Once again, Shorten takes the fictional bait

NEVER one to let the truth get in the way of a good scare campaign, Labor has taken an ABC privatisation debate and run with it, but to the detriment of voters, writes Caroline Marcus.

PICTURE a giant swamp monster, cross it with a science experiment gone terribly wrong and a hostile being from outer space and you’ll have something beginning to resemble the sheer horror that is Auntystein™.

This cheesy B-movie villain is destined to be endlessly conjured in the lead-up to not only next month’s Super Saturday by-elections, but the next federal election, too.

The Opposition has wasted no time turning the volume up on the creepy music for its latest Mediscare-style campaign, after the Liberal Party’s Federal Council voted two-to-one to privatise the ABC on the weekend, and in the process, handing Labor a stick with which to beat them.

What Labor and the ABC’s defenders don’t mention is the Young Liberals motion is, like every other motion at the council: completely non-binding, with no impact whatsoever on actual party policy.

Whatever their wisdom, and unlike those heard at Labor federal conferences, Liberal motions are little more than thought bubbles, ways to blow off steam about rank-and-file frustrations.

But thought bubble or not, the motion was all the excuse Shorten needed to paint Liberals as a pack of cultural vandals and philistines.

Of course, Treasurer Scott Morrison (who wasn’t in the room at the time the motion was debated) told reporters afterwards that while some may think Labor already owned the broadcaster (boom tish), no, the government wouldn’t privatise it.

Malcolm Turnbull (also not in the room at the time) has since made a loud and clear commitment that the ABC “will never be sold”.

Treasurer Scott Morrison told reporters the government would not privatise the ABC. Picture: Kym Smith

The other convenient omission in this entirely foreseeable uproar is that the motion contained a key exemption “for services into regional areas that are not commercially viable.”

So even if the policy were to be implemented — and just a subtle reminder again, IT’S NOT — Australians living in the bush who rely on the ABC for news would not be left out, as the scaremongering purports.

The Prime Minister prophesied this very kind of attack in his address to the council that day, cautioning the assembled 110 delegates to bash back every lie told by Labor because no matter how outrageous, someone would believe it.

“It’s a bit like Whack-A-Mole because it won’t stop them telling another lie, but you just have to keep at it,” Turnbull said.

The Prime Minister cautioned delegates to bash back every lie told by Labor. Picture: AAP

Like clockwork, up popped Mole-In-Chief, Bill Shorten.

“Watch us reverse Turnbull’s cuts to the ABC and keep it in public hands,” the Opposition Leader had tweeted to his 300,000 followers by lunchtime.

Campaigning in Braddon the next day, Shorten told voters the Liberals would “sell off” the ABC.

What rot.

The nightmare for the Libs is that these scare campaigns are incredibly effective; the now infamous Mediscare, in which fake SMSes designed to look like they came from Medicare (but actually originated from Queensland Labor), ominously warned voters on the eve of the 2016 election that the government was going to privatise the service.

Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten jumped on to Twitter to say Labor would reverse any Liberal decision to privatise the ABC. Picture: AAP

The hoax helped convince half of voters think that the Coalition would attempt to sell Medicare if it won the election, according to an Essential poll, so it was unsurprising the government only just scraped by with a minority of one.

Now, there is actually some merit to the idea of cutting the ABC back significantly in metropolitan areas.

Costing more than $1 billion annually — or $60 a year for the average family of four — the broadcaster has expanded well beyond its core purpose, with multiple national television and radio stations and countless online offerings.

While there’s no doubt some outstanding journalists are employed there, the organisation as a whole is captured by a green-Left ideology that simply doesn’t reflect the population it’s tasked with serving.

ABC’s economics correspondent Emma Alberici.

That’s not only my opinion: a 2013 study found two out of five ABC journalists are Greens supporters, four times higher than the wider population.

Egregious examples of impartiality, overrepresented recently in the work of its star chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici, are met with no real consequences.

If the broadcaster truly was unbiased in its pursuit of holding truth to power, why don’t we see more complaints from Labor and the Greens? A truly impartial ABC should be hated by both sides of politics equally.

Then there are its dismal attempts at “comedy”; you can be the biggest supporter of free speech and still not want your hard-earned cash funding cringeworthy skits that label white people and conservatives as “c***s”.

Add to that taxpayer money being used to pay sites like Google to boost search rankings and an unflattering picture emerges of aggressiveness and arrogance emerges.

But the fact remains that privatising the ABC would only heap more pressure on already struggling media organisations, particularly smaller ones, competing for ever-dwindling advertising revenue and subscriptions.

Ultimately, voting for this motion was an own goal for the Liberals, who would have appreciated that such a policy would never be implemented and it would only serve as a red flag to a Labor bull.

You can’t really blame Shorten for seizing on the cards presented to him, especially when the latest Newspoll shows he is more unpopular than ever.

So step right up and see the Amazing Auntystein; she ain’t going anywhere fast.

Caroline Marcus is a journalist for Sky News.

@carolinemarcus