Here's one paragraph from the book's chapter on the ABC - here Nick writes about Allan Ashbolt, a man who was considered for the plum job of heading up the new ABC flagship current affairs show This Day Tonight. Ashbolt was a person of interest to ASIO which warned the ABC General Manager about Ashbolt's communist ties. Ashbolt was shuffled to a "Special Projects" role, where his scheming and radicalisation was apparently pretty effective!
He was to use the unit's Kings Cross offices as a nursery for a radical class of public broadcasters who saw themselves in the vanguard of a war of independence, launching what Ashbolt later described as "a guerilla campaign" against the ABC, "an ideological arm of the capitalist state machinery". His ideal ABC would be run essentially as a workers' collective in which power would be removed from the ABC commissioners and handed over to its employees. Quality, creative and budget control would be put entirely in the hands of the program makers, leaving the commissioners free to enjoy their claret in the boardroom of "Bullshit Castle", as Ashbolt liked to call Broadcast House.
