Private commercial interests were not the only enemies. At its inception and for many years later, the ABC was the responsibility of the Postmaster-General's department. The politician to hold the office of Postmaster-General in 1938 was a South Australian Country Party man with a military background, A.G.Cameron. When the chairman of the commission and two of its members first met him, Cameron did not mince his words: '''I know nothing about broadcasting. I'm not interested in it. If I had my way I would stop all broadcasting. No time for these mechanical things. Don't know anything about music. As for people who give talks and commentaries over the air, if I had my way I would poison the blank blanks - would bring them under the Vermin Act.''

The story of the ABC suggests Marx's famous axiom - that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce - should be turned around.

The down-with-the-ABC clowns and incompetents are richly represented in the broadcaster's early years, but the ABC's enemies have grown fiercer and more determined as its capacities, its reach and its public appeal have threatened their private or political interests. Deceit, often built on false promises, is a marker of our own time.

In 1996, the Liberal-National Coalition's shadow minister for communications, Senator Richard Alston, presented the soon-to-be voting public with a manifesto on the ABC, titled ''Better Communications''. It was glowing, praising every aspect of the ABC, including Radio Australia, and promising that there would be no cuts to the broadcaster's budget during the first term of a Coalition government. This was consistent with his earlier role as chairman of a Senate select committee which reported on ABC management and operations in 1995, and recommended against government interference in the ABC and emphasised the need for government to properly fund existing and expanding ABC activities.

Yet only a few months after the Coalition won the election, cabinet was discussing which of two proposals for severe cuts to the ABC's budget the government should adopt. In his submission to cabinet, Alston favoured the lesser option - a 12 per cent cut - because it would arouse less public opposition than the 20 per cent cut favoured by the Finance Department, and it would still ''give us the opportunity to influence future ABC functions and activities more directly''. And so it came to pass. Among the casualties was Radio Australia, which lost its overseas transmitters, two foreign languages and a significant proportion of its staff and devoted overseas audience.