Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I rise to speak about the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017. This issue has caused us in Pauline Hanson's One Nation party to examine our preconceptions and misconceptions. We have done what we do well—listened: to media companies, to regional communities, to city communities, to journalists, to media analysts, to everyday Australians and to any political party that wants to share their views. This process illustrates the way we operate: to listen, to invite views, to reconsider the issues, to evolve our views as we learn, to be practical and to protect our nation's interests, as well as the interests of the people affected and of every Australian.

Initially, I have to confess, I thought this was an issue about the Murdoch empire but, as we delved into it, I realised it was about a far bigger and more powerful entity—government. All monopolies result from government regulation, and the biggest are government-owned and operated monopolies. We learnt about an entity far more powerful than Murdoch's News Corp, and this one is damaging. I'll tell you more. We learnt about the trends threatening media companies and journalists' jobs and driving substandard media companies out of business because they failed to respond to people's needs. We learnt about a revolution sweeping the world and becoming a force for freedom, liberating people from government control. We celebrate because it is proving, yet again, that the best regulator is the customer. I questioned my initial thinking and learnt a lot, and I want to share some of that with all who'll listen. Under the leadership of Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Brian Burston, we have developed a response with the government that is good for regional Australia, good for our nation and good for media and good for journalists.

So is Murdoch the problem? No, he's not, despite what some on the left say. What we see today is a swirl of coalescing media across platforms such as newspaper, radio, TV, internet and subscription channels. That change is underway no matter what we want and whether we like it or not, and it's due to external factors, the internet and government. The weakness in media right now is due to three factors. The first is the internet—specifically Google and Facebook. The second is government regulation—and that regulation, as in all regulation, reduces the quantity of the service or product, reduces the quality of media and raises the cost of media. These regulations weaken institutions. These regulations have created a monster. The third one is that monster: the ABC.

Let's go to Google and Facebook. They're revolutionising media and communication, and the internet is placing the market power of choice in the hands of all people. I listened to a Commonwealth car driver a few months ago who worked in the Kimberley in the 1980s when, he told me, they had one ABC channel and one ABC radio channel. Now, he says happily, they have a huge range of media and entertainment from around the world.

These choices are destroying conventional newspaper companies, especially the biased ones such as Fairfax and The Guardian, who are both collapsing as customers wake up to their poor service that reflects the paper's bias and dishonesty. Consider Fairfax, who sent us a prepared statement saying:

For the record, Fairfax Media and most other major media companies do not give equal weight to the 'sides' on issues … including climate change—

they specifically mentioned climate change—

because it is false equivalency.

Fairfax says it believes the overwhelming scientific evidence that giving all sides an airing is 'skewing the debate'. Fairfax says clearly: 'This is Fairfax's position on climate change.' It is biased.

Their former environmental reporter and now editor, Ben Cubby, has been repeatedly unable to provide empirical evidence proving human cause of global climate variability, yet repeatedly spouts his nonsense. He is unaware of the basic drivers of the climate scam, such as Maurice Strong, who he'd never heard of and who fabricated global warming and the monster he created, the politically driven United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cubby's ignorance within Fairfax is destroying the company. Readers are abandoning Fairfax and The Guardian. This is why Fairfax, the dinosaur, is dying—self-inflicted. This is why Fairfax journos are the most threatened by the changes we face—the changes that are coming whether we like it or not. These dinosaurs cannot see that it is we who are trying to assist them. News Corp, though, perhaps shows a more professional response to the internet threat because it seems to be saying: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Not only has the internet provided immense choice, so have alternative media such as cable TV or subscription TV and new structures for coalescing media companies across platforms. Also, Google, Facebook and other internet services, do not have to pay the conventional government fees, nor do they have to abide by the regulations choking the legacy media. This puts the older media companies at an unfair advantage due to government regulation.

Because Senator Hanson and Senator Burston have dealt with the details of our package put to, and accepted by, the government, I will focus on the ABC. The ABC was established in a bygone area. It was essential in the 1980s in the Kimberley, yet time has moved on and the ABC, sadly, has moved in a different direction from the way the world has moved. Nowhere in its charter does the ABC mention 'fair and balanced'. Under 'duties of the board', item 8, subsection c, it says that the duties of the board are to ensure 'news and information is accurate and impartial'.

