Their ABC, Class Clown

The Vision Statement of the ABC Education unit, I’m told by usually reliable insiders, must read something like this:

We ensure every Australian school student becomes a green/Left voter

Because of the ABC charter’s insistence on impartiality, we camouflage what we’re doing.

The unit’s greatest hit to date has been promoting the fake narrative of the fake Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian icon Bruce Pascoe to millions of schoolkids. This involves ABC Education’s giant 15-part extravaganza – “Bruce Pascoe: Aboriginal Agriculture, Technology and Ingenuity” which is still operating flat out in classrooms.

But while that taxpayer-funded load of old rope gets the attention, ABC Education slogs away tirelessly, day-in, day-out with routine brainwashing to support leftism and leach potential votes away from conservatives. I don’t know who runs it, how many staff it fields, and where they train as indoctrinators. The shadowy group  gets only a few paras in the latest ABC annual report of 280 pages, e.g.

ABC Education connects teachers, students and families to a range of educational media linked to the Australian curriculum and frameworks such as the Early Childhood Years Framework.

In 2022, the ABC Education portal was rebuilt. It now hosts 3,094 videos, 101 articles, 127 games and 102 showcase collections for teachers and students to use in formal and informal educational settings.

The additional funding provided in the October 2022 Budget allowed the ABC to invest in the creation of two new educational content initiatives: BTN High, a short-form news segment directed towards high school students, and ABC Education Studios, which produced a range of media including videos, interactives and articles for school audiences…

ABC Education also assisted in mapping relevant factual and cultural broadcast material to the website to assist teachers in planning…. (p104).

A typical ABC Education lesson landed in my inbox yesterday, which I’ll unpack in this essay. It’s for 15- to 16-year-olds doing English, and is titled “The Power of Speech”.

At first sight, the selection of speakers and speeches seems fair and balanced, but you need to remove the camouflage netting to see how the ABC artillery is emplaced.

For some reason the lesson actually dates from December 15, 2022, and no-one has bothered to do that tedious updating. Anyway the frontispiece of course is a stock pic of Barack Obama orating in full cry. His finger is pointing skywards like a saint in an old master gesturing towards the Trinity. The lesson compilers admire Obama so much they run this pic twice.

Which speech he is making in unclear. It might be the 2009 one at Cairo University, absurdly titled “On a New Beginning”, doing the anti-Semitism-plus-anti-Islamaphobia routine.[1] Almost before he sat down the speech got him a $US1 million Nobel Peace Prize. Unlike Myanmar’s Aung Sun Suu Kyi, who donated her prize to Burmese charities, Obama trousered it.

On the other hand, it could be Obama in January 2016 messaging the Iranian Ayatollahs. By pointing upwards, he indicates that his two planeloads, literally, of $US1.3b in Euro notes and $US400m in Swiss francs, total $US1.7 billion cash, are taking off from Geneva for Teheran. This generosity was meant to dissuade the mullahs from developing nukes to Israel’s detriment. For $US1.7 billion cash, Obama also hoped, Iranian mobs might even stop chanting “Death to America!”

The actual Obama segment of the oratory lesson fails to give kids a video or audio clip of the great man’s style. It just tells them that four years before becoming President he told Democrat politicians that Thomas Jefferson when drafting the Declaration of Independence, said stuff about

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Democrat politicians had probably heard about Jefferson’s remarks before, but for ABC Education it was an exciting example of how president-to-be Obama “used the rhetorical device ‘anamnesis’, which is the quoting of an author from the past.”

Before I mention who else’s rhetoric is crowned by the ABC, let’s skip to the tail of the piece and the link, “Unforgettable Speeches: The Nation Has Voted.” It tells how we the people have selected the world’s all-time great speeches, ranking them from first to 20th.

Martin Luther King Jr and “I have a dream” came top (Gold Medal), and Jesus with his Sermon on the Mount was runner-up (Silver). You’ll never guess, but who won Bronze? Paul Keating! For his 1992 Redfern Park address!

That was the one where Keating blathered about “we did the murders”. ABC Education is here dishing it out to kids as not just lofty but holy. (Keating’s Boswell, Don Watson, claimed authorship; Keating says it was all his own work). A decade later, however, many of the darker Redfern audience still don’t feel reconciled.

They rioted around Redfern railway station with missiles, bludgeons and Molotov cocktails, causing trauma and injuries to no fewer than 42 NSW police officers. The rampaging mob set the railway station and a church partially alight and torched a car. Eight coppers were hospitalised – one was knocked unconscious when a brick bounced off his helmeted head.

Limping behind Keating were the likes of Winston Churchill fighting on the beaches (4th), Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg (5th), a few others and then 9th, you’ll never guess, Gough Whitlam on Parliament House steps, abusing the governor-general and “Kerr’s cur”, little knowing that a month later Australian voters would give his rabble a resounding kick in the backside.

