TENDERS are open for a ten-year contract to operate Australia Network, the country’s international television broadcaster. Only two groups are likely to apply, the ABC, which currently operates the service, and the pay TV network, Sky News. The history of Australia’s overseas television service has sometimes been less than rational, but if the government did decide to dump the ABC, it would need measures that would prevent Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited enlarging its stake in Sky News.

The service we now call Australia Network was launched in 1993 by the ABC in fulfilment of its charter obligation to provide international television. The ABC had been involved in international broadcasting almost continuously since the Menzies government launched Radio Australia as a short-wave broadcaster in December 1939. When a new ABC Act was introduced in 1983, turning the commission into a corporation, international television broadcasting was inserted as a charter obligation. But until the advent of Australia Television International, or ATI, in 1993, the ABC had only served this charter responsibility in the very weak sense of selling the odd program overseas…