Let's consider this. I conducted a quantitative, measured analysis of the background briefing radio program on ABC TV on Sunday, 17 July 2011. In that 50-minute program, there were 22 instances where the ABC created or implied misrepresentations by omission and/or made unfounded associations. There were 22 in 50 minutes. There were 18 false statements. They ignored key arguments, countering their position six times. They made sweeping, inaccurate generalisations based on personal value judgements and they made questionable or dubious comments, including likely false statements—four in total. Even in their own transcript, there were 22 errors. Then we saw the Q&A climate debate on Thursday, 26 April—biased and unfair. We saw Media Watch on 21 March—again, measured assessments, quantitative—and on Monday, 30 May 2011. We saw the ABC's Catalyst on September 8 2011 and ABC's Four Corners, all quantitatively proven to be biased and unfair and misrepresenting. Is that accurate and impartial? No, it's not.

Then we see the way the ABC has treated Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. The British High Court ruled that Al Gore's movie is a political work, containing many factual inaccuracies. Does the ABC report that? No; it continues to peddle Al Gore's lies. An independent analysis provided in a congressional working paper in America shows that the books on which An Inconvenient Truth is based have in them 19 wrong or false statements, 17 misleading statements, 10 exaggerated statements, 25 one-sided statements and 28 speculative statements. It's absolute rubbish. It's a work of fiction. My detailed analysis of Al Gore's movie reveals an orchestrated deception. There are 234 images of natural and everyday events that are, falsely, depicted as unnatural and inferred to be caused by global warming. We see 71 instances and images of unspecific, unfounded mixing of projections with actual data to imply future climate change. But the ABC seems blissfully unaware of this—just sucked in and presenting this man as a climate scientist. We see in an analysis by Viscount Monckton that Al Gore's movie contains at least 35 errors on climate alone. Is this impartial and accurate?

Bob Brock, a colleague in Brisbane, was so sick and tired of the ABC portraying carbon dioxide—a colourless, invisible trace gas—as pictures of steam billowing out of cooling towers that he eventually wrote to the ABC, repeatedly. He was repeatedly ignored. And then the ABC admitted its error. Then it said it wouldn't do it again. And then it started doing it again, and continued. Is it impartial and accurate to mislead the Australian public? We see scientists like Ove Hoegh-Guldberg—a so-called scientist—misrepresenting climate change repeatedly on the ABC. When I complained to the ABC in writing, documenting the errors that Hoegh-Guldberg peddled, they said that the ABC is not responsible for what its guests say—yet Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a serial misrepresenter and was on the ABC's programs repeatedly. Is this impartial and accurate? Instead of pushing propaganda, the ABC must report facts and let people make their own opinions.

Never has anyone said that the ABC is right-wing—never, no-one. In the same way, we need to ensure the ABC charter is modified to include 'fair and balanced'. Both can be quantified, and both can be measured. Does the ABC represent both sides? Does it make blatant omissions? Does it present false facts as accurate? Does it check facts? Does it exclude people from one side, or grossly under-represent them, as it does with climate change? The ABC needs to listen to people and to present all sides.

About five years ago, I used to wake up in the morning and check the ABC News website first thing. That's how I got my news. Then I became so concerned about the distortions and the lack of balance and accuracy that I paid for a subscription to The Australian. I bypassed the ABC. But I must point out that there are some fine journalists within the ABC—such as Steve Austin in Brisbane—who can be tough yet fair, and we don't mind that. There is Caitlyn Gribbin here in Canberra, and many other fine reporters, especially in regional centres. Those reporters in regional centres are fair because they live within their communities and they have to answer to those communities, unlike the Greens communes among ABC journalists in Melbourne and Sydney. The ABC's time in its present form has passed, and it needs to be properly managed on behalf of all taxpayers.

Let me explain. Let's talk about productivity. Consider Jonathan Holmes's notoriously biased Media Watch program, which I measured some years ago. The same applies, I'm sure, with Paul Barry today. Analysis of ABC staffing on Media Watch compared with Alan Jones's best-rating daily radio program shows that productivity in program hours per staff is 160 times greater with Alan Jones than Media Watch, and accountability is strong, as shown in Alan Jones's record. Walk into the ABC studios here in Parliament House and see the palace they have to work in, and then walk into the phone box that Sky News operates out of.

By the way, Media Watch continues to blatantly misrepresent me, and its new host, Paul Barry, misrepresents me and Pauline Hanson's One Nation by saying:

... Malcolm Roberts insists the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are either deluded or corrupt ...

