The employment minister, Eric Abetz, who has previously pursued the ABC at Senate estimates hearings over bias claims, praised the national broadcaster's reports on alleged union misconduct in the construction industry, which aired this week.

"Let me say that the ABC and Fairfax Media have done a great public service in exposing the corruption and illegality on Australian construction sites," Abetz told reporters on Wednesday.

In early December, after the spying story controversy, the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, vigorously defended the national broadcaster against criticism.

“We are an independent media organisation and of course sometimes we will publish stories that politicians won’t be happy about. We are an independent media organisation. That’s the role we have to play,” Scott said at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/29/tony-abbott-attacks-abc-for-taking-everyones-side-but-australias

Acting Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek said every government had "been subject to the close scrutiny of the ABC, and we should all welcome that".

"From emergency broadcasts in times of trouble to coverage of the events that shape our nation, the ABC is there, free for all Australians," she said.

"[Mr Abbott] should stop complaining about media coverage and start behaving like a prime minister," she added.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: "We need strong voices in parliament to stand up for the public's right to an independent national broadcaster".

Critics have accused the government of secrecy over asylum policy.

The government has refused to comment on reports that the navy are towing asylum boats back to Indonesia. It has however recently issued an apology to Indonesia for "inadvertently" violating its waters on multiple occasions.

The government has also limited information on asylum arrivals and vessel-related incidents to a weekly e-mail, citing operational needs.

The ABC charter describes the corporation as "the provider of an independent national broadcasting service".

In December, ABC managing director Mark Scott defended the ABC's coverage of the spying allegations.

"We are an independent media organisation and of course sometimes we will publish stories that politicians won't be happy about," he said. "That's the role we have to play."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25925312

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Tony Abbott should stop bullshitting the Australian people and vanish... At the last election, Tony and his cronies lied.

if you know the conservatives, you should have been prepared for a few things:

Union bashing

ABC bashing

Blaming others for their own caca

Dismembering what works and replacing it with dodgy fiddles such as "direct action" on climate change

Demonising the unemployed, the public servants and the sick

Taxing the poor and letting the rich get away with "trusts" and tax haven immunity

Being ruthless against asylum seekers with an international disgrace of a policy that only works presently due to the monsoon.

Education shambles

etc, etc, the list is long and Tony would not get away with any of this if he did not have the blatant bias of the merde-och outfit...

There's probably a great deal more to Prime Minister Tony Abbott's criticism of the ABC on Sydney commercial radio on Wednesday.

It is less likely to have been some off the cuff comment born out of frustration that the ABC may have got the odd story wrong and more likely to be the launch of a new attack on the nation's public broadcaster.

This is certainly not the first time an Australian prime minister has publicly criticised the ABC in the way it handles its news and current affairs. Practically every prime minister since Bob Menzies has at some stage complained that the ABC either got it wrong, or demonstrated bias in reporting a story. We all remember Bob Hawke's accusation that the 7.30 Report coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 was ''loaded,'' ''biased'' and ''disgraceful'' because of the views expressed by an analyst invited on to the show.

However, Tony Abbott is going a lot further by now suggesting the ABC should censor its news coverage and withhold information to the public when it portrays Australia in a bad light.

On Sydney commercial radio 2GB on Wednesday, the Prime Minister suggested the ABC ''instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia's'' and he wanted to see ''some basic affection for the home team''.

He criticised the ABC for running a story alleging the Australian navy was the cause of some asylum seekers being burned and that the navy should have been given ''the benefit of the doubt''. In the same interview, he made it clear the ABC should not have broadcast the revelations that Australian spy agencies had tapped the mobile phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife Kristiani Herawati because the information came from documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. According to Abbott, the ABC ''seemed to delight in broadcasting allegations by a traitor''.

The inference to be drawn from this is that patriotism should now become part of the ABC editorial responsibility and the ABC should deny the public access to news and information that would portray Australia, and presumably its government, in a poor light.

There is no doubt that Tony Abbott and his more conservative Coalition colleagues genuinely believe the ABC is too left wing and needs to be brought to heel. Privately, they still grumble that the likes of Kerry O'Brien was once a young press secretary in a federal Labour government and Barrie Cassidy was once the press secretary for Hawke.

They also feel a frustration at not being able to change what they see as a culture within the ABC that is hostile to the Coalition. Even stacking the ABC board in the Howard years with arch conservatives such as Michael Kroger, Janet Albrechtsen, Keith Windschuttle, John Gallagher and Maurice Newman failed to fundamentally change the organisation.

