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Chris Kennys column in The Weekend Australian would have to be the read of the weekend as he takes it up to the jelly back milk toasts of the Liberal moderates. A gaggle of puffy factional fakes, foneys hacks and empty suits just along for the ride.
 
In a sentence, it’s as if they’re conspiring to lose the next election or perhaps they’re just plain hopeless.
 
This weeks example of just how dreadful they are is best illustrated by the selection of Justin Milne as the new Chairman of the ABC board. A once in a 5 year opportunity to sort the place out and they blow it and allow the broadcasting behemoth to continue business as usual which involves beating up conservative forces and working against Australia’s interests and values with their entrenched left wing agenda.
If the selection of the new Chairman of the ABC board is any indication as to Turnbull’s judgment, we can only imagine who they’ll select to replace Gillian Triggs when her term is up at the HRC in June. 
 
“…This week we saw signs of fatal weaknesses from the Coalition. It is as if the Coalition is conspiring to ensure Bill Shorten becomes the next prime minister.
 
The shambles over the extradition treaty with China was inexplicable (and is covered elsewhere) but what really set me back on my haunches was the appointment of the new ABC chairman and his dismissal of concerns about bias.
 
This represents not only a monumental missed opportunity but an almost unthinkable desire on the part of the Coalition to work against its own interests. Based on what he has said so far, the appointment of Justin Milne to chair the ABC board will be as useful to the nation as Julia Gillard’s installation of Tim Flannery as chief climate commissioner.
 
As outlined last week, it is not the issues that are working against the Turnbull government but its lack of public advocacy skills and conviction. The Coalition leadership doesn’t have an appetite to join the battle each and every day. During last year’s election campaign, it tried to go gently and the result was almost calamitous. Since then, instead of dictating terms, the government has spent almost every day on the back foot.
 
This shows the endemic weakness of the Liberal moderates who form the Prime Minister’s support base. A year ago in this column I warned their lack of spine could cost Turnbull the election. Let me reprise some of that to demonstrate how, despite barely clinging to power, the government hasn’t learned the lessons..”
 
READ ON, BELOW….
 
“… Even after a decade of almost uninterrupted political dysfunction it remains dispiriting to watch a confused government doing itself harm. Perhaps we shouldn’t expect any better, but especially after writing last week about the opportunities for Malcolm Turnbull to take advantage of core policy advantages, it is enormously frustrating to witness yet more self-harm.
 
The structural issues would still favour a diligent government winning re-election over a recalcitrant Labor Party, but we are right to be deeply pessimistic about this occurring.
 
This week we saw signs of fatal weaknesses from the Coalition. It is as if the Coalition is conspiring to ensure Bill Shorten becomes the next prime minister.
 
The shambles over the extradition treaty with China was inexplicable (and is covered elsewhere) but what really set me back on my haunches was the appointment of the new ABC chairman and his dismissal of concerns about bias.
 
This represents not only a monumental missed opportunity but an almost unthinkable desire on the part of the Coalition to work against its own interests. Based on what he has said so far, the appointment of Justin Milne to chair the ABC board will be as useful to the nation as Julia Gillard’s installation of Tim Flannery as chief climate commissioner.
 
Milne, on day one, thumbed his nose at Aunty’s most important challenge and signalled his intention to focus on pushing ABC content on to as many platforms as possible. This is not in the national interest and clearly is the last thing the Coalition needs.
 
As outlined last week, it is not the issues that are working against the Turnbull government but its lack of public advocacy skills and conviction. The Coalition leadership doesn’t have an appetite to join the battle each and every day. During last year’s election campaign, it tried to go gently and the result was almost calamitous. Since then, instead of dictating terms, the government has spent almost every day on the back foot.
 
This shows the endemic weakness of the Liberal moderates who form the Prime Minister’s support base. A year ago in this column I warned their lack of spine could cost Turnbull the election. Let me reprise some of that to demonstrate how, despite barely clinging to power, the government hasn’t learned the lessons:
 
“In federal politics the Liberal moderates are not, as they would have it, characterised by ‘compassion’ and ‘liberalism’ but largely by a default ability to concede their opponents’ arguments and retreat on tough debates. They … often shrink from the difficult arguments and hard actions … hunger for the approval of Radio National and tend to be favoured by the press gallery, but they can be political leaners rather than lifters.”
 
