Welcome to Teak Publishing's Shortwave Central blog. This blog covers shortwave frequency updates, loggings, free radio, international mediumwave, DX tips, clandestine radio, and late-breaking radio news. Visit my YouTube and Twitter links. Content on Shortwave Central is copyright © 2006-2024 by Teak Publishing, which is solely responsible for the content. All rights reserved. Redistribution of these pages in any format without permission is strictly prohibited.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Australian senate rejects bill to restore ABC shortwave
The bill would have required the ABC to restore its shortwave transmission services which the broadcaster ended in January this year.
This move was described in the bill as having deprived communities in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and other parts of the Pacific of access to reliable emergency broadcasting.
Submitters of the bill questioned the ABC's assertions that very few listeners accessed Radio Australia's shortwave service.
Concerns of the submitters included perceived neglect of remote communities in the Pacific, and the loss of capacity for emergency warning broadcasts.
They also appealed to Australia's own regional interests, warning of the potential loss of an avenue for diplomacy and "soft power" in the Pacific.
But the senate committee concluded that the measures proposed in the bill were not an appropriate way to address the concerns raised about the end of the shortwave services.
However the committee's decision came with some dissenting reports.
In one of them, Senator Nick Xenophon described the decision to shut down ABC shortwave as a significant foreign policy failure."The board cannot really be blamed for this oversight; foreign policy is a responsibility of the whole of government," he said."In allowing the ABC Board to shut down ABC shortwave, the government has failed."
(www.radionz.co.nz)