In 30 years at the ABC, the broadcaster Phillip Adams has never seen such a “moment of danger” for public broadcasting, which is now under attack on several fronts, he told a rally in support of the ABC on Sunday.

“This is a really, really dark time,” the Late Night Live host said at a packed event organised by ABC Friends in Sydney, which also heard rousing speeches about the importance of the ABC from the author Thomas Keneally, the journalist Kerry O’Brien and the actor Magda Szubanski.

Now @PhillipAdams_1 can’t say much because of the memo which went out to staff - so asking everyone to have a minutes silence to think what the abc means to us. Now says this is biggest threat to ABC he’s seen #auspol #handsoffourabc pic.twitter.com/60Lg2aFzzk — Denise Shrivell (@deniseshrivell) July 8, 2018

The crowd heard that the ABC had suffered from $400m in cuts since 2014, faced several government inquiries, daily hostility from News Corp and calls for privatisation from the Liberal party conference and the Institute of Public Affairs.

“Never before have we had a political party call for our extinction,” Adams said.

“It’s not just public broadcasting, it’s public health, it’s public education, it’s public transport.



“If it’s public, public is the adjective, it is now a pejorative.”

The actor Hugo Weaving, the former Play School presenter Benita Collings, the ABC science broadcaster Robyn Williams, the former ABC foreign correspondent Greg Wilesmith and the feminist academic Eva Cox were among the familiar faces in the audience, which was so large it had to spill into a second room.

O’Brien, the former host of 7.30, urged people not to be partisan, saying support for the ABC was strong across the political spectrum and everyone – no matter how they vote – should fight for it.



“Honestly I don’t like hissing,” he told the crowd when they hissed at the meniton of the prime minister’s name. “This is something that is too important to allow divisions and divisiveness about.

“There are many very, very passionate ABC supporters that are part of a national conservative constituency and they should be applauded for it and they should be encouraged to feel they are a part of this fight.

“There has been times when the Labor party has forgotten its support for the ABC.”

O’Brien said the ABC was already heavily scrutinised and it should be because it is taxpayer funded. However, the scrutiny being applied to the ABC should be honest and the government driving that should have “honest intent” and not be driven either by “political prejudice or ideology”.

Szubanski also called for a bipartsan approach, saying it was “up to all of us to open our arms to all sides of politics”.



“This is an attack on the soul of this nation,” she said. “And it’s up to us to fight for it and to preserve it and, as far as I’m concerned, the line is here. The line has been crossed. The fight is on.”

Keneally, who said at 82 he was probably the oldest person in the room, said as a child his imagination was formed by Australian broadcasting, and warnings of war and peril always came via ABC broadcasting, right back to when his father fought in the second world war.

“People turn to the ABC as they never can and will never turn to commercial outlets,” Keneally said. “Commercial outlets will still be serving their shareholders. If the ABC were cancelled, no communicator will be serving us.

“A commentator in the Australian recently said, to my great outrage, the ABC should not bite the hand that feeds it. We are the hand that feeds it!”

The Chaser comedian and independent producer Julia Morrow was a late addition to the rally, speaking about the shelving of his show The Checkout on Friday. Morrow said the ABC had made a mistake but he would not abandon a friend just because it had made a mistake.

The rally was the first of a series of national rallies cross the nation, including one in Melbourne on Sunday.