And now Rupert Murdoch wants his payoff from LNP.

[Matilda]

The ABC's funding should be cut and the national broadcaster forced to sell advertising and paid subscriptions online to compete with commercial newspapers, Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi says.

"I don't want to see a state run media effectively dominating this landscape," the South Australian senator said.

Senator Bernardi's call for ABC funding cuts, which he made in an interview on ABC radio on Wednesday morning, comes amid widespread anger within the Coalition about the ABC's collaboration with The Guardian Australia to report on the alleged phone-tapping of the Indonesian President, its perceived left-wing tendencies and its $1.2 billion annual budget

(snip)

''It is in the national interest, the budget interest, and the competitive media interest, that the broadcaster be separated,'' he later told Fairfax Media.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/cut-abc-funding-urges-liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-as-coalition-ramps-up-attack-on-the-national-broadcaster-20131204-2ypet.html#poll


Sen. Bernardi shows his ignorance when he confuses "state-run media" with the concept of public broadcasting. Conservative politicans have long claimed that the ABC is run by pinko, left-wing feminists and commies of all sorts; perhaps because it is generally even-handed. Those on the Left, in fact, felt that the ABC showed considerable bias towards the LNP during the election campaign; quite possibly they feared that an Abbott government would cut funding and were attempting to ward off the cuts.

It is the phrase "in the ... competitive media interests" that goes to the heart of this attack on the ABC (known to Australians as "Aunty&quot . Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of Rupert Murdoch making even more money and gaining even more control than he already has. If his newspapers didn't print so much rubbish, they wouldn't have so much to fear from Aunty.

Murdoch has long wanted to obtain Radio Australia, the broadcasting network that covers the Asia-Pacific and is currently run by the ABC. I don't doubt that these attacks are part of the plan to split up the ABC for the benefit of Murdoch. Rupert's support for political parties isn't given free.

And for our American friends, Cory Bernardi is a homophobic, racist, bigoted Right-wing Catholic fundamentalist who has spent time with Tea Party members in the U.S., studying their tactics. He's one of the ugliest of a very ugly government.