It’s time to privatise the ABC

Instead, what we saw was a glorification of the Union movement, in particular, of Greg Combet, who, as Michael Duffy pointed out in a Lateline interview, was portrayed “as an absolute marvellous character. He is picking up his daughters from day care and so on, which will do him no harm at all I'm sure with the vote, in his new political career.” As Duffy concluded in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, “The series is the most blatant union propaganda”.

It demonised Corrigan and ignored even the most important factual details of the dispute. Those being that the waterfront workers were lazy - nay, the laziest - in the world, with one of the lowest crane-lift rates in the OECD. Corrigan was dehumanised. No recognition was given to the years he spent attempting to negotiate with the wharfies to lift productivity.

In response to allegations of bias, the ABC’s response was simply to deny it had any influence over the production of the series. The series’ writer, Sue Smith, said that the ABC provided no "instruction or censorship or anything else”. “They accepted our approach and supported it," she said.

Of course it did not need to have any direct influence over the production. Smith delivered the series to the ABC with sufficient bias already injected. Smith was quoted saying the ABC approved the script and thought it was “fair”. Of course it did.

It is an easy way for the ABC to deny any allegations of bias. It had nothing to do with the production. It had no influence over the script. It had nothing to do with direction. It merely commissioned the right person to create a program that suited its needs. Hands clean. But the bias still intact.

The response to the program from the right was completely fair. Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells comments that the series smacked “of wasteful spending by the ABC, being used to drive an anti-government, pro-left agenda, conveniently timed to appear during an election year".

Hear, hear.

What else?

In the recent airing by the ABC of the Martin Durkin’s polemic documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle the ABC sealed its own fate. It showed that even after Mark Scott took the helm of the National Broadcaster, its leftist agenda would remain. In what was lambasted by ABC Director, Kim Dalton, as the best evidence of the ABC’s priority of “allowing principal relevant viewpoints on matters of public importance to be aired” (see “ABC should air dissenting opinions”, May 25, 2007, The Australian), The Great Global Warming Swindle, was far from that.

The airing of the documentary was supposed to give an opportunity for Australians to hear arguments opposing the existence of global warning. Durkin’s documentary featured criticism of the science and indeed the business surrounding climate change. It was interesting, through-provoking and challenged the climate change orthodoxy which has taken a strangle-hold of the Australian thinking on the subject.

But the ABC failed in its aim, as Dalton alleged, “to be Australia’s town square where people can debate, hear alternative views and learn from each other”. Instead, it was nothing more than a hand-holding experience. The ABC could not just air the program and leave the concepts and ideas with Australians to mull over themselves. Instead, the ABC’s Tony Jones (usually the host of Lateline) conducted a panel discussion after interviewing Durkin that essentially blocked out any anti-climate change opinions. Whatever has been said about the performance of the climate change sceptics in the discussion, it does not change the fact that Jones’ approach to the “discussion” was completely biased.

Jones even blocked the opinion of the ABC’s own highly-respected conservative voice, Michael Duffy. Duffy could not get a word in, having made it clear that he would not tow the ABC pro-climate change line. Early on in the panel discussion, Duffy had queried why there was such organised criticism and deconstruction of Durkin’s documentary, and no such treatment of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.