I have never said that. I do not believe that. Such a statement would be wrong because the majority of real climate scientists agree with my view. See how cleverly it's done, just to discredit me and those who disagree with the ABC's propaganda. ABC Radio's host in Melbourne, Rafael Epstein, said that Pauline Hanson's One Nation lies about climate. He tweeted that I'm a liar about climate, yet he refuses to provide empirical scientific evidence on climate and refuses to contradict the facts that I have presented from reputable sites, including peer-review papers and well-known sites measuring climate. A former ABC employee wrote to me saying:

The extreme left-wing bias of the ABC has become intolerable. I worked at the ABC at William Street in Sydney and saw at firsthand manipulation of news which I took down from stringers, sometimes rewritten into complete exaggerations or complete lies.

Former chairman of the ABC, Maurice Strong, dared to challenge the ABC staff for groupthink and was howled down. Is that accurate or impartial?

Let's go to another topic. One of Donald Trump's departments released a report earlier this year that said there is a party in Australia that wants to ban Islamic immigration, along the lines of what President Trump tried to do. We were described as a racist party in the left-wing media. Why do people in the left-wing ABC align with Fairfax media to misrepresent and slam us? It is fear driving them. The same report from Trump condemned the Greens for wanting to end prayer at the start of parliament. They did not mention the Greens' anti-Semitic behaviour and words, nor did they mention the Trump reports of apparent condemnation of the South Australian Labor Party. Is that accurate and impartial? We see well-known Muslim support for Senator Pauline Hanson's bans for the burqa. The story took off on the internet. Was it reported on the ABC? Not at all. Is that accurate and impartial? It seems that, on the ABC, wearing a burqa is offensive yet forcing women to wear the burqa is not. Why? This strikes at the core of our Australian values.

The ABC's time has passed. In the budget, its role needs to be reconsidered. It has a regional role, and that is vital and that needs to be strengthened, but its Greens' dominated, capital-city staff in Melbourne and Sydney are killing the ABC's reputation. People in the bush and people in the suburbs laugh at the ABC. They don't treat it seriously. There is the misappropriation of taxpayer funding to push the political agenda. Everyday Australians, everyday taxpayers, are fed up with political correctness that has been incorrect and unreasonable and is peddled by the ABC. The ABC, sadly, is not accountable to anyone. It's okay for private media to be biased; that's their choice. Fairfax and The Guardian are dying because of that choice. News Corp, though, is thriving as it markets different messages to different target audiences across different and sometimes combined media platforms. But it's not fair for the government to be biased. Taxpayer funds must be used fairly, yet the ABC says on that score to the taxpayers: 'Stuff you.'

The ABC budget is around 38 per cent of the national media spend in our country, yet its audience is just over half that, at about 22 per cent. People in rural and regional Australia decry the bias and propaganda, yet listen to it at times because in some places it's the only source of the news and rural data they need. The ABC should be restricted to its charter or sold to the highest bidder. Then we'll see whose ABC it really is. The ABC's audience is 35 per cent in regional and rural areas, yet only 17 per cent of its budget is spent in regional and rural areas—proportionately half.

The ABC is the elephant in the room. It is running rampant and out of control and severely hurts the privately owned media, and that threatens journalists' jobs. If the ABC's spending were increased in the regions, it would increase regional coverage and jobs. People across Australia, and especially in regional areas, are feeling frustrated, annoyed and even angry. We felt it. People need fairness, accuracy, balance and impartiality, because the media's vital role helps or prevents people meeting needs for information, understanding, communication, entertainment, escape, relaxation and even emergency response.

The internet shows that life is complex and things change so quickly that we must remove regulations while protecting people against monopolies that governments created and enabled. To meet people's needs requires a lifting of outdated regulations and rules: the 75 per cent audience reach rule, the two-out-of-three rule, the cross-media ownership rule, the five-out-of-four rule, the one-to-a-market rule, the two-to-a-market rule, the concept of control, free-to-air sports not being siphoned off to subscription broadcasters and the protection of local content.

Our supporters have a strong moral compass and a strong work ethic. People across Australia just want a fair go. That includes journalists, who deserve a fair go and the opportunity to earn job security. We listened, we spoke up and we took action. Pauline Hanson's One Nation says the things that need to be said and we do the things that need to be done. People in this chamber are afraid to take on the fat, bloated sacred cow that is the ABC because of punishment over the airwaves by Greens journalists. We need to bring the media and broadcasting sector into today—the 21st century—for the benefit of media customers, journalists and sustainable media entities into the future, to give all taxpayers a fair go and, especially, real freedom of choice.