No, only 93 per cent of funding for Australia’s ABC comes from the government, and not all taxes are paid by white Australians

The meme was shared in this Facebook post on July 14, 2019, by a Facebook page called ‘Make Australia Grouse Again 3’, which has more than 7,500 followers. 

It has been shared more than 110 times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Image

The top half of the meme shows the logo of ABC Australia, Australia’s national broadcaster. 

The bottom half of the meme includes three photos, which show, from left to right: Senator Pauline Hanson, leader of the right-wing One Nation party; former Senator Fraser Anning, leader of Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party; and Blair Cottrell, founder of the anti-Islam group United Patriots Front. 

Text superimposed over the images states: “99% of funding comes from taxes paid by white Australians, tries to slander and destroy anyone who advocates for the interests of white Australians”.

The claim is misleading; only 93 per cent of ABC’s funding comes from the government, and not all taxes are paid by white Australians.

Funding for the ABC is part of the Australian government’s annual budget, according to the Department of Communications and the Arts, which published its latest federal budget here in April 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the ABC resource statement included in the budget: 

Image

The report states that in the year 2018-19, ABC’s total net resourcing was AUS$1,125,809, of which AUS$1,045,911 came from the government. This represents 92.9 percent of the budget.

For the year 2019-20, the estimate for ABC’s total net resourcing is AUS$1,137,695, of which AUS$1,062,265 is set to come from the government. This represents 93.4 percent of the budget.

Taxes are not the sole source of income for the Australian government.

The government raised approximately AUS$485 billion in 2018-19 and of that, about AUS$333 billion, or 69 percent, comes from income taxation, according to this April 2019 ABC report.

The latest tax stats from the years 2016 and 2017, published by the Australian Taxation Office in March 2019, states 13.9 million individuals paid income tax.

This represented about 56 per cent of the population in that year, according to this data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

While no official figures about the percentage of “white Australian” taxpayers is available, the latest census in 2016 states: “Nearly half (49 per cent) of Australians had either been born overseas (first generation Australian) or one or both parents had been born overseas (second generation Australian). 

“While England and New Zealand were still the next most common countries of birth after Australia, the proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 (from 6.0 per cent to 8.3 per cent, and 5.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent, respectively).”