It’s time to privatise the ABC

A valid question indeed. Why did the ABC feel the need to aggressively deconstruct Durkin’s documentary? Why did it feel that Al Gore’s documentary deserved no criticism?

The answer of course, was simple. The ABC has a particular agenda to push. It remains accountable to no one. Its revenues are secured. The taxpayers will continue to be forced to pay no matter how biased the coverage is or how enraged the voters are.

This environmental agenda is pushed further by other programming choices the ABC makes. In Carbon Cops the ABC is really on to you - invading your home and checking to see if your carbon footprint is bigger than it should be.

In The New Inventors all inventions have be “environmentally-sound”. Watching the show, one wonders whether an invention claiming to cure a life-threatening disease would lose because it demanded too much packaging or refrigeration. What is otherwise an entertaining show, is tarnished by the ramblings of the requisite environmentalist panel member carping on about why everything needs to be environmentally-sound. If it is a good invention, why should this matter at all? Because it matters to the ABC.

But the ABC’s bias does not stop at this overt sort of bias. Indeed, the more dangerous manifestation of its bias is the covert kind. The kind to which you have to be alert. The kind that is dressed up as balanced, but under this subterfuge still pushes its political agenda.

A good example of this was (and is often seen) on the 7:30 Report on July 30, 2007. The show featured a story discussing the retirement of Victorian Premier Steve Bracks. What should have been a story about Steve Bracks, was nothing more than a campaign to suggest that Prime Minister John Howard should, following the lead set by Steve Brack's fine example, retire. He should pass the reins onto someone else and give someone else an opportunity to lead. The reporter was even so brash as to say it herself: “Some political observers have suggested there's a moral in this for John Howard.”

Up front and centre was none other than ABC favourite, Bill Shorten, Federal President of the ALP saying "It is unprecedented in the modern era of politics I think, when you've got someone who is at the top of their game to say, ‘Ok, I've done my bit, now it's time for someone else’.” Of course, always a thinking politician, Shorten followed that comment by suggesting it was a moral for all, saying “It's not just a lesson for John Howard or Peter Costello, I think it's a lesson for everyone in public life.”

To appear to be balanced, the story included a snippet of Federal Minister for Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey saying something - obviously cut-down and edited - that had little to do with the agenda the ABC was trying to push. Of course, then it became a nice fluffy piece about newly elected Victorian Premier, John Brumby whom Kerry O’Brien, with a cheeky grin, referred to as “bean-counter plus”.

So it is happening. The ABC is pushing a particular point of view. Why then, is this a problem?

It is a problem because taxpayer funds are used to fund the opinions of a certain part of the political spectrum. It is wrong that taxpayer money is pumped into an organisation which is motivated to provide a platform for particular political opinions.

As someone who views themselves on the right side of the political spectrum, it enrages me that opinions of the left are aired and then legitimised by the national broadcaster. And I am forced to pay for it.

When it is the private sector, it is a different matter: no money is stripped compulsorily in the form of taxation to fund the views aired on commercial Television Stations.