Trailing behind Mr Whitlam come also-rans Queen Elizabeth 1 (“heart and stomach of a king”), Mandela, Ghandi, Socrates, William Wilberforce (something about slavery), and rather surprisingly, Alfred Deakin at Bendigo, 1898. Finally, as we the nation have allegedly voted, we get to 20th place, and it’s Ben Chifley, 1949, doing his “Light on the Hill”. I’ve forgotten (if I ever knew) what that speech was all about, but I do recall the Australian people got rid of Chifley and his would-be bank nationalisers six months later. Actually Labor’s “Light on the Hill” is now mentioned only ironically, in terms of Gillard appointing Peter “Mussels” Slipper as Speaker, endemic branch-stacking brawls, Dan Andrews’ legacy, one-time ALP President Michael Williamson put inside for five years for ‘parasitic’ fraud on his Health Services Union and so on. However, Prime Minister Albanese is not into irony, and instead claims, “Chifley’s thoughts on the nature of the Australian labour movement are, in many ways, our equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.”

Time now for the big reveal: that Top 20 Speeches list headed “The Nation Has Voted” was actually chosen by a self-selected jury of some 5000 ABC Radio National fans and keyboard warriors way back in 2007, before most of today’s high-schoolers were born.

This list wasn’t ABC Education’s main game, it was just optional homework. I’ll now fill out what the main lesson involved. It’s a green/Left kernel surrounded by politically neutral or even apparently conservative material. For example, opening speaker is Republican President Ronald Reagan. He’s honouring in a bipartisan way the US troops who fought and died in Normandy on D-Day.

Then we get President John Kennedy and his 1963 Berlin speech about “Ich bin ein Berliner”. All well and good so far. Next comes Churchill and his beaches, followed by President Obama with no speech accessible. Maybe our ABC Educator/programmers haven’t yet mastered the internet.

We then get to the ABC’s core business: trashing its political enemies, starting with Senator Pauline Hanson. The ABC leftists give kids a villainously expurgated clip (2min43secs out of 21 minutes total) of her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996 at age 41. She was politically unskilled, her delivery was terrible and she was just one remove from her prior career as a fish-shop proprietor – not that many other Parliamentarians can boast small-business credentials. Sandwiching her between Obama and PM Julia Gillard for oratory seems a deliberate mockery.

ABC Education excerpted only those passages when she is strident and eliminated points with which probably 60 per cent of Australians – “No” voters, for instance – would heartily agree. The ABC wants students to mock her as “Invective, angry, attacking”. As a figleaf rationale for her inclusion, the ABC adds, “Note also her use of ‘litotes’, or understatement, around the 1.50 point” (It’s actually 1.20) when she says,

 “I may be only `a fish and chip shop lady’, but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. [Following sentence cut: I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping].

Here’s how the ABC edits to make sure Hanson doesn’t gain accidental influence with kids. The cut bits are in italic, bits used by the ABC in bold:

Present governments are encouraging separatism in Australia by providing opportunities, land, moneys and facilities available only to Aboriginals. Along with millions of Australians, I am fed up to the back teeth with the inequalities that are being promoted by the government and paid for by the taxpayer under the assumption that Aboriginals are the most disadvantaged people in Australia. I do not believe that the colour of one’s skin determines whether you are disadvantaged… 

 I have done research on benefits available only to Aboriginals and challenge anyone to tell me how Aboriginals are disadvantaged when they can obtain three and five per cent housing loans denied to non-Aboriginals. [In 1996 variable mortgage rates were around 10%].

This nation is being divided into black and white, and the present system encourages this. I am fed up with being told, `This is our land.’ Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here, and so were my parents and children. I will work beside anyone and they will be my equal but I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago. Like most Australians, I worked for my land; no-one gave it to me.

The same ABC snip-trick is used to muffle her attack on multiculturalism — which today has led to mobs of Hamas-lovers at the Sydney Opera House chanting “Gas the Jews!” (or coppers’ version, “Where’s the Jews?”):

Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.[2]Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country. A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. The world is full of failed and tragic examples…

Perhaps you’re thinking the ABC doesn’t really have an animus against Hanson and I’m drawing the long bow here. Not really. Soon after that maiden speech, the ABC wheeled out its “comedian”, drag queen/academic/LGBTI-activist Simon Hunt, to mock her for two decades as “Pauline Pantsdown”.The ABC Complaints Department was fine with this, considering it harmless satire, not that anyone would contemplate satirising a Federal Minister as “Penny Pantsdown” or the Reserve Bank Governor as “Michele Pantsdown”.[3] In his ABC-popular persona as Hanson, so-called comedian Hunt also created filthy misogynist songs “Back Door Man” and “I Don’t Like It”[4]. The songs were played repeatedly on ABC’s Triple J[5] over 11 days in 1997 with lyrics including

