One Nation leader Pauline Hanson will bin multicultural broadcaster SBS if her party wins the next election.
In an incendiary National Press Club address yesterday, the former chicken shop owner promises “big changes” to public broadcasters SBS and ABC if she gets into power.
“The SBS will be gone. There’s no need for it anymore. The internet has overtaken the need for it,” Hanson said.
Hanson’s pledge to axe SBS followed remarks earlier in her speech that Australia “cannot be a multicultural society” and that “we must be monocultural”.
About a quarter of people living in Australia speak a language other than English at home.
Hanson also labelled the ABC as a broadcaster with politically biased (against One Nation) and teeming with “activists” in its ranks.
“They think of themselves as a pillar of democracy. The arrogance is stunning in its scope,” she said.
She plans to turn the ABC into a taxpayer funded service only for regional Australians.
“The ABC will still exist but in a very different form. Taxpayers will still fund the ABC in regional, rural and remote areas where there is a lack of commercial media,” she said.
“But in the cities, which are already saturated with media outlets across the political spectrum, the ABC will only be a subscription service only.”
Such a policy would effectively mean that Australians living in major cities would have to pay for the ABC twice; subsidising regional coverage through tax, and paying a subscription fee for their own viewing.
Hanson also took a swipe at transgender rights, a Guardian journalist, Islam and workers rights — using her inaugural National Press Club to stoke popular culture wars in a week she nudged ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister in the latest Newspoll.
