The A for ABC

As the Q&A episode continues, more government officials threw their gauntlets in to have their say. The invitation of acquitted terrorist Zaky Mallah to the audience and the subsequent verbal confrontation with Steve Ciobo was a spectacular affair from a programming point of view. However, it is eventually the tsunami of abuse on freedom of speech that makes this saga going down as one of most important issues in Australian history.

Tony Abbott kept questioning whose side ABC was on and demanded “heads to be rolled” regarding this incident. Now it is no surprise or secret the Coalition hated ABC since the John Howard years. The Coalition thinks the ABC is never on their side and thus as soon as the current government came into office cut its budget dramatically as a display of power. The end result was innocent working people, whom the Coalition claimed they represent, lost their jobs because of the cuts. Tony Abbott’s continued assaults against ABC reflected a very serious issue here – the Coalition government is trying to control a public Broadcaster that stands for freedom of speech and turn it into a state broadcaster that only propagates government agendas whether they are good for Australia or not. Mark Scott, the managing director of ABC hits back on Tony Abbott by saying him doing so he is not fending for freedom of speech as ABC and all Australians are standing for but controlling speech in the national broadcaster. Strangely enough Tony Abbott stopped talking immediately but left the issue to his cohorts.

The ironic thing is this is the same bunch of people who wanted to change the discrimination law to enhance freedom of speech because according to George Brandis, the Attorney General, “everyone has the right to bigotry”, and this is what freedom of speech represents. If the right to slander other people publicly is a way to protect freedom of speech why couldn’t the same group of people accept the same on the receiving end? If this government is really about protecting freedom of speech, should everyone representing this government be gracefully accepting this on the other end? Should they be the role model to show to the Australian public that they are the real freedom fighters? Why is it every time when someone criticised them or said something they don’t like to hear they have to bring the wrath of their whole political gangster mob to gun these people down?

At the same time, Tony Abbott praised “The Killing Season” also produced by ABC that chronicled power struggles in the Labor government in the last two terms.  I found this extremely disturbing that a Prime Minister of a country could exhibit this kind of childish and bullish behaviour in the Parliament and be proud of it. The program was not made to appease the Coalition government it was just another piece ABC did. The Labor opposition did not take this opportunity to ask whose side is ABC on and did not question ABC’s motive. The same happened when ABC made a comedy series based on the sitting Prime Minister Julia Guillard at the time. Was Julia happy? No she was not. Did she go on to attack ABC? No she didn’t.

The fact that this Coalition government only wants things that suited their political agendas to be portrayed on TV is a definite indication that these people wanted to have a state controlled broadcaster called ABC not a public broadcaster that helped to shape the society and uphold freedom of speech called ABC. By asking their ministers to pull their appearances from ABC programs this government had rendered itself into nothing but a bunch of narrow minded school yard bullies. Is this what all the hard working Australians deserved? Are we for our freedom or are we for a controlled society that people would shiver just by knowing they have different views from the government. Is this Coalition government ran by a bunch of middle aged to elderly white men (and a few white women) a representation of “white terror” in the modern Australian society?

It is quite obvious the current saga is a public display of power from the Coalition government just like George Bush did in America in the past. If you are not with me you are against me. But if Australia became a society that is only run by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, George Brandis, Peter Dutton and even Alan Jones, could Australia still be successful in this 21^st century? Maybe they saw the success and rise to power of China so they thought this is the only way to make Australia a new world order power. But is that what all Australians want considering the convict and migrant history of this county that eventually built Australia?

I personally feel jarring that these people who are not the original owners of this land could become so entitled, especially considering people like Joe Hockey who has a strong migrant history – he would not in this country smoking cigar thinking about budget cuts on defence force and a pay rise for himself if his father did not come to this country as a refugee and worked hard. However, as people always say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is what we are observing in the current Coalition government.

To survive this, we all need to remember the A for ABC is “Australian” not “Abbott”. God bless Australia.