Outspoken activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has weighed in on the heated debate surrounding the privatisation of the ABC by joking that she’d ‘be down’ to run the public broadcaster herself.
Ms Abdel-Magied was tagged in a tweet by communications consultant Jonathan Brown which read: ‘I think we should make @yassmin Managing Director of the ABC just to watch [people] lose their s**t.’
She re-tweeted the words with the caption ‘I’m down’ accompanied by a relieved emoji and a wink emoji.
Her tweet caused debate with the controversial figure unsurprisingly receiving both support and criticism from the response.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied has tweeted that she would be ‘down’ to run the ABC
‘I am available to be your personal a) driver b) coffee runner c) collector of angry white man tears from the mob at The Australian,’ wrote one supporter.
‘Sure! Let’s give her another tax-funded job she’s woefully unqualified for!’ tweeted a detractor.
Debate around the privatisation of the ABC has raged since the Liberal party rank and file went rouge from the government and voted to privatise the broadcaster last week.
The opposition jumped on the decision, using it to criticise the Turnbull Government while ministers scrambled to shoot down the idea.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attempted to pour water on the flames by telling reporters in Canberra that the broadcaster will never be sold.
‘The ABC will always be in public hands. It will never be sold. That is my commitment. It is a public broadcaster. It always has been and it always will be,’ Mr Turnbull said.
Her tweet caused debate with the controversial figure unsurprisingly receiving both support and criticism from the response
The debate has also flared editorial lines across different media competitors and while The Australian has historically taken a heavily critical position towards the ABC it recently condemned the vote.
In a recent op-ed Associate Editor Chris Kenny wrote that : ‘There are five key reasons why the ABC won’t and shouldn’t be privatised.’
While littering his article with arguments for descaling the ABC’s funding, he also argued that: ‘Even if it wanted to, the government would never be able to sell the ABC because it will be blocked by parliament, public backlash, strikes, internal political dissent and all the rest of it.’
After several days of silence ABC boss Michelle Guthrie made an impassioned speech to the Melbourne Press Club vowing the ABC will not be a ‘punching bag’ for political and vested interests and mapped out the economic benefit the public broadcaster brings to the nation.
Michelle Guthrie made an impassioned speech to the Melbourne Press Club vowing the ABC will not be a ‘punching bag’ for political interests
‘[Australians] regard the ABC as one of the great national institutions [and] deeply resent it being used as a punching bag by narrow political, commercial or ideological interests,’ Ms Guthrie said.
‘Inherent in the drive against the independent public broadcaster is a belief that it can be pushed and prodded into different shapes to suit the prevailing climate. It can’t. Nor should it be.’
The broadcaster is set to become an election issue after the coalition moved to freez $84million of its annual funding for three years from July 2019.
Guthrie also hit back at the repeated cuts saying they: ‘rob the ABC of its ability to finance new content and innovation.’
‘This whittling away of our funding represents a real opportunity cost and, in the end, serves only to punish those audiences,’ she said.