By ABC's Barrie Cassidy Friday 21 November 2014

Photo: Malcolm Turnbull is interviewed by ABC 7.30's Leigh Sales, November 19, 2014. (ABC News)

Reducing the ABC's resources might please big C conservatives, but they'll thank Abbott for that, not Turnbull. In the meantime, he'll lose part of the middle ground that he has so successfully cultivated for so long. Barrie Cassidy writes.

Let's get started by going straight to the transcript.

Leigh Sales, presenter 7.30: "So how come we are having a discussion about a five per cent cut to the ABC when in the election campaign, the government unequivocally said, 'No cuts to the ABC'?"

Malcolm Turnbull, Communications Minister: "Well, the Prime Minister said that in one interview I think the night before the election. But Joe Hockey and I had made it very clear on a number of ABC programs in fact that we - that if there were going to be cuts across the board, as plainly there would have to be - across the board of government ... then the ABC and SBS couldn't be exempt."

Sales: "...they shouldn't have taken 'no cuts' as 'no cuts', they should have been parsing Mr Abbott's comments and Mr Hockey's comments and your comments to try to figure out exactly what that meant?"

Turnbull: "Well, well, look, you know, I mean, I've defended the Prime Minister on this today and earlier in the week. I think you've got to take his comments, which, look, I mean, what he said, he said, and, you know, it's there, it's on the record. But you've got to take that in context.

"And I can only assume that what Mr Abbott was referring to or was thinking about, anyway, was the proposition that there would be cuts in - with the intent of reducing ABC services and we've ruled that out."

Sales: "You must understand that for voters, when someone says 'no cuts' you think 'no cuts'."

Turnbull: "No, look, I understand that. But to accept that Tony Abbott meant the ABC and SBS, out of all the agencies of government, would be exempt from any savings measure, to accept that, you would have to assume that he had decided on the eve of the election to overrule and contradict the very carefully considered statements that Joe Hockey and I had been making. Now, that's a big call too."

What extraordinary logic.

The Prime Minister did not break a promise because, though he may have said in the most emphatic and unequivocal way that he would not cut funding to the ABC, he, Turnbull, had said something else.

Apart from that, the public needs to take into account that he and Hockey had cleverly nuanced their statements - gave themselves considerable wriggle room - while Abbott did not.

And in any case collectively, they only had in mind cuts that would not reduce services. Clean cuts. Nice cuts. Cuts that can't be seen with the naked eye.

So let's hear no more talk of broken promises and lies on the part of the prime minister.

Such a plea might carry more weight if Abbott hadn't so often called former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, a liar for promising there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. Abbott - and his senior frontbench - cut Gillard no slack. They elevated her words beyond a broken promise to a lie, insisting that she knew when she said those words that she had no intention of keeping them. They took no account of the fact that she could not have imagined the power sharing arrangement to come in minority government.

Tony Wright wrote in Thursday's Fairfax media: "Ms Gillard, he (Abbott) declared over and over regarding the carbon tax promise, was a liar.

"If that were so, then so now is he."

Turnbull's convoluted defence did nothing to answer that direct charge, and it did nothing for his own reputation. When Turnbull led the Liberal Party, Kevin Rudd typically thrashed him as preferred prime minister. That was in part because the big C conservative Liberals didn't like him. Reducing the ABC's resources might please that group, but they'll thank Abbott for that, not Turnbull. In the meantime, he'll lose part of the middle ground that he has so successfully cultivated for so long.

The best that can be said of Turnbull's contributions is that he at least emphasises the cuts are solely a part of a wider strategy to reduce the budget deficit, and not, as others imply, an act of revenge against an organisation they see as biased against them.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.

It's lose-lose for Malcolm Turnbull with ABC cuts - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)