Malcolm Turnbull Loves The ABC Way More Than Tony Abbott; Here’s Why That Should Have You Worried

One of conservative politicians’ favourite hobbies in Australia and elsewhere is complaining that the media is controlled by a latte-sipping lefty elite. Recently deposed Prime Minister Tony Abbott was a particular fan of this pastime, missing no opportunity to smear the widely trusted ABC as a malevolent agitprop machine powered by money fleeced from the unsuspecting suburban taxpayer. His critique fell somewhat flat due to the public’s opinion of him as a thuggish dullard, and many of his sooky old allies will probably find these overwrought persecution narratives holding less and less purchase as time goes on.

Malcolm Turnbull, by contrast, is a renowned ABC fan. During the pre-Abbott era he was a staple on Q&A, hamming it up for the audience like a charismatic absent father. This is an intriguing divergence in strategy: Abbott treated the ABC like an enemy force that had to be crushed, whereas Turnbull is usually thrilled to co-operate.

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Is The New PM On Board With The ABC “Jihad”, Or What?

Turnbull’s willingness to engage with the ABC is sometimes presented as proof of his progressive spirit and openness to productive debate. Many people who lean left appreciate this about him: it shows he’s a reasonable man who knows a fact when he sees one, and that his agenda isn’t dictated by an arcane set of cultural or religious principles that have no place in the modern era. He’s not like old mate Tony, who thinks climate science was invented by Bob Brown in 1979 to trick people into living in homosexual treehouse communes.

But from my perspective, the differences between Turnbull’s politics and Abbott’s politics are not especially profound, at least in terms of their effects on ordinary people. Turnbull began what is likely to be a long process of proving this point yesterday, when he re-introduced legislation forcing young people to wait four weeks for the dole. He may not be a cultural conservative, but his classical liberal ideology still has the effect of protecting wealthy and upper class interests at the expense of poor and working people.

If the ABC is such a hotbed of socialism, why is Turnbull so comfortable there? The answer is that the ABC, and much of the mainstream media, operate according to roughly the same principles as Turnbull: all present themselves as part of a sane, rational centre ground. Not crazy conservatives like Tony Abbott; not loony lefties like Greenies or the Labor Left. Their ideology is pragmatic, scientific, and neutral. Just the facts, please, we’re not ideologues here.

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The Sinister Conservatism Of Impartiality

For the media, this ideal of objectivity is sacred but impossible, and in practice it has all kinds of perverse effects like false balance. This occurs when a media platform presents a settled issue like anthropogenic climate change as though it were a going concern, simply because the people promoting the discredited ‘other side of the debate’ have the power and money to create negative consequences for anyone who doesn’t take their garbage opinions seriously.

This relationship between wealth, power and objectivity repeats itself over and over in the media, relentlessly framing politics, crime, social issues and everything else in a way that re-affirms the legitimacy of our unequal and unjust social forms. False balance in climate change coverage is a glaring example, but others are far more subtle.

Political reporting, for instance, is often shallow and boring, centred on which party or politician ‘won’ a certain issue. Rarely is time taken to explore or contextualise issues, or relate them comprehensively to people’s actual lives and circumstances. This is especially true with regard to economic issues, which, despite being of crucial importance, are presented by politicians as incomprehensible jumbles of de-contextualised numbers. The result is a frustrated public that has contempt for the parliamentary political sphere. People know they’re being had by sloganeering pollies and untrustworthy journos, so they disengage from the entire process.

And who benefits from a populace that doesn’t have a strong collective understanding of politics, and doesn’t believe their interests are being heard or represented? Oh yeah: groups like the business lobby, who — in the absence of keen public accountability for politicians — are free to use their already-existing money and power to influence what is supposed to be a democratic process. This is not accidental. The cumulative effects of this influence have already provoked rebellion in the British Labour party, whose members elected scruffy old socialist Jeremy Corbyn as leader because he was the only candidate with a record of speaking honestly on these very issues.

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What To Do With Malcolm

In Australia, these cumulative effects manifest themselves in Malcolm Turnbull’s historically jovial relationship with the ABC. Decades of funding cuts, scurrilous accusations of left-wing bias, and a general reshaping of public discourse according to the interests of the wealthy and powerful have shifted the ABC incrementally toward being receptive to Turnbull’s extreme right-wing ethos. It sounds funny to say that about Turnbull, given his reputation as a progressive on social issues, but it’s utterly consistent with his core beliefs. Who cares what people get up to in their own homes, as long as they don’t start questioning Malcolm Turnbull’s divine right to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars while advocating the removal of welfare regimes that keep people from becoming destitute and homeless.

This isn’t the fault of the ABC, or the many lovely people who work there. The ABC is subject to the same historical and social processes as any other institution, many of which have mutated into much worse and more dysfunctional forms for similar reasons (holla, Australian Labor Party.) Despite being consistently attacked and undermined for decades, it is still the most thorough and trustworthy mainstream media outlet in the country.

Nevertheless, it is deeply troubling that a man who doesn’t really believe in the provision of public goods feels so warmly received by an organisation that is legally compelled to provide them. It suggests that the ABC, along with the rest of the media, are not engaged in a proper critique of his ideas. It suggests that the industry charged with providing the information necessary for people to make meaningful political decisions is not performing this task to a high enough standard. It suggests that Turnbull believes, when supporting the ABC, that there’s something in it for him.

Politicians hate being held to account. Turnbull liking the ABC so much, and being a media tart in general, suggests that is not happening as well as it could.

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Eleanor Robertson is a writer living in Sydney. Her work appears regularly in The Guardian, Daily Life and Frankie Magazine. Follow her at @marrowing for crap jokes and drunk tweets.