The ABC's Poison Propaganda

I rarely watch the ABC anymore. It is just too predictably biased. Anything the conservatives do is wrong and anything the leftists do is enlightened.

Their presenters, display their bias in almost every utterance, while standards for accuracy and accountability have virtually been abandoned.

However I did tune in via iView in response to a column by Nicolle Flint MP in the Australian.

She tore into the ABC program “Ms Represented”.  Clearly Flint is made of steel because she sat through the entire series only to conclude that:

"this utterly biased and completely unbalanced program is unacceptable."

Now, I still had no intention of watching it until I noticed a reference to me in the Flint article. So I sat through episode two of Ms Represented, listening to people I know whinge and whine about how hard it has been for them.

Knowing most of the players involved I could only conclude what a bunch of self-serving hypocrites I was watching.

I remember seeing one of the interviewees being presented with a Christmas card by another MP and throwing it back in his face and telling him where to go using spectacularly colourful language.

Another time,  I saw one of these 'victims' standing over a member of the of the South Australian Liberal Party State Executive bullying him into changing his vote; because he didn't vote how she wanted him to.

I called her out on it at the time, which would probably be classified as misogyny now.

But calling people out for their actions isn't wrong.

It's actually the right thing to do and yet few, if any of the ABC subjects seemed to do so when they could have done something about their gripes.

Everyone deserves to be held to account, especially in our national parliament.

Some don't like being held to account so they play the gender card or the race card or if they haven't got any cards to play they just smear, so that they can be above criticism.

That's seems to be the modus operandi of  Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who took a swipe at me for something she claims happened in the parliament seven years ago.

Now please understand, I have zero respect for this child-like senator and accordingly don’t give a fig about what she says – especially if it is self-serving, attention seeking garbage.

Remember, this is the Senator who has spent most of her adult life in the cosy world of politics. She’s never run a business, never employed anyone (outside of parliament) and has no idea how the real world functions.

Her reputation for accuracy includes believing a commercial television drama series ‘Sea Patrol’ was actually a border force documentary.

She thought Captain Cook landed with the first fleet,

and can’t tell the difference between Ray Hadley and Alan Jones. According to The Australian:

During an interview on 3AW yesterday to promote her new book En Garde, calling out “rampant sexism” in politics, Senator Hanson-Young accused Hadley of reserving his “nastiest comments for women”. In the book she notes that Hadley has at various points called her a “dingbat”, “mad as a meataxe”, “silly as a cut snake”, a “dolt” and a “silly woman”...

...This morning, following a request from Hadley’s lawyers, Senator Hanson-Young issued an apology.

Hadley accepted the apology, in the spirit is was given, with some words of advice.

And what I’d like you to do in future, before you get interviews either on 3AW or the ABC, a little tip for you darling, I get here at 4.30 in the morning and do a bit of research — and I guess that’s another way of being a misogynist, calling you darling, so I’ll do that again, darling, I get here at 4:30 in the morning and do a bit of research...

...You might try it one time, Sarah, it’s call research, and most people in public life do a stack of it, including politicians. Obviously in your case, research is not perhaps what it should be.”

Perhaps Peter Dutton summed it up pretty well when he said some years ago:

“I have evidence that Senator Hanson-Young over-states every issue. She gets her facts wrong most of the time. And I just think you need to look at it in the light of experience with Senator Hanson-Young,”

Wise words indeed but not heeded by the national broadcaster.

But as I said, what Hanson-Young projects about from years ago is a matter for her.

But what the national broadcaster did was an absolute disgrace.

Rule 101 of journalism is that if someone is making an allegation about another, you seek a response from the aggrieved party.

That never happened in Hanson-Young’s smearing of me.  The ABC never sought to confirm anything she said, instead relying on the word of a person who "gets her facts wrong most of the time" and presenting it as fact.

If the ABC did contact me with some simple questions they would have got some pretty clear answers.

Here are some basic facts about what they put to air.

That evening was an extended debate in the Senate with numerous divisions called.

That’s where you move across the chamber to vote yes or no to whatever question is put. It’s a normal part of senate procedure and moving seats is not some ‘creepy stalking’ as Hanson-Young suggested.

There was no ‘party’ as Hanson-Young claims. Like most senators I spent the evening waiting for divisions in the coalition senate ante-room

Her cheap smear suggesting there was a drunken party, is a classic diversionary tactic I have seen in use many times before. It is simply a baseless and unprovable smear designed to deflect criticism from those who make it.

That’s why the deputy president called her up on it because it was an unparliamentary imputation.

Remaining in the chamber to talk to others after a division is also quite normal. Sometimes it's the only way to actually catch up with colleagues on either side of politics.

It's also perfectly normal to interject on the absurdities of what others may be saying in their speech – and there are always lots of absurdities in the utterances of Hanson Young.

Take for instance her cavalier dismissal of the deaths of 200 wannabe illegal boat arrivals who were drowned off Java in 2011 as ‘tragedies happen, accidents happen’.

That's the type of thing I remind the Greens Senator about through interjections.

I have also have heard Hanson Young interject herself with all manner of unsavoury phrases over many years.

She’s accused coalition senators of being ‘creepy old white men’, ‘fat, bald white men’ and ‘disgraceful old white men’ and much worse. Put the shoe on the other foot and you'd be labelled racist, ageist or bigoted or some such other slur.

I’ve even heard her deny making unparliamentary statements in the Senate, but when they were confirmed as heard by other senators, she conceded and withdrew them.

From where I come from that type of behaviour doesn't demonstrate much integrity. Like it or not though, that is all grist for the mill as those sorts of things are daily occurrences in the Senate, used by all sides of politics

However, Hanson-Young criticises others for political tactics, words and actions that she uses herself. To me, that's the very definition of hypocrisy.  It's part of the reason why I concluded long ago that Sarah Hanson-Young is not an individual who I can rely on to tell the truth on all matters.

Her track record in this regard didn't seem to phase the ABC though. Like a flathead swallowing a fake grub, the bait simply proved too tempting

The fact that the ABC has seen fit to broadcast such garbage suggests that Nicolle Flint is quite correct.

Their program Ms Represented would be better named ‘Misrepresented’ or ‘Extreme Misrepresentation’.

Over the years I have come to expect very little from the likes of Sarah Hanson-Young, yet I don’t know why I still cling to the notion that we should expect better from their ABC.

Unfortunately, this latest broadcast is only more evidence the ABC has devolved further into the propaganda network more akin to the Soviet Union’s Pravda than a publicly funded broadcaster acting in the national interest.