Every few years, someone floats the idea: why doesn’t Australia just do what the UK does and slap a TV licence fee on households to fund the ABC?
Here’s why that’s a terrible idea and why we’ve already had this fight and won it.
1. Been there, done that!
This isn’t some untested theory. Australia had a TV licence fee, and the Whitlam government scrapped it in 1974, moving the ABC onto general taxation instead. When the Fraser government tried to bring it back in 1975 ($70 for a colour TV, $50 for black-and-white) Australians revolted so hard the idea was dead within months.
We’ve done this experiment already, and it was a fail.
2. It is not a fair go, mate!
A licence fee doesn’t care what you earn, everyone pays the same flat amount, whether you’re a pensioner in Gunnedah or a billionaire, iron-ore oligarch. Politicians across the political spectrum in the UK and Ireland continue to call this out for exactly what it is, with even UK Tories calling it unfair.
TV licences are a regressive tax that hits low-income households hardest, dressed up as a fair user-pays system.
3. It turns non-payment into a crime
In the UK, chasing down people who don’t pay the licence fee means prosecutions, court dates, and criminal convictions.
According to UK Ministry of Justice data, women made up 74–76% of all TV licence evasion prosecutions across England and Wales between 2020 and 2022, despite women accounting for only around 50% of licence holders.
More than half of those charged were experiencing financial hardship.
A fearless, independent ABC that is free for all Australians is worth fighting for — but that freedom is under threat. Sign our petition to reject calls to defund the ABC and force it onto a subscription model that would price out the Australians who need it most.
4. It doesn’t actually stop political interference
A licence fee is still set by government, frozen, raised, or left to rot, entirely at its discretion. The BBC’s licence fee income has dropped by a quarter in real terms since 2017, largely because governments kept it frozen or below inflation.
This all sounds very familiar. The ABC already deals with an inadequate indexation formula. A licence fee wouldn’t fix that. It would just give the government a new lever to pull.
5. It would kill the one thing that makes the ABC different
Right now, anyone can turn on the ABC. No bills, no barriers. A licence fee changes that overnight and on top of the fee itself, you’d be paying for a brand new billing and enforcement bureaucracy just to collect it. Money that should go into original Australian content to tell our stories in our voices, instead going into TV cops chasing down those who can’t afford another bill.
The ABC doesn’t need a UK import that the UK itself is struggling to defend. It needs to be properly funded, through the budget with legislated 5 year funding, free to access for everyone, with no bill in the mail.
It’s time for the Albanese government to put its money where its mouth is, and legislate 5 year funding for the ABC as it has promised to do.
Right now the BBC is in the throes of renewing its Charter, a secretive bureaucratic process that looks at many issues including funding. Whether the model will change remains to be seen. Read this article to learn more.