The ABC and its Feral Audience

Among the many fingers the ABC has jammed into the mass-media pie its Facebook page is one of the most unintentionally instructive, the reader comments posted on threads beneath the re-posted news reports regularly opening a window on the sort of people successive Coalition governments have persisted in squandering a billion-plus dollars per year to inform, entertain … and incite.

There was another example just this morning in the comments thread beneath the national broadcaster’s coverage of an emotional speech by retiring South Australian Liberal Nicolle Flint, who is quitting politics after being subjected to a campaign of sustained and vile harassment by Labor supporters and the party’s GetUp! auxiliaries. But first, some of what Ms Flint had to say:

“I ask the Leader of the Opposition, where was he and where was his predecessor and where were the senior Labor women when GetUp, Labor and the union supporters chased, harassed and screamed at me everywhere I went in the…