Dear Linton Besser,
Thank you for revisiting the topic of ACON’s stranglehold over the ABC. This is hardly a new topic, given Paul Barry courageously raised it years ago, and it’s ever more concerning that ABC is not taking immediate action to end its relationship with ACON.
Despite Hugh Marks’ shambolic attempts to minimise ACON’s meddling: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CizZxtjxa it doesn’t wash with the public, as women’s rights blogger and left-wing feminist Kit Kowalski has pointed out here:
Paul Barry referenced Kit’s work in his Media Watch missive to ACON. This week, The Australian’s Stephen Rice has written extensively on how ACON is facilitated by our government ministers and senior public servants, using vast amounts of taxpayer money to embed its fringe ideology throughout virtually all our public institutions.
ABC’s platinum status on ACON’s Australian Workplace Equality Index is starting to look less like a virtue signal, and more like a red flag for compromised integrity.
ABC’s complaints system is itself a serious concern. Its Ombudsman claims, for example, to have no responsibility over ABC’s lies by omission. By this I mean ABC’s failure to report significant, high public-interest issues, even when the public are asking why not.
Sall Grover’s appeal is one such obvious example, but there are many more, and they often involve the prioritising of trans-positivity over everything else.
This case has been an absolutely shocking abuse of public trust and taxpayers’ money, and for what? A young mum, Celine Baumgarten, made a polite tweet, concerned about extreme sexual and inappropriate gender ideology introduced into a primary school. The eSafety Commissioner’s actions have been extraordinary and alarming, secretly getting Celine’s tweet taken down. The courts established the eSafety Commissioner was in the wrong. As if that were not concerning enough, Inman-Grant then dragged Baumgarten through court at taxpayers’ expense, seemingly just to prove a personal point. Thankfully she was admonished by the judge for being so silly.
ABC has nothing at all to say about such an extraordinary abuse of government authority, to cosh a woman for expressing a valid concern about the sexualising of children?
Then there has been ABC’s avoidance of the scandal of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody secretly attempting to undermine the UN’s Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, because Alsalem protects women-only spaces, as per CEDAW governance, and Cody does not. This has great relevance to Sall Grover’s ongoing legal woes, which are likely to end up in the High Court before sense is restored in Australia.
ABC’s utter failure to report impartially on the trans/women’s rights debate has been instrumental in how Sall Grover’s case has played out, giving her clear grounds for legal action in future.
Here is one thoughtful complaint from a member of the public, who has put a great deal of effort into clearly showing ABC’s long-term bias in its coverage of women’s rights campaigners (routinely described as “anti-trans activists” by ABC).
It’s incredibly disheartening to see how obviously ridiculous ABC has become, due to ACON’s ideological capture. Thankfully, Stephen Rice fully intends to continue with his long-form exposure of the ABC’s longstanding affair with ACON, and it makes for unbelievably fascinating reading: https://archive.md/ufZBC
The same week Anna Cody was outed as secretly plotting to depose Reem Alsalem, ABC managed to avoid mention of it—however, it did publish a story championing a drag queen because he breached a council ban on reading to little children at a public library: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-13/nsw-western-sydney-cumberland-city-council-bans-drag-story-time/105925662
This is an insult to the public’s intelligence and patience, and it is only one of many such instances—there are too many to mention here.
In my work as a child protection social worker, I am constantly horrified at the erosion of women’s rights and children’s safety that is resulting from gender ideology saturating every area of public life. How this has happened is well documented—just not by ABC. It is what happens when too many people are afraid to speak up.
I have hope that you will continue to have courage to explore these issues openly and respectfully on Media Watch, and to be undeterred at the clamour of pushback you will certainly have to contend with from the transactivists within ABC whose gravy train is about to be derailed: https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-stonewall-sacrificed-gay-rights/
Kind regards,
Elizabeth Gillanders