This time it is not budget cuts directly that are tearing the ABC apart, but action from within.

A host of experienced executives and presenters have been sacked. New managers, many from a marketing or commercial broadcasting brackground have taken their place, at much higher salaries. Paul Barry has been sacked from Media Watch and Quantum has been discontinued.

There is talk of advertising on the ABC web site, and the ABC entering into a business partnership with a major bank.

As I said this action has come from within - in a sense it's self inflicted. But the inspiration has come from without. The key actors may be employed by the ABC, but the writing of the script, like so many other ABC activities, has been outsourced.

The chief scriptwriter, of course, is Senator Richard Alston. He says the ABC does not have big enough audiences. A little later Jonathan Shier says the same thing. Of course its not a documentary that Senator Alston is scripting - it's pure fiction. Senator Alston says that only 10% of Australians use the ABC. Yet independent surveys have confirmed that 86%, that's nearly nine out of ten, Australians over fifteen use an ABC service each week.

Senator Alston loves to attack the ABC's ideas network, Radio National. And yes, its true that Radio National has fewer listeners than Classic FM and Triple J, and fewer listeners than most commercial stations. But Radio National is not the ABCs least popular network. That distinction belongs to the ABC's Parliamentary and News Network. Perhaps some of the key presenters on that network, with Senator Alston at the top of the list, should be offered redundancy if ratings are our only concern.

Or lets look at these figures. Each week 650,000 people listen to Radio National. By comparison the Financial Review sells 95,000 copies, the Bulletin 76,000 copies and the Australian 131,000 copies daily.

Australian Penthouse sells 77,000 copies each month. Assuming all its readers are men, and assuming half the listeners to Radio National are men, we can compute that four times as many Australian men listen to Radio National as buy Penthouse. Does that mean therefore that Radio National is four times better than sex?

Senator Alston says the ABC is biased. Yet when John Howard appointed high profile businessman Bob Mansfield to review the ABC, Mansfeild after conducting a comprehensive reivew of the ABC, found no evidence of bias.

Senator Alston says the ABC is inefficient. That's the justification for Jonathan Shier's reorganisation. Yet the fact is that the whole of the ABC, five domestic radio networks, Radio Australia, six Symphony Orchestras and ABC Online, and of course the TV network- the whole of it costs less than Channel 9, just one TV station.

Senator Alston says Australia can't afford the ABC . So Jonathan Shier says we'll get the money from sponsorship and business partnerships with banks. The fact is of course that there is a $4.3 billion dollar budget surplus. Moreover a study conducted by Professor Glenn Withers for the Economic Planning Advisory Commission found that the ABC was one of the very few institutions that most taxpayers were actually willing to pay more for.

Its now my pleasure to introduce today's speakers. I've been told that the health of frogs, which is one of Professor Mike Tyler's interests, can act as a kind of litmus test of the health of the general environment. In a similar way, I think that the fate of the ABC can be seen as a litmus test of Australia's cultural, intellectual and political health. Mike Tyler.