ABC Australia's "soft diplomacy" aspirations at odds with prior Labor policy

As reported in THE AUSTRALIAN:
ABC managing director Mark Scott last night proposed a dramatic expansion of his organisation's services into Africa, Latin America and Asia, saying it would lift Australia's profile.
"We have an important role to play and we have to use all the tools at our disposal to continue to do so," Mr Scott said in a speech in Sydney.
"One of these tools is soft diplomacy -- using the media to put our nation's culture, views and policies on show."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/pm-propaganda-not-abc-role-nick-minchin/story-e6frgczf-1225794871714

But what of this inconvenient truth:



By mid-1991, after Senator Evans had acknowledged the insensitive actions of a "number of different groups in Australia - some in the media, some in Parliament, and some in pressure groups in the wider community," Mahathir agreed that the Australian Government should not necessarily be blamed for the failings of the media. According to Mahathir, "They fabricate stories...I think they have breached the limit of press freedom...I am talking about the Australian Press, not the Government...Mahathir felt nevertheless that the Australian Government could not absolve itself completely ofresponsibility for the media....

As the price for restoring normal relations, Mahathir believed he had extracted from the Australian Government " a guarantee to distance itself from what was done by several bodies in that country, and to take a disinterested attitude in various matters." This understanding was put to the test in early 1992 with the release of the Australian film Turtle Reach, which depicted a massacre of Vietnamese refugees...


Senator Evans announced that the Australian Government would dissociate itself from the film. The scenes depicted were "simply not accurate historicalrepresentations." Australia's Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshall Funnel, said this statement saved the Malaysia-Australia relationship: "I believe the ties between the two Governments have been preserved due to this action" .
( See http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/391 & http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/391/1/adt-NU1999.0024prince03.pdf)

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