Abetz and the ABC

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz hates the ABC, and to be fair it seems to be substantially reciprocated.

Coalition and conservative parliamentarians have always been uncomfortable with our national broadcaster, and his week Abetz used a senate estimates committee hearing to interrogate ABC Managing Director Mark Scott over the number of interruptions made by Tony Jones while he was interviewing different politicians on his news program Lateline.

‘Senator Abetz claimed that Jones interrupted Mr Hockey 20 times but did not interrupt Mr Swan at all,’ The Age reported.

‘Jones uttered 42 per cent of the words in Mr Hockey’s interview, he said, compared with 29 per cent when interrogating Mr Swan.’

But this fateful and largely un-winnable battle has been raging since, well, for ever!

Take for instance this Eric-takes-on-the-national-broadcaster-for-being-unfair-upset in 2008, which also came to bear on Tony Jones and that little show we all know and love: Q and A.

In yet another estimates committee Abetz said:

‘”The test surely is that the ABC provide a balanced audience, because the cheering, the support, the commentary out of the audience can potentially be off-putting for some people that are part of the panel.”

A couple of Abetz supporters rallied in this chat room, to support his claim that small-l liberal audience members were over represented at Q and A live screenings, yet none of them seem to have offered to go on the show themselves… Perhaps there is a dearth of people who actually share Abetz’ views on things like climate change and ABC bias, rather than a lack of exposure for them?

Yet another example of coalition opposition to the ABC came this week, the day after Abetz was using hearing time to whinge about the lack of web-space offered to climate change denier Bob Carter by ABC online opinion site The Drum – and this time it was fellow Liberal senator Mathias Cormann waving the why-can’t-everyone-just-be-like-Fox-News-flag.

He was up in arms over the ABC’s use of the Twitter hash-tag #Budgies while tweeting about Tony Abbot during question time during the week.

Communications Minister Steven Conroy was quick to reply to this falsely indignant complaint with the sally:

“Well, it could have been #Lycra. I mean, that would have been appropriate.”

As I dare say it would have, since he sold a pair of those ill-fated Speedos for charity not long ago, and seems to make a vastly disproportionate number of policy announcements in them, too.

Kids, let’s face it. Not only does the coalition whinge about government policy initiatives without offering alternatives, they also whinge about the ABC without delivering a message that anyone would want to hear.

Can’t wait to see what Eric’s next complaint will be… The ABC said my nose is big?