All the ABC news that’s fit to spike

What could have happened at the ABC, do you think? Was there an explosion in the fair-trade, carbon-offset latte machine in the national broadcaster’s cafeteria, perhaps obliging taxpayer-funded staffers and life partners to run in terror from their keyboards? Or could it be that ABC Editrix-in-Chief  Michelle Guthrie has had second thoughts about the diversity policy of which she has been so ardent an architect, perhaps concluding the process has now reached a point where there are too many multicultural mugs positioned behind microphones and no room left for a prominent Aboriginal to squeeze in beside Stan Grant? Whatever the reason, the ABC has somehow managed to overlook the latest alleged misadventures of its favourite felon, Dylan Voller.

Young Mr Voller, whose antics while incarcerated prompted both a monumental 4Corners beat-up and a subsequent royal commission, courtesy of friend of the ABC and for-now PM Malcolm Turnbull, insists he was oppressed all over again while visiting Perth on the weekend. Perth police offer a rather different account of the alleged goings-on at a suburban railway station where, or so they say, the much-convicted youngster rumbled with officers and, at one point, dropped his strides and treated fellow travellers to a spectacle seldom seen on public transport. All of this is best left to the courts, which will decide the matter in due course.

Yet somehow, even though the story of Voller’s arrest broke at about the same time rostered-off ABC staffers were slipping their vegan Sunday roasts into the oven,  not a word has appeared on the ABC News website. This is curious indeed, as the ABC has found Alice Springs’ favourite public nuisance to be almost as compelling a topic as climate change. Consider some of what the ABC has laid before its audience:

Larissa Behrendt — did you know she has a radio show? — devoted an entire hour to Mr Voller, his alleged “fragility” and his quest for “healing” — a process which apparently required him to turn up at the studio with two handlers and allow them to do almost all of the talking.

Dylan Voller’s Path to Healing.

Dylan Vollers “mistreatment” in NT detention

Dylan Voller’s fight for reparations.

Dylan Voller’s troubled youth (and how it was everyone else’s fault).

According to the search-result field on the ABC website, reproduced atop this post, an astonishing 6,553 items mentioning Voller have been crafted at the taxpayers’ expense since 4Corners whipped out the Mixmaster and frothed a young thug’s sorry story into a cri de coeur for social justice and compensation payments.

And yet, when an incident erupts that might well be seen to reflect badly on the ABC’s pinup boy, not a word.

Fortunately the state-run behemoth has not yet run out of business its commercial rivals, with Perth’s Sunday Times still on hand to report the ugly scene at Cannington railway station. You can read all about it about via this link or the one below.

Those hoping the ABC might cover the case will most likely just have to wait. Perhaps if someone were to inform the ABC that Voller’s pants had been yanked down by Cardinal George Pell, rather than of his own alleged volition,  the national broadcaster might deem the arrest worth reporting.

— roger franklin

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