Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The acting managing director, Mr Green, was not appointed by the government, and the next managing director will also not be appointed by the government, Senator Webber. What did we get from Ms Attard on Media Watch last night? She said:

As we reported a few weeks ago, the government has decided to abolish the staff representative, to keep the board exclusively for government appointees.

This is a false statement and the very kind of misreporting that Media Watch is supposed to expose.

That is not the only curious piece of ‘reporting’—and I use the term loosely—going on at the ABC these days. Richard Aedy, on Radio National’s Media Report, on the one hand stated as a matter of fact that Australia was being turned into a police state, while at the same time lamenting that journalists are not as sympathetic towards terrorists as they used to be in the good old days. According to ABC answers to questions at Senate estimates, the ABC is now officially of the view that the government’s much needed counter-terrorism laws are ‘draconian’. That is the opinion of a small minority of civil liberties types and perennial critics of the Howard government. It is not the view of the government, nor of the Australian Federal Police or a host of counter-terrorism experts. For the ABC to adopt the policy position of one side of a debate is a disgrace.

The ABC has been forced to admit that its reporters have presented accusations of mistreatment made by terror suspects as matters of fact. Lateline has a policy of always referring to the war on terror as the ‘so-called war on terror’. It gives a carte blanche platform to the divisive and partisan Robert Fisk, who also used an ABC platform to encourage the wild conspiracy theory that the United States itself was somehow responsible for the attacks of September 11.

The ABC program Four Corners has recently peddled the far left-wing view that the al-Qaeda terrorist al-Zarqawi is a creation of the United States. The ABC refuses to call an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber who blows up a cafe or bus full of innocent civilians a ‘terrorist’. The ABC still has as a guiding principle in its news and current affairs style guide the hackneyed old cliche: ‘Remember, one person’s terrorist is usually someone else’s freedom fighter.’ Whose freedom is Osama bin Laden fighting for? The Melbourne radio broadcaster Jon Faine recently interviewed an Indonesian apologist or supporter of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah. During the interview, Mr Faine made this reference: ‘Mr Osama bin Laden’, obviously intending some respect to the terrorist bin Laden.

The ABC has been forced to admit to a range of breaches of its editorial policies and style guide which show that it takes sides or at least has created the perception that it takes sides with the following: left-wing political parties, David Hicks, left-wing American activists Cindy Sheehan and Scott Parkin, and the causes celebre of immigration activists. Just look at the way it always refers to immigration activists as ‘refugee advocates’. The ABC has been forced to admit a range of indiscretions in terms of promoting trade union protest activities in news bulletins, in contravention of ABC rules, including time and place of protest and even the 1800 number. All this when the ABC actually has a policy which bans reporters from using the expression ‘strike action’. Tony Eastley on AM presented Gough Whitlam’s view of the dismissal—that it subverted the Constitution—as a fact, not as the highly partisan and contested opinion that it is.

Furthermore, I am still waiting for the ABC management to provide a coherent answer to the many questions raised about the employment of one Lindsay McDougall, one half of Jay and the Doctor on Triple J breakfast. This person mounted an offensive personal campaign against the Prime Minister during the 2004 election, including putting together a musical compilation with one song titled Johnny Howard, take a gun to him. This venal behaviour was rewarded with part-time employment at the ABC. After the election, Mr McDougall then announced his decision to campaign hard to stop the coalition being re-elected in 2007. This is my paraphrasing. His actual words are not fit for this chamber. This led to the offer of a full-time position on Triple J and, ever since, Mr McDougall has exploited the opportunity to continue his partisan political crusade against the Howard government. Ministers and policies are regularly ridiculed, all at taxpayers’ expense.

The ABC had a wonderful opportunity at the time of the release of the Latham Diaries when five senior figures from the ALP, including its president, were interviewed on current affairs programs. They had a wonderful opportunity to ask the one really hard question that the Latham episode continues to pose for the ALP: what does the selection of Mr Latham as leader say about the judgment of the parliamentary Labor Party? Do you think that question was asked? Not once. Instead we got examples like Kerry O’Brien’s dorothy dixer to then party president Barry Jones, in terms of the way Mr Latham portrayed the ALP: ‘Is this the Labor Party you recognise?’

ABC programs make a whole range of attacks on the faith of Christianity but not other religions. The ABC provides a very biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a recent example of that claim, it stated that last month’s suicide bomb attack in Israel was ‘the first since Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament’. That was a suicide bomb attack in which a Palestinian terrorist, dressed as an Orthodox Jew, blew up four innocent Israeli civilians who stopped to give him a ride. The ABC has officially taken the Palestinian side of the debate on the highly contentious issue of whether events at Jenin four years ago were an Israeli massacre. It hides the truth about the Hezbollah TV station, Al Manar. Australian soldiers serving our country in Iraq are on so-called ‘active service’, according to the ABC. TV presenters in Sydney were told not to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day because ‘the ABC doesn’t do World Aids Day either’. Evidence at estimates shows the ABC portraying Mrs Howard and Mrs Bush as racists.

The duty of the board is ‘to ensure that the functions of the corporation are performed efficiently and with the maximum benefit to the people of Australia’—that is, all Australians, not the sectional interests, some of which I have raised today. When the ABC news boss, Mr Cameron, was asked at Senate estimates about a journalist who had posed the question: ‘Do we’—that is, the ABC—‘need to get rid of the federal Liberal government?’ he was also asked whether it was the official policy of the ABC to get rid of the federal Liberal government. He replied that he would have to take the question on notice. We are still waiting for the answer. Judging from the activities of the ABC, the answer is clearly yes. If there is any threat to the independence of the ABC, it is not from the sensible and long overdue reform to the governance of the ABC board. It comes from the pernicious left-wing influence that permeates far too much of the ABC’s biased and unbalanced coverage.