Australia’s woke ABC. By Chris Kenny.

The mutation of our national debate into a dumbed-down, ideological sideshow could not have been demonstrated better this week.

On Sky News, Sharri Markson aired a world-leading forensic documentary examining the likely origin of Covid-19 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology; but the following night on the over-resourced public broadcaster [the ABC] they used teenage smut and hateful slurs to mock the story and Sky News during a comedy/current ­affairs program (or current affairs/comedy, who can tell?) called Question Everything.

News Corp had funded groundbreaking journalism, and taxpayers funded lifelong adolescents revelling in their ignorance, spreading bile, and questioning nothing. And we wonder why the nation becomes more polarised, paranoid, and ill-informed.

The ABC follows the narrative unquestioningly.

Without action on the ABC, the Coalition is betraying its values every day. Forcing taxpayers to spend more than a billion dollars a year on an organisation that undermines our national interests rather than enhances them is indefensible.

On the night Scott Morrison announced the new US, UK, Australia nuclear submarine and defence technology partnership, the ABC 7.30 program turned over its analysis to leading pro-Beijing academic Hugh White and embittered former prime minister Kevin Rudd. If the ABC had outsourced the line-up to the Chinese embassy they might have come up with the same pair.

In Australia, the ABC is the main promoter of the narrative, the mothership of political correctness.