Tag Archives: Peter Reith

The only issue is the indelible green-left biases of the ABC

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Let me come back to this Zaki business one last time because it does worry me that either the government doesn’t get the point, or doesn’t want to. I don’t care that they gave Zaki air time. In fact, the more they let him talk, the more he demonstrates what a danger he and others like him are. That was not the problem. The problem was that he was brought onto Q&A by the ABC specifically to ambush a government minister. It was the ABC’s intent that is so vile, not the particular means they chose on this occasion. What the program demonstrated, far better than anything else in recent times, is that the ABC is out to harm the government because the ABC, contrary to its charter, is pursuing a green-left agenda of its own. The entire organisation is now a billion dollar version of the Green-Left Review. That is the problem. That is what you must deal with.

My worry is that no one seems to get it. All the quotes that follow are from The Australia today. Each is one more example of missing the point. Here first is Julie Bishop:

The ABC’s action in allowing a former terror suspect to air his views runs counter to the government’s work in attempting to protect Australians from terrorism, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.

This is from Christopher Pyne discussing Mark Scott:

“He’s trying to pretend the government is trying to close free speech at the ABC. This is typical of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; rather than ’fessing up to their mistake, which was to bring a convicted terrorist on to the audience of Q&A and give them a platform … (and) put at risk the people in the audience,” Mr Pyne told the Nine Network.

Then Peter Reith:

Peter Reith, a former Liberal cabinet minister, accused Mr Scott of reducing the ABC’s blunder to a question of audience security and not the “shocking and offensive” decision to give Mallah a platform.

“The ABC head was basically saying the real problem is that ‘we didn’t manage the security side of it’ as if, you know, if they’d got that right then having this guy on would be OK,” Mr Reith told Sky News.

Even Malcolm got into the act:

“This guy on social media not so long ago nominated two female journalists and said that they should be publicly raped,” Mr Turnbull said. “What if he had said that again in the Q&A live audience? Why would you ever put a person (like that) in a live audience? It’s incredible.”

The issue is neither terrorism nor free speech. The issue is the ABC. Nothing else. The issue is whether the government is going to take on the the fanatical leftist bias of the ABC, or is instead going to leave it alone until it conspires with the Greens and ALP to see it defeated at the polls. I would have thought that an instinct for self-preservation would have driven the government towards some such conclusion already.

I am in no doubt how difficult this task is. But I am also in no doubt that unless you identify the problem for what it is and then deal with the problem itself, you and we will never be rid of this deformed monstrosity of the far left. This is what you must do if you are to survive. You must set down a strategy for dealing with the indelible green-left political biases of the ABC and then do what you can to counter this malignant publicly-funded cancer in our social midst.

Do us a favour – keep it to yourself

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No one wants this government to succeed more than I do. So when I write about something I see as a wrong step taken, I do it in the hope that the Government will see what I write – assuming that they take any notice at all – as advice from a friend. I am a citizen blogger and we are a site that almost overwhelmingly has high hopes that this government will stay around for a long time to come. But this blog is like closed-circuit TV. We are a small close knit group who speaks to each other.

A story like this on the other hand – with the following headline across the front page of the AFR – Reith accuses Abbott of orchestrating GrainCorp veto – is different. And when we go into the text, this is what we find:

One of the most senior figures of the Howard government and a leading ­figure of the Liberal Party’s conservative wing, Peter Reith, has accused Prime Minister Tony Abbott of orchestrating the veto of a $3.4 billion US bid for GrainCorp, which he described as the latest of several botched decisions.

Mr Reith called on the new government to show more leadership and resist the push for government subsidies and assistance for business, and raised concerns that the GrainCorp decision, which was supposed to have been made by Treasurer Joe Hockey, makes a bailout of Qantas Airways more likely.

Here’s the difference between myself and Peter Reith. He can pick up the phone and talk to the Prime Minister, not all the time perhaps but at least some of the time. He has the ear of most of the front bench and he can tell them privately what his concerns are.

Here is another difference. It would not be a news story if I thought that the government had “botched” something. It would not potentially swing a single vote or help alienate any part of the voting public. A former government Minister in John Howard’s government, however, is in an entirely different place. He does cause people to become disaffected. He loosens the hold of the Coalition on government.

He and others like him should stay out of it. They had their moment and that moment is gone. Their public criticisms only do harm. Malcolm Fraser became Labor’s greatest shill but we had stopped paying attention to him years ago.

Coalition unity is more important than GrainCorp. I have never understood the full complexity of the issue but the Nationals are dead against the sale. From what I understand, they are wrong to be opposed but that’s how it is. What’s the advice therefore being offered? Ram it through? Create a split in the government? Demonstrate to National Party voters there’s no point in voting National?

If I thought it was a bad decision I could say it but so what. For people a phone call away from making these point personally, however, people whose name recognition is high and who are associated with this government by being former high profile politicians on the Coalition side, their responsibility is to avoid at all costs the damage they have most clearly done. Their responsibility should be to ensure this government has a long life. In the meantime, they should keep such criticism for private communication to their friends in the government. And barring that, they should keep it to themselves.