A Hypothetical Lizard

Well, this certainly sounds like bad news:

On Thursday, the ABC’s managing director, Hugh Marks, apologised to Rinehart and said the national broadcaster would change its editorial policies.

“While the Ombudsman has found that the film did not breach the ABC’s editorial policies, the ABC acknowledges the episode has fallen short of community expectations,” Marks said in a statement.

“The ABC apologises to Mrs Rinehart and to anyone else affected or upset by the publication of the film.

“As part of our review of this matter, we have considered whether the guidance in the ABC Editorial Policies adequately reflects current community expectations. We have also considered whether the relevant guidance sufficiently distinguishes between news and non-news content. As a result, the ABC will amend its guidance as it applies to violence.”

Some context: someone tried to be funny on Race Around the World. Historically this has rarely been a good idea, and in this case Gina Rinehart – the target of the satire – got a bit shitty. What a shock. Cue the ABC falling over itself to back down, complete with “we’ll make sure this never happens again your majesty” capper.

A few people have pointed out this kind of shifting of the editorial goalposts will be fatal to ABC satire. After all, the whole idea is to make sure that certain jokes about public figures can’t be told on the ABC. That’s definitely bad news for… uh… hang on a second… we’ve got the list of shows here somewhere…

Surprise! This kind of editorial buggery will make no difference to ABC satire, because as things stands there is currently no ABC satire. Nothing. A big enchilada filled up with nada. The chumps running the ABC can decree that all satire must contain nothing harsher than a wet slap from a soggy sandwich and it won’t mean a thing because they’re not putting satire of any stripe to air outside of very firmly secured containers. Hey, remember how we actually liked Always Was Tonight?

Seriously, it’s not possible for The Weekly to get any weaker when it comes to satire, or anything else, and what other satire has there been since 2022? Nothing, because every time they do get satirical – see Always Was Tonight – some attention-seeking LNP tool calls into the talkback line to complain. And while the ABC has zero interest in listening to complaints about many, many aspects of their news coverage, when it comes to comedy their hand is always ready to pull the plug.

Obviously, having the national broadcaster groveling to a mining magnate who’s currently shoveling cash into One Nation because she’d quite like the rest of us to live under the leadership of a right-wing racist is – just to be clear – a bad thing. It’s just not a new thing. And while we’d like things to be different, looking back over the history of the ABC… uh, yeah.

So any talk about ABC management “tightening up” editorial standards is on par with Team Tumbleweeds promising to crack down on card cheats at our offshore gambling boat the SS Dame Edna. Sounds good in theory, kind of evaporates when it comes to the real world. At least the Dame Edna reminds you of something that used to be funny.