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Comments (0)In The Australian, frequent Quadrant contributor Jim Allan wonders why allegedly conservative governments, both state and federal, continue to fund and appoint their sworn enemies:
“Conservative governments do a lousy job of putting people with their views into jobs that affect the general cultural outlook. Put bluntly, they lose the culture wars because they don’t bother to fight them, not really…
… Here in Australia we have a national broadcasting company that sucks up more than $1 billion of your taxes every year. So you can say that $500 million of that comes from voters who prefer the Coalition. Yet not a single big-ticket current affairs show is hosted or produced by someone with a right-of-centre pedigree. The appearance of bias is blatant.
It shows up there; it shows up when Q&A runs a program on terrorism with four blatantly anti-government people, plus Tony Jones, on one side, with a government minister on the other; it shows up when the ABC contracts for a documentary on Paul Keating hosted by Kerry O’Brien but turns down one on Howard hosted by Janet Albrechtsen. (The latter got picked up by Channel 7. Guess which had the higher ratings?)
Yet ABC managing director Mark Scott can see nothing wrong with any of this. No appearance of bias, not a hint, can he see. I feel as if the man lives on a different planet from the one I inhabit. Yet here’s my main point. Scott was appointed by the Howard government. Labor would rarely, if ever, make that sort of error.”
Allan would seem to have a point. Take a look at these recipients of Victoria’s Liberal Premier Denis Napthine’s arts dollar, especially this one:
Given that Overland will not publish the work of poets who have had their verse published in Quadrant, the allocation below is so galling it will be worth remembering in November, when Napthine expects the party faithful to cast their votes without thought or reservation.