No doubt Abbott's recent comments are the first of a series of new assaults we can expect on the ABC in the coming months. In March, the ABC funding for next year goes before the federal cabinet's expenditure review committee and the ABC would be wise to brace itself for a new round of cuts. And then there is the ABC international TV service contract, which is almost certain to be handed over to a commercial operator and probably one in which Rupert Murdoch has an interest.

It is a great shame governments don't recognise the ABC' s greatest patriotic duty is to continue to hold governments to account by the provision of independent, unbiased, and honest news to the Australian public.

David Hill is a former chairman and managing director of the ABC.

When once asked about climate change and environmentalists, former Senator Nick Minchin actually argued that the environmental movement was largely driven by fallen communists whose main ambition was to use the movement to de-industrialise the west:

“For the extreme left it [the existence of climate change] provides the opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left...and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion.”

This is the something like ignorant and lazy ideological attitude of conspiracyfrom the Liberal-National governments of the 1960s and early 1970s, who used ASIO to run checks on various ABC journalists, academics, activists, feminists, Aborigines, politicians and, for that matter, anyone else it seems that displeased them almost as a matter of course. After all, there was a Cold War to fight, or the Vietnam War to support, or the relationship with our precious ally to protect. And these horrid people, no doubt ,would be intent on damaging national security or be on the way to doing something even worse — for example, publicly embarrassing the democratically elected government by reporting news and asking some inconvenient questions.

The latter would appear to be the greatest sin in the eyes of many politicians, particularly our current Government.

If the meek news reports and occasional questions from the ABC have become a problem for the current government in Australia, yet the commercial media with its spiralling quest for the lowest common denominator journalism is not, the basic assumptions of democratic accountability have, in fact, been turned on their heads.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-abc-of-ending-embarrassing-questions,6116

Should some people have taken the protection of the environment as their "new religion", one can say to Nick Minchin that industrialists have religiously taken on the destruction of the environment as their modus operandi. 

The wife of prominent broadcaster Ray Hadley has withdrawn her apprehended violence order application against her husband 24 hours after she first went to police.

Suzanne Hadley, 48, went to Hornsby police station on Thursday afternoon and spoke with officers. That discussion prompted police to apply for an AVO against the 2GB host.

But on Friday afternoon, police said following further discussion with Mrs Hadley that application would be withdrawn.

Both applications had been lodged by Detective Sergeant David Fairclough, of the Kuring-Gai police, on Suzanne's behalf.

Hadley and his son had been due to appear at Hornsby Local Court on March 4.

Hadley, who is also a Daily Telegraph columnist, did not arrive for work on Friday morning.

An email was sent to 2GB staff at 7.30pm on Thursday saying: "Ray is unwell. Luke Grant will host mornings tomorrow."

Lewis Review to propose a doubling of cuts to ABC

MEAA, the union and professional association for Australia’s journalists, is shocked by reports that the cuts proposed for the ABC’s budget may be more than double what was initially proposed.

MEAA has been advised by several trusted sources that the Lewis Review into ABC and SBS efficiency is on the verge of suggesting cuts of more than $100 million year on year, dramatically exceeding the cuts of $120 million over four years in the Federal Government’s budget.

MEAA has learned that the savings figure does not include the 1% reduction in the annual appropriation already announced in the Budget, nor the $88 million over four years the ABC will save following the axing of the Asia Pacific News Centre (APNC). This would take the total cut to more than $130 million in the next 12 months alone.

MEAA federal secretary Christopher Warren warned that the cuts, and the reduction in staff numbers, would cause irreversible damage to the national broadcaster. “The cuts the Lewis Review is set to propose would decimate the ABC. MEAA believes such severe cuts would have a direct impact on vital, unique services that only the ABC can provide. We would likely see a reduction in the number of foreign bureaus and a distinct drop in the ABC’s rural and regional footprint.

“Specialist journalists and programs would all be hit hard. Areas like state politics, courts, science, law, religion, investigative reporting, trade, defence and national security would all be under the scalpel,” Warren said.

This new revelation comes on the same day that some of the ABC’s most prominent on air and production staff signed an open letter to the ABC board, calling on it to “take decisive action in support of the ABC” and dispense with the secrecy that has been shrouding the conversation around cuts to the ABC.

