Is the Liberal Party lining up behind Murdoch and old media?

The Liberal Party of Australia's Simon Birmingham is a senator who doesn't usually swim across my line of vision.

However, this week he came to my attention because of his exchanges with the ABC's Managing Director Mark Scott and the Federal Communications Minister during a Senate estimates committee hearing on 19 October 2009.

After dealing with Bananas in Pyjamas and a few other matters, Senator Birmingham's queries began to focus on the advisability of Scott's public comments on the future of Australian media and the ABC's continuing role in providing free to air and free online news content:

The question relevant to Mr Scott here is whether, as head of the national public broadcaster, he feels that in any way his remarks stepped beyond commenting on the role and responsibilities of the national public broadcaster and into the commercial operations of his competitors in the news world.

and

What risk, if any, do you see in terms of the future of that mixed model, given that the ABC does have a clear and, while you can debate about the levels from time to time, guaranteed source of revenue, whereas the income model for commercial news operators is a rapidly changing and very uncertain world?

and again

But I am acknowledging the reality and I would have thought that as communications minister you would acknowledge the reality that the income model for commercial news broadcasters is changing dramatically and is very uncertain into the future. It is reasonable for them to be hypothesising about the impact of that on the future of news broadcasting and, indeed, on the potential that if their traditional income revenues dry up and the online world does not provide enough revenue, then we will be left with the ABC as the major news provider in that market space. That is the argument being put by some. I am not saying that it will happen, but there is some validity to it.

At the same hearing Senator Abetz revealed a Liberal Party still trying to inflict payback for what it sees as ABC bias and misconduct in its political coverage during the Howard Government years and beyond.

Murdoch & Co are ploughing fertile ground here and all Australians should be very wary of the Liberal Party's intentions with regard to public broadcasting if it is returned to government.