Bring the programs down from Sydney they said. The staff will follow. Well things don't work that way. The cost of relocation alone would have been enormous. It is money we simply do not have, even if we thought the reason was justified.
Every organisation has a head office.
To view it charitably, in establishing its inquiry the Victorian Government may have sought to make itself a squeaky wheel in order to attract more ABC oil. The pressures of such inquiries cannot be simply brushed aside, but it is uniquely the responsibility of the ABC Board to consider these and other proposals in the light of our corporate and business plans which establish our priorities. To underpin these priorities, especially in regional Australia, the ABC needs the confidence of adequate, indexed and ongoing funding. But the ABC also needs to establish its future digital strategies - and the funding for them. We have prepared ourselves remarkably well for the digital era.