Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Henderson's motion referring this matter to the Environment and Communications References Committee. The ABC receives about $1.1 billion in taxpayer funding each year. This funding will increase by $30 million each year until 2029. With that level of public investment, there comes a responsibility to uphold the highest standards of accuracy and impartiality. Australians expect their public broadcaster to get the facts right, present issues fairly and correct mistakes quickly. Last year, the ABC received about 4,000 editorial and content complaints, with only 56 breaches upheld. The majority of complaints were not even investigated. This level of public concern makes it clear why oversight of the ABC is necessary.

Senator Henderson has rightly said the ABC's editorial division has been allowed to run wild and is no longer fit for purpose as a taxpayer funded source of trusted news. I'll go through and highlight some of the examples, but I will take some out because my colleague Senator Henderson has covered some of them. In 2019, the ABC aired serious allegations accusing fellow senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was then deputy mayor of Alice Springs, of spreading racist vitriol and hate speech. The claims were unverified. In 2021, two years later, the ABC apologised after a defamation action confirmed that the allegations were, in fact, false. The ABC admitted it failed to verify those statements before broadcasting them.

They took a now senator through two years of a defamation trial at the taxpayers' expense, only to be found to have never verified the statements that they broadcast. In January 2023, the ABC's report on a community meeting in Alice Springs was found by the ombudsman to breach accuracy and impartiality standards. The ABC relied heavily on just one attendee, who described the event as a 'white supremacist fest', and ignored the broader community perspective. The ABC also understated the crowd size, reporting hundreds when more than 2,000 locals were present peacefully. The ombudsman ruled that the story misrepresented both the tone and the scale of the meeting, and the ABC was forced to correct and re-edit the story.

These two instances show a clear pattern. We can keep going. In October 2023, the Federal Court ruled that the ABC defamed former commando Heston Russell, yet another trial that was paid for by you, the Australian taxpayer. In May 2025, the ABC news repeatedly reported that 14,000 babies would die in 48 hours in Gaza. The statistic was incorrect and was based on a misstatement by a UN spokesperson in an earlier BBC interview. The ABC repeated the claim across multiple programs and took a full week to correct it. The ombudsman found a clear accuracy breach and a breach for failing to correct a significant error promptly. This mistake spread misinformation and showed weak fact-checking and weak correction processes. I could keep going on. In recent weeks, I've seen a doctored photograph of my colleague Senator Hume on Insiders, which again raises questions about the ABC's editorial judgement. These examples matter. What we see here are unverified and one-sided claims, misrepresentations of events, failures of investigative fairness, major factual inaccuracies and editing choices that distort context. These are not isolated, one-off mistakes. They point to a systemic weakness in editorial processes.

And what about the accountability to the Australian people and the taxpayers who fund this journalism? Public funding comes attached with accountability. The ABC is funded by Australians. That is $1.1 billion of taxpayer dollars every single year. Australians deserve confidence that this funding delivers factual, balanced and trustworthy journalism. Independence is important, but it does not mean that the ABC should be exempt from scrutiny.

This inquiry will allow the Senate to examine whether editorial standards are being upheld, complaints processes are independent and effective, and corrections are made in a timely and transparent manner. This is a constructive process. It ensures the ABC meets the high standards that it sets for itself. That is why it is time for a transparent, independent inquiry into the ABC's impartiality. Australians deserve to have confidence that their national broadcaster upholds the highest standards of fairness, accuracy and balance. An inquiry would not be about attacking journalists nor about controlling content. It is about restoring public trust in our national broadcaster. With rising concerns about political bias, selective reporting and uneven scrutiny, Australians deserve transparency and accountability in our public broadcaster. We must ensure that the ABC truly serves all Australians. The ABC needs to be held to the standards as set out in its charter, a charter that is rightfully attached because it is publicly funded.