The ABC needs to have its budget protected from future attack by special legislation, according to former prime minister Kevin Rudd.
The former Labor leader said that while the national broadcaster's independence was enshrined in law, its $1.04 billion annual budget was vulnerable.
In an interview on the 10th anniversary of leading Labor to power, Mr Rudd said that one of his regrets was that his government didn't protect the ABC budget against assault by a future Coalition government.
"To fix its baseline budget and entrench it in legislation with an automatic CPI acceleration would have been helpful," Mr Rudd said.
The ABC was at particular risk from a future conservative government doing the bidding of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, he said.
"Given Murdoch's historical commitment to kill public broadcasting, something to have considered at the time was not to re-legislate the independence of the ABC but to entrench its budget," he said.
Mr Rudd also rued that he didn't declare "open war" on News Corporation during his time as prime minister.
"I regret deferring constantly to the advice of my cabinet colleagues and not declaring open war on News Corporation.
"It became clear early in the government's life that, when we would not commit to the News Corporation agenda, they set out to destroy the government."
His government's decision to build the National Broadband Network was a threat to Murdoch's Fox entertainment channels distributed through Foxtel cable, said the current president of the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
"The current dominance of Murdoch represents a growing cancer on Australian democracy," Mr Rudd said. He urged a future Labor government to hold a royal commission into New Corporation's relationship with the Coalition.
Mr Rudd disclosed that during the global financial crisis in 2008, he had appealed directly to then US President George W. Bush to protect Australia's corporate sector from the knock-on effects of a looming US collapse.
"I said to George W. Bush, 'This is an alliance matter. It goes to the fundamentals of what our economy needs to survive. I really need you to prevent AIG from going under.' "
He said the American President had "done absolutely the right thing by us".
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Friday paid tribute to Mr Rudd as "just the third Labor leader to take our party into government from opposition since the Second World War".
Mr Shorten was one of the factional "faceless men" instrumental in the axing of Mr Rudd as prime minister and the installation of Julia Gillard in June 2010.
Compounding his reputation as a backroom wheeler-dealer, Mr Shorten then helped reinstall Mr Rudd as leader in June 2013 to save Labor seats ahead of the 2013 election win by Tony Abbott.
Despite the pair's chequered history, Mr Shorten listed a swag of achievements by both Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard's governments and hailed "the legacy of two transforming terms and two reforming prime ministers".
Those achievements included steering Australia through the Global Financial Crisis, securing a AAA credit rating from all three major ratings agencies, abolishing WorkChoices, implementing paid parental leave, launching the National Disability Insurance Scheme, apologising to the Stolen Generation, starting to build the NBN, hospital and schools funding reform and tackling climate change.
"We pay tribute to Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and all those who helped both elect Labor to government and deliver on these nation-changing reforms in office," Mr Shorten said.
Mr Rudd blamed Julia Gillard and the factional chiefs who brought him down for creating Australia's political coup culture.
They "bear a deep historical responsibility for establishing new forms of political brutality in taking down a democratically elected first term prime minister", he said.
"It's infected the body politic in the Labor and Liberal parties. It was a deep assault on the public trust."
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