ABC’s refugee, climate crutches getting wobbly

Developments in the public debate have exposed the national broadcaster's misleading alarmism on global warming and handwringing over border protection. Its hyperbole on these issues has polarised public sentiment, made sensible political discussion more difficult, and created a backlash.

The very organisations it has relied upon for its ideological and factual ballast, the Labor Party on border protection; and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have made dramatic corrections to adopt more rational, mainstream positions.

To search for climate change references in the ABC archives is to drown in a rising tide of fear and loathing. To say the public broadcaster has campaigned on climate is now uncontroversial; even its outgoing chairman Maurice Newman spoke about the extent of its "groupthink".

A careful study would keep a PhD candidate busy for a year or two but it is easy to sample some of the environment stories. You'll recognise the remorseless tone: "to avert a climate catastrophe, emissions must peak before 2020"; "the study blames climate change for the state of the reef"; "the planet has experienced the hottest start to a year on record"; "Australia's water-supply problems are only going to get worse"; "as temperatures rise, not only is the landscape copping the heat, but people are feeling the stress."

Thankfully, there is always some positive news: "Australia's top clothes designers have gone green, staging an environmentally friendly fashion show"; "farmers could be $3 billion richer if they tackle global warming"; "religious denominations joining hands, campaigning for action on climate change".

If it were just as easy to find rational debate and counter arguments on the ABC this would be fine. But in its coverage, to question extreme claims has been to be scoffed at, while an omnipresent Tim Flannery has been lauded as an honest broker.

When the ABC broadcast Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth there was plenty of attendant publicity, sympathetic coverage and acclaim. But when it broadcast another side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle, the ABC issued a disclaimer and followed it with an interview and panel discussion, largely debunking the program.

Yet it was An Inconvenient Truth that was found by a British court to contain inconvenient errors, such as false claims about islands being evacuated and exaggerations about rising sea levels.

This year, there has been a reckoning of sorts for those who have been pushing the emotional and misleading lines.

With the IPCC exposed for failing to verify exaggerated claims such as the predictions of melting Himalayan glaciers, and Climategate email leaks revealing a culture of scientists cherry-picking and campaigning for their "cause" of global warming, what was once the orthodox view is now on the back foot.

This month's IPCC summary report on extreme weather events marks a dramatic recalibration of the way the science is presented. It highlights uncertainty in the modelling and predictions and cautions that decades of observations will be required to separate natural variability in weather and climate from that induced by our emissions.

The implications of this are quite simple for politicians and the media. It is time to drop the grandstanding.

As has always been clear, there is a variety of rational views on climate science and policy responses. We should expect a public broadcaster to foster an open-minded, informed and objective debate.

Given its silence on the latest Climategate leaks and its lack of curiosity about the environmental impact of Australia's carbon tax, this seems unlikely.

On border protection, the story is similar. The ABC has adopted a so-called compassionate position for more than a decade.

Through emotional coverage on flagship current affairs programs like Lateline and The 7.30 Report, to its talk hosts on radio, and even its television drama and religious programming, its positioning has been clear.

It has strongly promoted those advocating an open-borders policy, opposing offshore processing and questioning mandatory detention. For much of the past decade the ABC has been able to portray this as a mainstream view because it has been supported, in the main, by the Labor Party.

The strong policies of the Howard government were denounced as hard-hearted and even racist, even though they stopped the flow of boats, emptied detention centres, and led to some centres being decommissioned.

When the Rudd government softened border protection laws and dismantled the Pacific Solution, there is now no argument that it triggered the re-emergence of the people-smuggling business. With upwards of 4000 people in detention, centres constructed in every state and more boats arriving, the government is switching to community detention because it can't cope with the flow.

Labor argued for two years that there was no connection between its actions and the new influx. It said asylum-seekers were thrust on Australia by global push factors, and that there was no such thing as a pull factor.

The ABC never seriously challenged this fallacious argument: "Prime minister Kevin Rudd says Australia is seeing the effects of a global spike in people smuggling"; "Government policy is the last thing on the minds of asylum-seekers when they are fleeing persecution."

But the Labor Party has abandoned this position. The horror of 50 people killed on the shores of Christmas Island forced the government to admit that the disincentive of offshore processing is necessary. Subsequent efforts to reinstate offshore processing through the East Timor and Malaysian solutions are a belated and welcome acceptance of error.

Now even senior members of the government privately express frustration at what they see as the relentless campaign by the ABC against their efforts.

Mugged by reality, the government is stuck combating the emotional media posturing it once fostered: "Human rights groups are calling on Prime Minister Julia Gillard to consider Australia's international obligations"; "Australia has appeared before a UN panel in Geneva accused of human rights violations"; "An independent UN expert says Australia's Christmas Island detention centre should be closed." Welcome to your ABC.

As with climate change, what has been needed over the past decade has been a reasoned debate, rather than special pleading, over asylum-seekers.

With annual public funding of more than a billion dollars, it is incumbent upon our ABC to tackle significant national policy debates with an appropriate sense of objectivity and detachment and to play its part in encouraging sober, evidence-based discussion and analysis.