Why Australia’s cuts to news services in the Indo-Pacific are a failure of soft diplomacy

Australia seems intent on missing a vital opportunity to win the hearts and minds of our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, through its continued refusal to guarantee ongoing funding for transnational news services in the region.

Since the second world war, Australia has provided news services across this geopolitically significant region. Its first incarnation was as a propaganda service^[1] promoting the interests of Australia and the British Empire. Later it became a trusted public news service via the national broadcaster, the ABC, and its international arms, Radio Australia and Australia Television.

But over the years, successive governments, and sometimes ABC management, have cut international news services. At times the region has been left with few services^[2].

And yet, each time our Indo-Pacific neighbours seek assistance elsewhere, we act outraged^[3], while continuing to hold inquiries^[4] into the importance of engaging with Asia.

The situation has become particularly dire since US President Donald Trump slashed aid, including media aid, across the region. The cuts have left many of our most vulnerable neighbours without access to trusted news sources.

Radio Free Asia^[5] was among those hardest hit by Trump’s cuts, although it has since restarted a limited number of services. The other major public media voice, the BBC World Service, is also in a precarious funding position^[6].

At the same time, other countries, including China and Russia, have filled the void: the former with its own brand of news, and the latter with online disinformation designed to destabilise the region.

China has been very active in the media space^[7]. It takes journalists on “training” trips to China, offers incentives to newsrooms, and shows off what it calls the world’s largest newsroom through its broadcasting services.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong should be applauded for renewing the ABC’s Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy^[8], in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) budget papers. That funding has allowed a range of initiatives, including

• establishing a Pacific Local Journalism Network
• expanding regional reporting across TV, radio and digital platforms
• growing ABC Asia and ABC Pacific digital and social content
• increasing Pacific-focused radio programming
• launching Asia News Week, a weekly pan-Asian current affairs program
• providing Australian content through local media partners in Timor-Leste and Indonesia.

But the DFAT funding continues to come through her department, not communications. In other words, support for journalism across the region remains limited to a select number of countries at the whim of the foreign minister of the day.

The funding has been renewed for just two years instead of five. This creates uncertainty for program participants and adds to the costs of administration. Moreover, without indexation, the $7 million a year looks like a real budget cut. That means some of the ABC’s most skilled Pacific journalists do not have the job certainty that others in the corporation can claim.

Significantly, the decision to limit funding, and to fail to shore up its ongoing viability, comes just as ABC Pacific Local Journalism Network reporters Lice Movono (Fiji), Marian Kupu (Tonga) and Chrisnrita Aumanu-Leong (Solomon Islands), working alongside Foreign Correspondent’s Steph March, have shown the importance of this work to Australia in the two-part series, Cartel Paradise^[9]: A special investigation into the Pacific’s drug superhighway.

There could be so much more of this kind of reporting if this funding were made core to the ABC, and the mandate extended beyond the Pacific to the broader Indo-Pacific.

International services from the ABC are not an added extra. They are core to the ABC’s charter^[10] and, I would argue, to Australia’s national security. It seems absurd this work is not fully funded into the future.

There are military and strategic reasons to provide quality news and information, in partnership with our neighbours across the region.

But there are also purely altruistic reasons for working with our neighbours, who need critical public information sources in the face of authoritarianism, climate change and severe weather events.

In this new world order, Australia needs to be careful not to continue treating our neighbours as lesser. Understanding we need to be genuine partners, rather than a paternalistic presence, is key to the long-term success of providing news and information across the region.

Australia’s continued support for the ABC’s international efforts seems like a no-brainer. Its 2023 ABC survey^[11] across six Pacific nations — Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu — found trust levels approaching 80%, comparable to those in Australia.

Compared with major international broadcasters, including the BBC, CNN and national networks from France, Japan, New Zealand and China, the ABC was the most valued source of news via websites, apps or social media in every market except Fiji, where Al Jazeera was preferred.

That said, the ABC does not always get it right. The region could do with a few more supported voices rather than just the ABC, such as the excellent Benar News Service, which was shut down in the Trump cuts.

Supporting media diversity, including local news outlets, is an easy way to show the region we have shed our colonial past and are genuinely seeking to be partners.

References

1. ^{^} propaganda service (www.abc.net.au)
2. ^{^} few services (theconversation.com)
3. ^{^} outraged (www.theguardian.com)
4. ^{^} inquiries (www.aph.gov.au)
5. ^{^} Radio Free Asia (www.rfa.org)
6. ^{^} precarious funding position (www.theguardian.com)
7. ^{^} very active in the media space (www.aspistrategist.org.au)
8. ^{^} Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy (www.abc.net.au)
9. ^{^} Cartel Paradise (www.abc.net.au)
10. ^{^} ABC’s charter (www.abc.net.au)
11. ^{^} 2023 ABC survey (www.aspistrategist.org.au)