[kookaburra]

It comes down to internal choices by the BBC. The ABC has endured decades of this culture war stuff with regular funding freezes and cuts from conservative governments, but they continue to run a domestic news channel on what would be a fraction of the cost for a much smaller audience! 

I watch the YouTube stream from time to time. What I've noticed is some press conferences are played in full but delayed because the "live" DOG is missing and the anchor/presenter says something like "the police chief spoke a moment ago let's listen in". I don't know how much the delay is. These are played after a segment is finished. Others interrupt planned segments and they're always live. I don't know if this is because it's because "less urgent" breaking news can wait or their ability to break news "instantaneously" is a bit hampered by because they have fewer staff (like France 24 according to what some have said previously). If that's the case, would UK viewers prefer that than having merged bulletins from 11 am to 5 pm on weekdays? Of course, would that even be possible given how deep the cut seems to be?
Their weekend daytime anchor/presenter has an on-air shift of 7 hours though there's a bit of recorded programming. Though I think merged weekend bulletins is an acceptable trade off for the BBC as it is slower. If breaking news happens or even a press conference that's only of interest to UK audiences the BBC could get away with it since WN is pretty heaving on repeating recorded programming on weekends.
It would be interesting to see how much the ABC News channel costs to run.

The pressers have always been handled like that - a mix of live or prerecorded. Anything proper important, eg a PM announcement, bushfire etc is live. The recently recorded ones are I think more of a factor of Australia’s federated system. It can often be a juggle when you have competing stories/breaking news/announcements from all the states + Canberra. The ABC NC can definitely crash in and do rolling news as needed. 

The channel can also move around and be broadcast from Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth etc as needed. In the last few years ABC Perth has recently taken more and more control of late news and overnights before Melbourne comes online with Breakfast. 

It’s a good service, you’d hope NBH picked up the phone to ABC HQ in Ultimo to learn more before all of this.