppose funding cuts. The group’s first public meeting was addressed by a range of speakers that showed the breadth of support for the ABC.

The founders stepped back from the committee in 1977, though all continued to support its work. Walter Bass became the leading spokesperson for the NSW Friends of the ABC in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a tireless letter writer and articulate speaker on its behalf. Corin Fairburn Bass is still an active member of the Northern Suburbs of Sydney branch of ABC Friends.

Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews

The founder of Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews in Melbourne was Meg Paul, a school librarian and parent, who was active in local politics. She was also a member of the Children’s Television Action Committee, a group who campaigned for better programmes for children.

In 1976, she was alarmed by news of cuts to the ABC and wrote to Melbourne’s Herald newspaper. Her letter, under the headline ‘Let’s defend the ABC’, argued against cuts to the ABC and for its independence. She suggested forming a group to lobby for the ABC – and enough people contacted her to do just that. They met in her kitchen and started a newsletter.

Meg wrote letters to newspapers, contacted politicians during election campaigns and organised public meetings.

In 1980, Meg Paul was invited to speak at a conference at the Australian National University in Canberra about the group she had founded:

Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews are credited by historian Ken Inglis with persuading Liberal backbenchers in late 1976 to block a move to abolish the ABC’s staff-elected Commissioner. The group’s newsletters were distributed to supporters in Victoria and interstate until 1985 when the committee was dissolved and its membership list sent to Friends of the ABC in Sydney.

Meg Paul spoke in 2023 about the activities the group undertook, admitting how much they had enjoyed it:

Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews Rally, Melbourne 1976

ABC Staff Association

The ABC Staff Association and ABC Friends groups were generally on common ground in the face of threats to the number of staff at the ABC. After the Fraser government announced cuts to the ABC’s funding in February 1976, the Acting Chair, Dr Earle Hackett estimated more than a thousand staff would be retrenched. The Staff Association called meetings to discuss its response, including the possibility of industrial action. Press coverage of the Staff Association’s deliberations was one factor that alerted the public to the need to stand up for the ABC.

In 1978, the ABC Staff association in NSW held stop work meetings and organised industrial action which resulted in black outs for radio and tv over several days. The Sydney Friends of the ABC placed an advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald commending the sacrifice made by staff in losing pay and called on the public to support them.

Tom Molomby was vice president of the NSW Staff Association at this time. He remembers becoming aware of the group called Friends of the ABC and welcoming its independence.

While the Staff Association welcomed the support of the Friends of the ABC, Molomby is adamant that the organisations determined strategies separately.

Tom Molomby was the staff-elected director from 1983–1988. He left the ABC in 1988 and wrote about his time in his book Is there a moderate on the roof? published in 1991.

Geoffrey Dutton

In July 1982, the Canberra Times published an interview with Geoffrey Dutton who had just become the first national spokesperson for the Friends of the ABC. Dutton was a well-known poet, author, academic and broadcaster,  yet it’s not fully clear how he came to be appointed to the role (possibly through his friendship with the poet Judith Rodriguez who was later the president of the Victorian Friends of the ABC).

Dutton told the Canberra Times of his enthusiasm for the ABC following the government’s decision to throw out the Dix review proposal for corporate sponsorship. He was optimistic the charter would lead to a more ‘hopeful spirit throughout the ABC’ whose staff had been ‘mucked around over the years’.

Dutton does not appear to have been overly visible in his new role, but his appointment indicates a long-standing interest in having a unified Friends of the ABC nationally – the idea appears in a resolution passed in 1978 at a Sydney meeting. After national conferences began in the 1990s, South Australian Joan Laing launched the newsletter Background Briefing as a national publication in 1999. Professor Alan Knight was named national spokesperson of the Friends of the ABC at the national conference in May 2007.

Friends of the ABC initiated moves towards more formal unification in 2014, resulting in ABC Friends National in 2016.

