![abc aerial](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/abc-aerial.png)
The ABC That Might Have Been
Not long ago I idly turned on ABC television in the middle of the evening. An Aboriginal woman was speaking, or rather yelling, and the first words I heard were a complaint in graphic terms about anal rape (I will spare you the exact phrase). Not exactly what one is used to hearing by one’s own domestic hearth.
Dear me, I thought, switching off, how our national broadcaster has changed since its courtly days more than six decades ago.
This set me delving into my misty impressions of the ABC as it was in that remote era when manners and opinions were so alien to our own. To start with, it was dignified. It never in those days tried to touch the lowest common denominator of vulgarity. Its hierarchy was headed by serious-minded public-spirited men (none of whom had made their careers publishing a magazine that encouraged teenage girls to lose their virtue). Its radio announcers (also male, though no longer in dinner jackets—that was before the war) would never have dreamt of…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins