Adjournment debate - Senate

Senator SANTORO (Queensland Lib) (12.45 p.m.)—Last time I spoke in the matters of public interest discussion, on 9 November, I spoke on the continuing issue of ABC bias and lack of balance of broadcast news and current affairs. It was no particular pleasure doing so. I would far rather that, in the context of obvious error, the ABC just accepted that it is an imperfect entity—nothing and no-one is perfect—and answered questions as it should do rather than evade them, which it always does.

It is with equal displeasure that I return to the topic today. I do so on this occasion for two chief reasons. One is that I wish to make a plea directly to the ABC’s managing director, Mr Russell Balding, to get control of the nest of obfuscators in his corporation. Mr Balding did not appear at the latest estimates hearings, of course, as everyone knows, but he is still the man in charge. Presumably if he was to say to his people, ‘Look, just answer the questions,’ his people would comply with his direction.

After the last estimates hearings, at which the ABC’s crack platoon of obfuscators appeared—dimly, as it were, through the smokescreen—in Mr Balding’s place, I copped a lot of flak. I do not mind copping flak. It comes with the territory when you are in politics. But I do mind when the flak is undeserved or when it is not objective and is designed to bolster the view that the ABC is somehow untouchable. No entity that depends on public funds is untouchable. No media operation of whatever stripe or provenance is untouchable either. It is the media’s job to critique governments—we all accept that and welcome it—and to watch over and report on community issues.

The ABC does a fine job in that role as our leading public broadcaster. I have always made that point too. But it makes mistakes. Everyone does and, as I said, nobody is perfect. It must, and I underline ‘must’, work out a way to correct itself in its partiality. It does itself the greatest disservice by evading issues and avoiding answers, and that is a shame. Its chief problem remains the coterie of luminaries in its news and current affairs broadcasting who consistently, wilfully fail to abide by the ABC’s own rules requiring objectivity and balance. Until it is prepared to confront that issue in a meaningful way, voices in the community and in this parliament will be very loud on that significant failure of management.

At the latest estimates, as honourable senators know, I asked a lot of questions. I had hoped to re-engage Mr Balding in that process, but for reasons that remain still unexplained that was not to be. I put a lot more questions on notice. The result was a further flurry of activity by ABC defenders, who, while they might approach the issues from different perspectives, are seemingly of one mind that the ABC is above criticism from a government senator. One particularly pernicious group of defenders exists within the organisation known as the Friends of the ABC. I do not believe they are true friends of the ABC at all. True friends point out faults. They do not ignore them, seek to hide them or aid and abet hiding them.

Honourable senators may know that I had a straw poll running on my web site on the question of whether there was a left-wing bias within the ABC. It was not a scientific poll. It could not be, and I do not think that anyone would ever think that it could be, but it provided a way for people to express a point of view on the ABC.

After the latest estimates it was rorted by the Friends of the ABC. I refer to the organisation that arrogates to itself that title. Some of the email traffic that I tracked down relating to this operation was quite interesting. The vote stuffing that these people engaged in appears to have been organised from within the New South Wales wing of ‘the friends’. The email traffic identified indicates that the Friends of the ABC staged an orchestrated campaign to rig the poll. An examination of the web site’s server logs support this claim, as do comments posted on a number of left-wing blog sites.

It is also interesting that in one case one individual voted 1,900 times. That is real dedication. Dozens of IPs identified by tracking post on my web site— Santosantoro.com is a great site, by the way; please feel free as parliamentary colleagues to visit it often and recommend it to your friends—also appeared to have voted dozens of times. The orchestrated stuffing of votes by the Friends of the ABC is of no consequence except that it seems to indicate a very curious view of the fundamental principles of democracy.

Perhaps the friends are inflicted with the same hubris that leads some of the ABC’s great minds to believe that only they possess true wisdom. In any event, I say to them today, and particularly to Nizza Siano of the eastern suburbs Friends of the ABC in Sydney and Trevor Wheeler of the ACT branch: don’t kid yourselves. There is a bit more substance to these ABC issues than can be fixed from their point of view by rorting a web poll and laughing about it. Nizza and Trevor, for the record, I pulled the poll on 9 November, but not because the ABC was winning. I pulled it because it was absolutely clear that it was rorted by people running a vote stuffing campaign. Nizza in Sydney’s eastern suburbs said to Trevor in the ACT in an email sent at 3.32 pm on Thursday 10 November:

Yes, he’s removed the vote from his Home Page. I think when it started looking good for the ABC and bad for him, he decided to stop the Poll. She got it absolutely wrong. Trevor emailed Nizza at 11.49 am on Wednesday 9 November and said:

It’s now 55 % - but I can’t figure out how to vote. Perhaps that survey has closed!

