Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I like the ABC. I am a regular viewer of it. I appreciate and value the national broadcaster. I acknowledge the comments—I think it was last night—of Justin Milne regarding unnecessary criticism of the ABC, and I understand the need for a diversity of opinion and the need to hear minority views and have proper debates on our national broadcaster. But I don't think that should include the broadcasting of neo-Nazis and people who are adherents to national socialism.

I spoke out the other night about Triple J's interview with one Mr Eli Mosley, who is an American neo-Nazi, and I was shocked on Tuesday night to turn on 7.30 and find yet another interview on our national broadcaster. This time it was with a Mr Matthew Heimbach, who is, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, quite the extremist and has views that would be completely unacceptable to this country, to the United Kingdom, to the US and to all of those who fought under the flag of the United Nations.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Those opposite should actually listen to this, because it is a very relevant point. This is the very thing: we shouldn't have neo-Nazis on our national broadcaster, because of the way these people are presented. For instance, Mr Matthew Heimbach on 7.30 was positioned as a white nationalist and as a representative or a spokesman of the Traditionalist Worker Party rather than being identified as a nazi. When he was put on this program, he was allowed to advance a self-defence theory for the individual involved in the tragedy in Charlottesville. In response to him advancing this theory, the reporter, Stephanie March, said, 'What you are saying is very provocative to some people that he may have been justified in killing this young woman,' and then allowed Mr Heimbach to advance his theory.

The ABC has to be very, very careful about interviewing such people because the alt-right, as they call themselves, have done a bit of public relations and they don't like calling themselves nazis anymore. They like calling themselves white nationalists and the alt-right, but they are actually nazis. They seek to move, what is known as the Overton window, the acceptable boundaries of public discourse to a place where they can advance their horrific views. The ABC's interviewing style of playing devil's advocate—of interviewers repeating the contrary argument to the propositions put by those interviewees—is particularly susceptible to those using a strategy to shift public discourse, no matter who those people are, whether they are extremists of any type, to those who are propagating inaccurate claims, fabrication or outright lies.

The ABC needs to be aware that this is afoot. It is not just the nazis. It's non-state actors. It's extremists on all sides of the horseshoe of extremism and, of course, it's sometimes state actors like other countries. We need to be particularly aware that this is happening, and the ABC needs to be particularly aware that it's occurring. If we were in the 1930s, we wouldn't think it was appropriate to interview Goebbels, Goering, the Brownshirts or Adolf Hitler. We wouldn't think it was acceptable to put them on the national broadcaster and accept their propositions uncritically or to mislabel them as nationalists or as being on the right. Nazis aren't on the right side of politics. They're not in any way associated with the normal spectrum of political thinking in this country or the normal spectrum of political thinking across the world. So this is an insult to all those who fought at El Alamein, Tobruk or in the Mediterranean, or in Bomber Command. Those people didn't die so our society could be democratic and free, and we could put nazis on the national broadcaster. They wanted us to have a proper democracy, where facts are facts and where extremist views are contested and not embraced or encouraged or put in a benign fashion. It is critical that everybody is aware that those who have extremist views—as I said, they're not really across the spectrum; they lie in the same place, in effect—and who will use violence to enforce them do not belong on the national broadcaster.