Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know you mock it on the other side, but some of us care about places beyond the Emerald City—to give the stories of those parts of the country a voice too. Let's face it, when it comes down to it, if I had a choice between which program is more biased or more myopic in its ABC world view, between Q&A versus Insiders, I'm going to make Barrie Cassidy's day. I reckon that Insiders is more reflective of a diversity of views than the programs on Monday night from Ultimo in Sydney.

What that says is that the more the ABC gets out, the better—the more the ABC turns around to this great nation and says, 'We want to represent everybody as part of the story of this nation. And this is where I give proper credit to programs like Back Roads, to lots of other comedy programs which are made outside Sydney and to those that try to tell the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. These are the stories that don't get their voice on national television and which don't get onto commercial broadcasters. The more we see of that then the more confidence the ABC will hold and the more confidence it will have within the Australian community.

Frankly, the people who have been doing a better job at this than the ABC are actually SBS. Yes, they've created programs which tell the stories of the lived experience of Australians, and they've actually shone bright lights into dark places.

Ms Claydon interjecting—

I know you can mock it, but the reality is that programs that focus on things like homelessness and that focus on the challenges faced by refugees are critically important to educate, to inform and to grow the opportunity experience of Australians. I would like to see more of that from the ABC, not less.

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