Our regular correspondent, Marcus May has been following the politics which surround the ABC and this is his take on the latest exchange between the Leader of the Opposition and an ABC journalist.

You can call Peter Dutton “Mr Consistent”, consistently hating the ABC - hating the ABC’s independence, hating its direct, revealing, and often embarrassing questions, hating its fearless exposure of corruption, lies and deception, and especially hating that it is more popular and trusted than his friends in the Murdoch press.

Since 2015, when the ABC revealed the then Immigration Minister Peter Dutton secretly joking about the plight of Pacific Island nations facing rising seas from climate change, Dutton has made it no secret that he despises the ABC and its journalists, in 2018 summarily saying “the ABC [...] are dead to me!”.

He regularly attempts to undermine their credibility, and whether it is speaking of the “crazy lefties at the ABC”, or earlier this year clashing with 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson over claims of ABC bias, or claiming the ABC’s Laura Tingle’s “credibility as a journalist is really shot”, and “Laura Tingle's outed herself now as somebody who is a partisan, she's a Greens/Labor supporter” after she critically analysed his policy announcements, Dutton paints the ABC as biased and partisan, something that regular independent reviews of ABC performance have found no evidence to support; in fact found the opposite.

Dutton is not alone in his efforts to undermine public trust in the ABC, it has been a decades long campaign within the Coalition ranks, manifested through Abbott, Morrison, Joyce, Henderson, Coleman, Price and many others in their comments about the ABC on a regular basis. As Joel Carret (The Conversation) summarised after the 2022 election:

That [Coalition] onslaught consisted of relentless accusations of left-wing bias, a succession of pointless and enervating inquiries, punitive funding cuts, and the use of the ABC for target practice in the Coalition’s interminable climate and culture wars. The government also joined with News Corporation in a pincer attack on the ABC. But worst of all, it stacked the board.

Last week Dutton again denounced the ABC.

Asked by Bunbury-based ABC reporter Bridget McArthur during a Western Australian doorstop interview to substantiate his claim that “the vast majority of the public” in Collie supported his nuclear power plants proposal, Dutton retorted with “Well how do you know they don’t?” (is that the new policy rationale?), before stating, “I understand the position of the ABC. The ABC has an ideological position against that. That’s an issue for you. I don’t really care.”, and further “When you’ve been employed by the ABC, I just think your job is to be impartial, and that’s not what you’re doing.”

The clash with Dutton saw the ABC reporter stand her ground. “You always make it about the ABC,” McArthur said. “I don’t have a bias; you might have a bias against the ABC.”

Good on you Bridget! It’s about time the ABC stood up for itself and insisted that such unsubstantiated claims of bias or partiality must be publicly justified!

Political Historian Paul Strangio was quoted in a recent SMH Natassia Chrysanthos article ("Does Peter Dutton Have a Glass Jaw") as saying, “As Labor plans to run a negative campaign against Dutton’s character, attacking ABC journalists, particularly women, could be risky. The trust and affection for the ABC is not just restricted to so-called ‘elites’ – it’s widespread throughout the community. Displays of aggression like these are also unlikely to endear him to women voters, a problem constituency for the Coalition, or those in teal seats.”

The public broadcaster vowed to continue to ask the opposition leader and others tough questions.

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