I’m a backdoor man for the Klu Klux Klan with a very horrendous plan. I’m a very caring potato. [A ‘potato’ is gay argot for a receiving male partner, according to Hanson’s lawyers]… You must come out and be one of us. As long as children come across,
 I’m a happy person.[6] 

Hunt was particularly proud that 8-14-year-old-children enjoyed Back Door Man, to the evident satisfaction of their teachers:

Time and time again, school teachers and parents would tell me that their kids knew all the words to the song. I hadn’t counted on the nursery-rhyme factor — I had also become some sort of alternative Ronald McDonald for the 8-14-year-olds. 

Hanson sued the ABC and won, with Justice Ambrose commenting,

There’s a political overtone to the whole exercise which seems to denigrate her personally by making assertions as to her sexual preference and her abnormal sexual attraction with respect to children and so on…I can’t imagine anybody listening to that production would not conclude that the assertion was that Pauline Hanson was a paedophile … or that she was a homosexual and rejoiced in the fact… I can’t imagine that one can avoid liability for injury to reputation… by simply prefacing it by saying, `Well, this is satirical, don’t take this seriously,’ and then playing it over and over and over again.

The ABC then spent more taxpayer funds appealing, only to lose again on September 28, 1998. Chief Justice Paul De Jersey (later Queensland’s Governor 2014-21) said,

Before the Chamber Judge, [Hanson] contended that the broadcast material gave rise to imputations that she is a homosexual, a prostitute, involved in unnatural sexual practices, associated with the Ku Klux Klan, a man and/or a transvestite and involved in or party to sexual activities with children. The [ABC] essentially contended that the material amounted merely to vulgar abuse and was not defamatory.

Interesting, that the ABC condoned and defended its “vulgar abuse” of politicians it dislikes. Remember, this is the taxpayer-funded ABC airing the misogynist abuse, not some nutter on the internet. De Jersey J continued,

These were grossly offensive imputations relating to the sexual orientation and preference of a Member of Parliament and her performance which the appellant in no degree supports as accurate and which were paraded as part of an apparently fairly mindless effort at cheap denigration.

To round off this tawdry ABC affair, Pauline Hanson, whose party in 2022 scored 5 per cent of national first preferences (727,000), had the guts and moral backbone to enter the Senate proudly wearing an Israeli flag as scarf. Would even one of the ABC’s 4400 tax leeches dare to dress for work like that? And Hanson’s weekly cartoon mockery of “progressives” is brilliant comedy.

ABC Education follows its Hanson item, ironically, with an adoring homage to PM Julia Gillard’s 2012 “misogyny speech”. Kids are told merely that she was being branded as “misogynistic” for defending “controversial politician Peter Slipper”. Slipper in reality had been texting to mates comparing women’s genitals to shelled mussels in a bottle and “salty c–ts in brine”. ABC Educators say that her speech “proved to be one of her most memorable” and got 2.5 million hits on YouTube. “Explore why as you watch this clip from the speech”, the ABC orders 15- to 16-yer-olds. That’s how leftist educators push kids to the “correct” answer. To make sure kids toe the line, the ABC continues,

Things to think about

1/ What tactic does Julia Gillard use to refute Tony Abbott’s claim that her government is misogynistic? Why would this be an effective strategy? What do you notice about how Ms Gillard uses her voice when quoting Mr Abbott? What tone does she use when thanking Mr Abbott for ‘that painting of women’s roles in modern Australia’? What does Ms Gillard’s speech suggest about the manner in which Mr Abbott views women?

2/ How successful do you think Ms Gillard is in painting Tony Abbott as a misogynist? In attacking misogyny, what values does she convey? …

And one open question

3/ Following Ms Gillard’s speech, both Mr Abbott’s and her approval ratings improved. Why might the public have responded in this unexpected way?

I mentioned the ABC knows how to disguise its biases. To “balance” Gillard’s powerful but poisonous attack on Tony Abbott, the class session is then given a 2m44sec clip of Abbott himself speaking. What about? Not defending himself against Gillard’s ludicrous “misogyny” attack, but doing a bipartisan job espousing progress for Aborigines. He delivers praise to PM Kevin Rudd, to Gillard, to Labor Senator Nova Peris and footballer Adam Goodes. In other words, the Abbott clip is selected to reinforce the ABC narrative about lovely Labor, not dispute it.

This time the “Things to think about” for the kids include

1/ Why do you think Mr Abbott pays tribute to previous prime ministers, even those from opposing parties? Explain how Mr Abbott has shaped his speech in consideration of his audience.