It was just a little too late to take part in the sport. Bad luck, Trevor—try running onto the field a little earlier next time. On the subject of opinion polls, I was interested to see yesterday the results of a Roy Morgan poll on broadcasting consumer habits. It shows that Australians who support the Australian Labor Party predominantly turn to the ABC for their current affairs while supporters of the coalition opt for Channel 9. I certainly hope that this does not mean that the ABC will now lay claim to another collection of undeserved brownie points on the basis that it is plainly giving its audience what it wants to hear and see.

For the benefit of people who apparently misinterpret my motives in trying to call the ABC to account, including the Friends of the ABC—the Queensland chapter of which I am still trying to join, by the way—various media critics who have the chutzpah required to call me a nitpicker while still finding it possible to look at themselves straightfaced in the mirror and of course the chatterati within the ABC itself, I again say: I am not seeking to replace left-wing imbalance with an alternative right-wing imbalance. No-one I know wants to do that. It would be wrong to attempt to do so and against the public interest.

However, it is the public interest that I seek to serve. That is why commentators like Mike Carlton of the Sydney Morning Herald are so wrong when they misinterpret the motives of those like me who seek an ABC that is actually accountable, as opposed to being theoretically accountable. On Saturday 5 November Mr Carlton wrote in his column:

Santoro’s idee fixe, amounting almost to mania, is that the ABC is a nest of leftwing traitors to be exposed relentlessly. He retains a network of busybodies who diligently report evidence of bias and subversion.

‘There are about 28 people in Australia monitoring what the ABC does,’ he boasted to a Senate estimates committee on Monday. ‘I receive between 15 and 20 tapes a week, and out of that we get transcripts. We are absolutely deadly serious ... about making the ABC accountable.’

Mr Carlton got it wrong. I doubt that anyone is surprised by that. I do not retain and have never said I retain a network of people, busybodies or otherwise, to file reports on ABC bias. Mr Carlton apparently needed a dyspeptic column item. Perhaps he was having a bad day. Maybe someone’s latte had got cold or their chardonnay had unaccountably warmed beyond the exact Celsius value at which it should be served. Life is so difficult sometimes, isn’t it? While he was pondering the technical difficulties of reheating latte or recooling an uncorked chardonnay, he invented something to write about using the tried and true methodology of some of his ilk. He started with a basic misinterpretation and extrapolated it from there.

The fact is there are many people in the community who object to bias and lack of balance on the public airwaves. The fact is there are some among them who actually want to do something about it, and from among that cohort some of them come to me. This is obviously something that disturbs Mr Carlton. It must not concur with his view of how the universe truly works. Well, to that, I say: tough.

Other pundits had a go at me following the estimates hearings and that is fine. As I said earlier, it comes with the territory. Some of them were even funny, and I think, in this instance, of Matt Price of the Australian, for example. And some of them are earnest like Errol Simper, who writes the excellent ‘Scribes’ column, also in the Australian. I was interested to read later, by the way, that Mr Price now thinks that I may have a point about bias in the ABC since he discovered to his horror that his own favourite music is not favoured by the ABC.

Jokes aside, the issue of ABC bias and lack of balance in news and current affairs broadcasting is simply not going to go away. It is on the agenda. It will stay there until the issue is resolved. What must be delivered is objectivity in line with the ABC’s charter as a public broadcaster, and a lasso must be placed around the broadcast egoists who pitch their own agenda. That this campaign is on some occasions supported by unbelievably crass quips on air is the plainest evidence of all that these people think they are a law unto themselves. One thinks of Tony Eastley’s moving car quip on AM about Vivian Solon as a prime example of a public sin left publicly unpunished—one suspects it is quietly applauded by the in-crowd. Of course, broadcasters of whatever class, luminary or otherwise, are quite at liberty to delude themselves over the nature and effect of the threat that faces democratic systems from the terrorists of this world. But Australians do not believe they are entitled to market that delusion by attempting to influence audiences to their way of thinking or, for that matter, any particular way of thinking. That is the bottom line. As I mentioned at the beginning of this speech, it would have been useful to take it up again with Mr Balding at the latest hearings. For those who still refuse to comprehend, I repeat: the issue of ABC bias is not a political argument. That may be something the Friends of the ABC and some within the ABC itself find difficult to believe, but it is nonetheless the truth. And it is what has driven my campaign to correct bias and lack of balance in ABC news and current affairs broadcasting since I first entered the Senate in 2002. The situation is that the ABC’s own rules are being flouted. We cannot forget about the smokescreen of contextual counterargument that the pliant ABC management fronts up with when these issues are raised, so that the broadcasters themselves become the arbiters.

Legitimate public discussion about policy and outcomes is derailed as a consequence. This can be corrected by the ABC management, and I strongly recommend that they must get on and do so. The ABC has thus far ducked every substantial question about editorial bias. That reflects no credit on the corporation and indeed it is a shame.