Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes ABC Radio National’s decision to axe the Religion Report, the Media Report and the Sports Factor;

(b)

notes that:

(i)

the Religion Report is one of the most important programs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) with a rapidly growing international audience, and

(ii)

this program broke the Peter Hollingworth scandal, has applied critical analysis of the Exclusive Brethren, Anglican, Catholic and Muslim religions amongst others and provided insightful commentary of various religions over many years; and

(c)

calls on the ABC management:

(i)

publicly to reveal all formal and informal criticisms made against this program over recent years, and

(ii)

immediately to make public the reasons for this decision.

Question agreed to.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—In supporting the intent of this motion and reinforcing our concerns about the ceasing of religion reports on Radio National, the coalition want to put clearly on the record that we do not support the negative insinuations contained in part (b)(ii) of this motion.