And here we are again: same team, same problem. The Coalition has been incapable of prosecuting the case on penalty rates, taking weeks before counterattacking Labor and the Opposition Leader. It has spotted the economic trauma and political opportunity on energy policy but been unable to force the issue because it continues with its interventions to support renewables. On the tax package and budget cuts, it is forced to react constantly to Labor and the Senate crossbenchers.
 
As it stumbles along, like all right-of-centre governments it faces antagonism from the press gallery and public broadcasters. Even when it has something strong to say or spruik, it struggles for clear air.
 
Between SBS and the ABC it faces a $1.5 billion free-to-air television, radio, online and mobile behemoth of publicly funded green-left propaganda. The public broadcasters are antipathetic to border protection, evangelical and (with rare exceptions) economically illiterate on climate and energy policy, in the thrall of union advocates, oppositionist on budget savings, uninterested in fiscal repair, unperturbed by tax increases and blind to the dilemmas of ­Islamist extremism and Muslim integration.
 
On these issues and more, the ABC’s progressive views are diametrically opposed to those of most Australians in the suburbs and regions. The political/media class is becoming increasingly ­isolated from the mainstream voters whose interests it claims to ­represent.
 
The only possible justification for the expenditure of $1.5bn on public broadcasting would be ­to better inform the population or better reflect its interests. Yet the public broadcasters do ­neither.
 
Take this week’s closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. The livelihoods of at least 500 families have been destroyed and they face uncertainty, unemployment or a move. Apart from this devastating social cost, power ­prices will increase and energy security will be reduced across southeast Australia.
 
But there can be no environmental gain; any emissions saved will be more than made up for within weeks as carbon dioxide emissions rise in China, India and elsewhere. So all the repercussions of this decision are bad for working families — fewer jobs and higher prices with less energy and economic security — and the only benefits are the perceived political goals being met by governments and political parties committed to renewable energy and emissions reductions targets.
 
A public broadcaster committed to its charter and the people who fund it would expose this sort of public policy cant. Instead, the ABC barracks day and night for climate gestures such as carbon prices and renewable energy targets; the economic and social costs, or the environmental reality, barely rate a mention alongside the emotional and political grandstanding. Let the coal industry workers eat coke. On border protection the ABC will run any number of unsubstantiated claims — from RAN sailors torturing refugees to rapes on Nauru — to undermine a successful policy. This shameful campaigning is completely at odds with mainstream views.
 
On ABC radio this week we heard claims the sacking of Mark Latham showed that Rupert Murdoch was turning Sky News Australia into Fox News. This is the paranoia of the ABC; a former ALP leader employed by Sky before it was taken over by News Corp is sacked for politically incorrect indiscretions from a network that produces at most five hours of right-of-centre programming (and stacks of progressive fare) in any 24-hour cycle, and Aunty runs with claims that Sky has gone hard right. This shows their perspective.
 
I could go on but you know the ABC’s predilections. Yet the new chairman says: “I don’t come to the job thinking I need to fix the ­perceived bias in the ABC because I don’t know that there really is a bias.” This is the single most important cultural institution in the nation. The ABC is critical in shaping public debate yet is unsympathetic to mainstream concerns such as border security, fiscal rectitude or energy affordability.
 
The government had a once-in-five-years chance to install a new chairman and it gave the job to a businessman who says the organisation has no institutional jaundice. “By and large I think it does a magnificent job,” Milne told this newspaper. “Roughly speaking, 50 per cent of the audience will think it is biased to the left and 50 per cent will think it’s biased to the right, and it has ever been thus.”
 
These words reveal ignorance about the task or a lack of fortitude to confront it. Either way, don’t blame Milne; it is Turnbull and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield who have failed in their choice.
 
Where is their will to win? As the public broadcasters continue to expand into every digital crevice, commercial media struggles and shrinks, and governments refuse to confront ABC bias, who can seriously wonder why ill-considered and counterproductive green-left policies stand largely unchallenged in public debate? Australia’s economic and political dysfunction is set to get much worse before it gets better..” Choice of ABC chairman reflects the Liberals’ tendency towards self-harm