The letter said: “We, the undersigned, express our grave concern at the ABC’s conduct through its secret consideration of a radical transformation of ABC operations in a pre-emptive response to government funding cuts. We take issue with the managing director’s vision that a future ABC will be structured and reshaped primarily on audience demographic objectives by reallocating resources. A plan constructed in secret and imposed as a fait accompli can only be destructive. ABC program makers are ready, willing and able to play a constructive role in shaping the ABC’s future.

Read more: http://www.alliance.org.au/lewis-review-to-propose-a-doubling-of-cuts-to-abc

See toon at top...

Bangkok: It's official. The lives of tens of thousands of Australian expatriates in Asia will change forever at midnight on September 28, hours after the AFL grand final.

A stake will be driven through our souls. For months we have been in denial: how could it be true that our government could close the ABC-managed Australia Network service?

No more footy.

No more Virginia Trioli's face smiling behind her dark glasses early on ABC News Mornings, bringing us up to date with the latest from home and abroad.

No more Tony Jones and Q&A.

No more Zoe Daniel and Jim Middleton fronting their program The World, a showcase news program in Asia (Middleton, a fine journalist, has taken a package and left the ABC after 44 years).

We won't of course miss some of the programming, like Channel Nine's The Block. But those of us who have been in Asia a while remember the sheepdog trials that were shown in the early days. Actually, I liked watching the sheepdog trials.

OK, I acknowledge I am writing this from the perspective of a passionate Collingwood supporter. I can't imagine what it will be like next season. I wake up in the night in a cold sweat thinking about the difficulties of trying to live-stream games on my dodgy internet.

But this is more than an atrocity inflicted on those of us out here deprived of Four'N Twenty meat pies.

For my children there will be no more Bananas in Pyjamas or Giggle and Hoot. How do you feel about that, Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop?

One of Tony Abbott's biggest supporters has rated the Prime Minister's performance a D-minus in the wake of the Martin Place siege.

Conservative broadcaster Ray Hadley delivered a stinging report card to Mr Abbott for his last couple of months in government during a radio interview on Thursday morning.

"I thought until about a month ago, you were going B-plus, I think you're now a D-minus," Mr Hadley told Mr Abbott.

Mr Hadley explained that one of the reasons for this was the government deciding to go ahead with its mid-year budget update at the height of the fatal Sydney siege on Tuesday. 

"I thought that was a really bad call," he said. "We had seventeen people in there whose lives were at risk."  

Mr Abbott earlier said that he tried to avoid scoring himself. 

"If I score myself high, people think I'm full of myself.  If I score myself low, people think I'm lacking in self-confidence." 

He later added that it had been a "ragged conclusion" to the year for his government.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ray-hadley-attacks-tony-abbotts-response-to-martin-place-siege-during-fiery-interview-20141217-129kfr.html

See toon at top.

In his maiden speech to Parliament last year Senator McGrath said the ABC should be privatised and replaced by a "rural and regional broadcasting corporation" if it doesn't address concerns of left-wing bias.

"I want to support the ABC. I like the ABC," he said.

"Yet while it continues to represent only inner-city leftist views, and funded by our taxes, it is in danger of losing its social licence to operate."

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/everyone-from-coalition-thinks-abcs-qa-is-biased-to-the-left-says-lnp-senator-james-mcgrath-20150527-ghatyw.html

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Senator McGrath is peddling a dead cat once more, from the side of politics that think the ABC is never right-wing enough even if the ABC has shifted to the right in recent years and has lost its "balanced" middle ground... But McGrath is part of a broader CONservative ploy to make the ABC's honchos take notice that their legs could be cut by the moronics and the idiots in charge of the present government. Lucky, Malcolm understands all this but unlucky for us, he's too pissweak to tell his side of politics to place a sock in it...

The spectre of "privatisation" of the ABC is one that is designed to make the public shake in their boots, toe the line with the rabid Turdy and please the ultra-right wing ratbaggery of the Shock-Jokery... 

It's nonsensical... The ABC has been weakened already by trying to attract the teenagers and rightwingers on its main channel and its many e-platforms with news and programming that have become more and more diluted from solid food content... This state of affairs has pushed the oldies go and re-watch for the 27th times old reruns of M*A*S*H instead of the boring ABC news of the day where, praise the lord, Abbott will open his mouth and shower us in crap once more... We've had nuf...

see also: A Born Conservative attacks the ABC..

And when McGrath says the ABC "continues to represent only inner-city leftist views." McGrath knows he is talking a lot of crap...

See toon at top