2/ Research some of the people Mr Abbott pays tribute to. Create a poster or digital pin board exploring these people and their contributions to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

ABC Educators are only just getting into their stride. Next job is to gee-up the kids about The Dismissal and its canards. Kids are told

After learning of his dismissal, Mr Whitlam addressed the Australian public and uttered a line that has resonated throughout Australian politics since 1975.

Words can be immensely powerful and, as you will discover in this clip, the way they are delivered can add to their power.

The Whitlam clip is just 57secs but gets started with Whitlam’s nasty “nothing can save the Governor-General” (loud cheers – but isn’t Whitlam being a Trumpian insurrectionist?) The clip continues to Whitlam abusing incoming PM Malcolm Fraser (loud boos and jeers) as “Kerr’s cur” (wild cheers for Whitlam).

The ABC “Things to think about” now gets worse:

Whitlam uses the pun of ‘Kerr’s cur’ to characterise his rival and successor, leader of the opposition Malcolm Fraser. What is a cur? What is Mr Whitlam implying here? What emotions do you think are expressed in Mr Whitlam’s famous lineabout the governor-general? What emotions do you notice being aroused in the audience? Why do you think this is such a memorable statement?

On and on the ABC goes. Kids get a 5min-50sec blast of PM Keating at the Despatch Box in 1992 doing a fine job on pathetic Liberal-lite opponent John Hewson and on PM-to-be John Howard. Keating looks great, is passionate, witty, and all-round brilliant, except that his main message is anti-British nuttery. This includes his armchair-warrior gripes that the British “decided not to defend the Malaysian peninsular, not to worry about Singapore” and tried to retain in North Africa our troops needed to defend against Japan (true but…) He also mocks the long Menzies’ growth era, in favour of Labor’s new deal of all things wonderful. I suspect that teachers would endorse to kids not just Keating’s oratory but his political messaging as well.

After some quite OK historical speeches, ABC Educators can’t wait to give kids even more Paul Keating (via speechwriter Don Watson) – another full 5 minutes of his 1992 Redfern speech including

The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us, the non-Aboriginal Australians…Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.

If Keating, as he says, did all these vile things, including murdering lots of our “first nations” colleagues, he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. However, the ABC in Things to Think About decides for kids that the speech was a “defining moment in Australia’s reconciliation”. ABC concedes (I think a little incredulously) that “some people at the time might have reacted negatively to what Keating said” and asks why. It fails to alert kids that on just about every indicator of health, schooling, crime, domestic violence, child neglect, substance abuse and general mayhem (think Alice Springs, Wadeye and Daly River, and here), the welfare-dependent 20 per cent cohort of Aborigines has retrogressed ever since, in many aspects at accelerating rates.

I pity any kids, identifying with a conservative household, having to sit through an ABC Education session like this. They’d probably keep their heads down, shut up and work out how to dishonestly answer all those loaded ABC questions to avoid a repeat year. I ask ABC Chair Kim Williams: “How about putting a stop to your organisation’s child abuse?”

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

 

[2] I think by “Asians” she was mis-speaking for Middle Easterners.

[3] I complained to the ABC as follows:

Baseless sexual innuendo about a woman politician by ABC news staff
:  This photo montage falsely implies that Ms Pauline Hanson is promiscuous or in other ways operates with “pants down”. There is no basis whatsoever for such a smear and for such disrespect to a female.

Could you please let me know what are the ABC guidelines on respectful treatment of females, especially avoidance of gratuitous references to sexual behaviour (in this case, also false). Can you also tell me whether the pic montage above complies with such ABC guidelines, and if not, what remedy you intend, and whether the ABC will make a public apology to this female politician.

On August 25 the ABC’s then complaints czarina Denise Musto replied, after apologising for the delay:

High profile public figures such as politicians are frequently the target of satire.   As explained in the ABC News online story, in the late 1990s the satirical character Pauline Pantsdown achieved some popularity with the release of two satirical songs about Pauline Hanson.  There was some speculation in the Australian media on whether Simon Hunt, a media lecturer and LGBTI activist who created ‘Pauline Pantsdown’, would reprise the satirical character following Ms Hanson’s successful return to Canberra.

Audience and Consumer Affairs are satisfied that the image was not in contravention of ABC editorial standards.  There was news value to this story, ABC News Online readers would recognise the satirical nature of image, and many would remember the character ‘Pauline Pantsdown’: they would not interpret the name of this character as  being a direct comment on the Ms Hanson’s sexual behaviour as you suggest. Nonetheless, please be assured that your concerns are noted.

[4]  “I Don’t Like It” was incorporated into a permanent exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy at ‘old Parliament House’, Canberra.

[5] Triple-J listeners voted it No. 92 on the “Hottest 100 [Songs] of all time”, an instance of faint praise.

[6] Obama: “Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel’s right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)