From: The Australian
Rowan Callick and Sid Maher
February 09, 2010 12:00AM
A controversial film about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer may have been pulled by the ABC to promote managing director Mark Scott's vision of a "soft diplomacy" role for the public broadcaster.
Producer John Lewis yesterday told The Australian the ABC had bought the rights to the documentary about Kadeer, The 10 Conditions of Love, and scheduled it for broadcast on December 17. However, the film never went to air.
"We had believed that the line `the Australian film China doesn't want Australians to see' would be a good one for the ABC to use to publicise its broadcast," said Mr Lewis, who worked in senior roles for ABC TV for about 20 years.
"It would be most regrettable if it were to be instead `the film that China and the ABC don't want Australia to see'."
Mr Scott was yesterday grilled in a Senate estimates hearing on why the film had been bought but never shown.
In a frequently torrid appearance before the Senate, the ABC boss also outlined his ambitious agenda to press ahead with his rural digital venture ABC Open and the 24-hour news channel, which he said he would be able to open without any extra revenue.
He said he maintained ambitions to broadcast into China - saying he would visit again this year for discussions with officials about access - and to double spending on international broadcasting to about $70 million, to create an integrated television and radio brand.
Mr Scott urged the Rudd government not to put the ABC's international broadcast operations out to tender at the end of its current five-year contract.
Sky News Australia is lobbying the government to create an open tender process for the $20m contract to run the Australia Network, the diplomatic broadcasting service controlled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The ABC's contract to run Australia Network expires next year.
In a speech at Macquarie University three months ago titled "A global ABC: Soft diplomacy and the world of international broadcasting", Mr Scott said that "using the media underpins soft diplomacy" and that China and India were firmly in Australia Network's sights.
In response to questions from Greens senator Bob Brown, Mr Scott said Chinese officials had approached the ABC about the Kadeer documentary when he visited China last September.
"The discussion about the film was discussion about the film in general rather than the ABC showing it or any plans of the ABC to show it," he said.
ABC corporate communications director Mick Millett last night confirmed the ABC did purchase the documentary but denied that it was "locked into the TV schedule".
"ABC TV intend to air it at some later stage this year," Mr Millett said, adding that the issue had nothing to do with soft diplomacy.
The film attracted massive opposition from the Chinese government when it was screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival six months ago. Beijing accused Ms Kadeer of orchestrating riots in the Uighur homeland, Xinjiang, in which about 200 people died.
It is being screened to American parliamentarians on Capitol Hill this week, and has had a successful run in cinemas in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.
Mr Lewis said that he was "quite taken aback" when the ABC informed him of the cancellation of the December 17 broadcast - which he had planned to tie in with the launch of DVD copies of the film, also to be sold through ABC bookshops.
"If I were to be asked, is the ABC kowtowing to China for some reason, I'd say I don't know, but it looks awfully like it," Mr Lewis said. "I don't see soft diplomacy as a role for a public broadcaster."
