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There is, or was supposed to be, a quaint convention that ABC news comperes keep their opinions to themselves in order to serve as fulcrums on which the arguments of those more directly involved in the debates of the day might hinge and swing. Those who have heard 774 radio’s Jon Faine get all huffy with climate sceptics, not to mention anyone who dares raise an eyebrow about the funds that underwrote Julia Gillard’s home renovations,will know that is not true. So, too, those masochists who tune in to Q&A, where the fun for those at home is in predicting the number of times during a single hour that moderator Tony Jones will interrupt. Somehow, it always seems that the token conservative guest suffers most from the snow-haired buttinski’s contributions, but that, sadly, is to be expected of an organisation overseen by an “editor-in-chief” who declines to, you know, actually edit, which should mean holding underlings to standards of relative neutrality. With all those tweets to send every day, poor Mark Scott probably just cannot find a spare minute.
Julia Baird, who hosts The Drum’s TV incarnation must be a better manager of her time because she has penned a little op-ed for The New York Times that begins thus:
SYDNEY, Australia — It will be remembered as one of the most ignoble moments in our history: On July 17, Australia became the first country to repeal a carbon tax.
“Ignoble”? There is ABC-style impartiality for you, and on stilts no less.
Baird’s screed invokes all Labor’s recent talking points: Gillard came to grief because she is a woman, not as a consequene of gender-neutral incompetence and habitual deceptions, and she also tosses in references to “shock-jocks” and their pernicious influence on public opinion. Inevitably, the evil incarnate that goes by the name of Rupert Murdoch gets a mention. And just for good measure she sources to Tony Abbott’s lips the predicted $550 to be saved by a typical household from the carbon tax’s repeal when the fact of the matter is that the figure comes from a Treasury analysis.
Even by ABC standards, such as they are, Ms Baird’s airing of her convictions sets a new high-water mark for partisan candour. If only Mark Scott was not so busy in his counting house — $800,000 a year requires no small degree of financial planning — he might have noticed Baird’s moonlighting and perhaps issued a stern, editor-style memo.
Alas, good management at the ABC, like unbiased comperes, is even more scarce than conservative voices.