Reflection: Using the media

A key objective for the founders of Friends of the ABC and Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews was becoming visible – to potential supporters, to politicians, and to the larger public. In the mid-1970s, the press was a means to achieve this. Notices of meetings were placed in the columns of classified advertising, letters were written to editors, and ABC Friends leaders became adept with quotable comments when editorial interest turned towards them.

Newspaper ads were occasionally used to attract supporters in the twenty-first century. The advertisements presented the reason for the groups’ existence. They also conveyed the message that members of the public could do something about it – ads for meetings defined a space for action.

On occasion, the Friends of the ABC branches placed large advertisements in broadsheet papers. These declared and explained their position in relation to specific attacks on the ABC. The ads often had the look of petitions with lists of supporters that included prominent individuals in amongst everyday members of the groups. These ads implied that ‘the ABC is common cause for anyone and all’. This style of presentation returned in 2018, for a full page in the Australian Book Review.

Letters to the editor from Friends’ representatives appeared with some regularity for many years. Meg Paul and Walter Bass provided letters with bite, likely to interest readers, and were rewarded with headlines – or even on occasion, cartoons.

Letters to newspapers continued to set an agenda for discussion. One of the tasks for Friends’ volunteers in the 1990s was to monitor letters published in newspapers for supporters of the ABC not already known to them and make contact with them. 

There was a considerable amount of editorial press attention in the first years of the groups’ existence. This may have been due in part to the novelty of their existence, coupled with a view of the ABC audience as staid rather than stroppy. The participation of well-known ABC faces, as well as prominent public figures, at events organised by Friends of the ABC and Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews helped to secure attention.

The groups’ activities were also covered on occasion by the ABC itself, with live radio interviews prior to major rallies and television reports afterwards. But over the years, not every such event was reported either by the ABC or the relevant newspapers. Despite the steady production by ABC Friends of submissions to government inquiries, with associated media releases, media attention was generally confined to big events, featuring big names, such as the rallies in Sydney in 2001 and 2018.

The early members of Friends of the ABC and Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews used the media of the day adeptly, contributing to the groups acquiring the recognition they needed to secure a future. ABC Friends continues to use the media available to it to create a visible public presence and affirm the right to advocate for an independent and well-funded ABC.

August 1996: rallying season

Rallies have traditionally given the public a chance to declare their support for a cause: a slew of rallies took place in August 1996 to let ABC supporters do precisely that.

The first, at The Domain in Sydney on 4 August, was organised by ABC staff – journalists Maxine McHugh and Quentin Dempster shared the stage with Jemima from Play School and the Bananas in Pyjamas, before Christine Anu, Roy and H.G. and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra among others entertained an estimated crowd of 60,000.

A stall run by NSW Friends of the ABC enabled 4,000 letters to be written by members of the public to politicians. Among the many speakers was magistrate Pat O’Shane, who took issue with Bob Mansfield saying he did not want the inquiry he was then chairing into the ABC to become ‘emotional’. Pat O’Shane’s response was to declare ‘we are entitled to be emotional about the things we care about and if he can’t stand our emotional heat, he should get out of the kitchen cabinet.’

Rallies continued across Australia. Friends of the ABC in Queensland spokesman George Blair spoke at an event in Brisbane on 10 August calling for ‘protection’ of the ABC.

While in Melbourne, the City Council provided the Melbourne Town Hall for a rally and concert on 12 August organised by Friends of the ABC.

June Factor’s committee produced a stylish program for the occasion. It was almost a manifesto, with statements affirming the value of the ABC from groups such as the Council on the Ageing Victoria and the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties, as well as listing ’10 good reasons’ to save the ABC.

Glenys Stradijot, then a Friends of the ABC Victoria volunteer and later employed as campaign director, remembers the part the ABC itself played in the Melbourne rally.

In September, ABC Managing Director Brian Johns addressed a Friends of the ABC rally in Adelaide, describing the proposed cuts as ‘not a pruning exercise, but wrenching’ in their impact. He made a point of referring to ‘the public outcry’ shown by the rallies.