Blind prejudice
The anti-Liberal and Nationals bias appears so deeply entrenched at the ABC it is quite possible they don’t even realise their prejudice. By Nicolle Flint.
There are very few reasons left to watch the ABC. However, Annabel Crabb’s new ABC TV program, Ms Represented, provides an excellent excuse to turn on the television, then turn it off again, and formally complain.
The ABC needs to hear direct from viewers that this utterly biased and completely unbalanced program is unacceptable.
Ms Represented claims to be about women in Australian politics, but judging by the first two episodes it seems more like an excuse to attack the Liberal Party and Liberal men (not to mention the fact the ABC could only find one conservative Liberal Party woman for the entire show).
By the complete omission of National Party women from the program, it is also an indirect attack on the Nationals as well.
The ABC, formerly beloved by country people all over Australia, couldn’t be bothered representing the women elected to our second-oldest political party, who achieved a raft of notable “firsts”, who have governed in Coalition for decades, and who represent rural and regional areas.
Ms Represented also lacks historical context, which — combined with a lack of party balance — means some of the important messages about the challenges women in politics face are lost.
As such, a better title for the program would have been “Misrepresented”, or perhaps “Extreme Misrepresentation”.
On this point, the numbers don’t lie.
In episode one of the bias-fest, Liberal women appear just 28 times, while Labor, Democrat and Greens women appear 66 times.
Episode two is barely better, with 33 appearances by Liberal women, while Labor and the Greens manage a total of 48 speaking spots.
Then, there are the attacks on Liberal men.
Julie Bishop and Amanda Vanstone single out former prime minister Tony Abbott, with Vanstone saying: “Abbott is probably a misogynist, he’s not sort of a new-age man, let’s put it that way.”
Leaving aside how offensive this is, it conveniently ignores Abbott’s extensive support of women’s charities, the care and compassion he expresses in his book Battlelines towards his former girlfriend Kathy, with whom he long thought he shared a son — before learning he didn’t — his female-focused policies, such as paid parental leave, and his employment of a female chief of staff in opposition and in government, to name just a few of the ways he is clearly not a misogynist.
Bishop’s and Vanstone’s efforts sit alongside the even more scathing depictions of Abbott by former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard and ALP senator Penny Wong.
However, Abbott is not the only Liberal man in the firing line of this ABC hit-job pretending to be a program about women in politics.
John Howard, Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister, is criticised for beating a woman, Joan Pilone, for preselection in Bennelong. From the description in Ms Represented, you’d imagine there were only two candidates in the field — Howard and Pilone — rather than the 23 candidates that fronted on the day.
Howard is further maligned for then daring to become the federal Treasurer after a few short years in parliament. It seems beyond the comprehension of the ABC that perhaps Howard’s success was due to the fact he is an extraordinary individual whose career trajectory demonstrates his remarkable intelligence, work ethic, determination, personal resilience, and political judgment.
The ABC also negatively portrays Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and former Liberals Jamie Briggs and Cory Bernardi are highlighted for alleged bad behaviour.
On the flip side, apparently no Labor leader has ever behaved poorly towards women, or beaten one in preselection (have any even run?), although Anthony Albanese gains a fleeting appearance wearing a bad tie.
Former Labor Treasurer John Dawkins, former Democrat-then-Green Andrew Bartlett and Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm are the only non-Liberal men briefly mentioned for bad behaviour in their respective chambers.
Strangely for a program on Australian women in politics, British Conservative PM Boris Johnson also manages to be criticised, while Americans Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are favourably portrayed.
It would be easy to assume that the ABC did all of this on purpose, as a continuation of their campaign to attack all conservatives, and see the Coalition removed from government. However, the truth is probably somewhat worse.
The anti-Liberal and Nationals bias appears so deeply entrenched at the ABC it is quite possible they don’t even realise their prejudice.
Thankfully, there is a way to fix this. No doubt the ABC provides all sorts of “unconscious bias” training, and they most definitely have a “diversity and inclusion plan”, so why not include instruction on the Liberal and National Parties in all this?
The ABC proudly boasts a 33-page brochure on “diversity and inclusion”, so surely it has room to expand.
After all, the “plan” states that the national broadcaster has a “responsibility to reach all Australians and to accurately reflect and represent the rich diversity and perspectives of our many communities”.
One of those “communities” is the Liberal-National voting population of Australia.
Last election there were 6,114,560 of them, and they hold the key to a far simpler and stronger solution that any training program.
Imagine the impact on the ABC if every single one of these Australians complained.
Nicolle Flint is the federal Liberal member for Boothby in South Australia. This article first appeared in The Australian and has been republished here with permission.