The Prime Minister's stoush with the ABC can be traced to his political heritage as a cultural fighter for the right. But it's a dangerous game for a leader still struggling to win the trust of the Australian public, writes Peter Lewis.

Go figure. The titular head of Australia's least-trusted profession launches a war on the flagship of our most trusted media outlet.

After working himself into a lather over the ABC's decision to allow an accused but acquitted terrorist access to the national knitting circle, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is running the risk of turning the bias issue into a battle of trust.

And as responses in this week's Essential Report show, that's a fight he is unlikely to win, with the vast majority of Australians rejecting his underlying premise that the ABC is biased to the left.

Q. Which of the following is closest to your opinion of the ABC?

Total Vote Labor Vote Lib/Nat Vote Greens Vote Other The ABC is biased to the left 22% 10% 42% 13% 13% The ABC is not biased either to the left or to the right 36% 48% 21% 61% 46% The ABC is biased to the right 3% 1% 3% 2% 8% Don't know 40% 40% 34% 23% 33%

The belief in partisan bias is centred on the Coalition heartland, but even here the bias allegation only resonates with 42 per cent of Abbott loyalists.

Ironically, hardly anyone sees the recounting of Labor's recent self-immolation as documented by 'The Killing Season' as anything other than yet another own-goal. While the PM momentarily embraced the messenger, no-one mistook this horror flick for bias to the right.

These responses to the explicit bias question reflect regular benchmark polling that ranks ABC TV news and current affairs our most trusted news source.

Meanwhile, when we recently asked people to rate their trust in various professions, politicians came out on the bottom of the barrel with just 11 per cent trust, less than half the rating for the media in general.

In separate findings, the ABC's power couple of Tony Jones and Sarah Ferguson rate only behind the Buddha, Laurie Oakes, for trust; meanwhile the PM's preferred commentators Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones have the lowest levels of trust from the broader public.

On this evidence, the PM's fight with the ABC seems a strange one to wage, a foray down sideshow alley where the odds seem heavily stacked against him.

So what's going on?

On one level this is a textbook example of creating a controversy to keep the national agenda on terrorism. Along with asylum seekers, this is a natural strength for a Coalition, struggling to build a coherent economic story and swimming against the global tide on climate change.

Even when the PM is accused by his own supporters of overplaying his hand on the banishment of duel citizens, the overwhelming majority of Australians back him in.

There's also a sense of playing to the party's conservative base in times of trouble. With nothing much to inspire the faithful, a robust fight with the national broadcaster has always energised the right.

But as with most things about Tony Abbott, there's more at play here and you need to understand his political heritage as a cultural fighter for the right in the dying days of the Cold War.

Through student politics and his early days as a political agitator, Abbott fought the left with a righteous zeal in an era where the ABC Staff Association was considered a Marxist vanguard.

You get the sense that nearly 40 years on, Abbott still believes the national broadcaster is in enemy hands. Ignore the ideological cleansing of the Howard era, the conservative Board appointees, or the fact that the current managing director cut his political teeth on the conservative side of politics.

For Abbott, a fight with the ABC is more than tactical and opportunistic - which is why it is all the more dangerous for a leader still struggling to win the trust of the Australian public.

Peter Lewis is a director of Essential Media Communications.

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