While I know that every Australian Government department has been required to find savings, I should not need to explain to you that the first responsibility of the Managing Director of the ABC is to the regional and remote areas of Australia.

I do not always have favourable reporting from the ABC, but I don’t cry bias, because I know that at the very heart of these regional reporters is the motivation to fairly reflect the views and events of locals from across the country.

I think the decision to close the Nowra office of the ABC is appalling, as it seems that management has taken the easy way out, targeting rural and regional services, rather than truly examining the economies of the metropolitan service base and bureaucracy.

If this closure goes ahead, it will be almost geographically impossible for the ABC to cover, in person, local news events between Nowra and Moruya on the NSW South Coast.

Please do what most other broadcasters have already done, and sit with your regional teams and acknowledge that it is their work that is most respected in terms of true journalism rather than the pen-pushing administrators in city based offices.

Once that has been done, I look forward to the redesign of the ABC’s ‘belt-tightening’ efforts that are currently about to impact our local ABC services.

A. Sudmalis,

Member for Gilmore.