HOW much longer will the Abbott Government let the ABC spit in its face — and in that of millions of other Australian conservatives?

Take the past week.

First, there was the ABC’s lavish and loving coverage of the memorial service for former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam — a service in which Labor presenter Kerry O’Brien was the MC.

Fair enough, you may well say.

But then there was the ABC’s 7.30 nominating the overblown eulogy to Whitlam from Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson as “possibly one of the best Australian speeches in history”, even asking viewers how it rated among those “of all time”.

Next, on Saturday, the ABC broadcast the After Julia concert featuring “world premieres of seven newly commissioned works by outstanding Australian composers reflecting on the Hon. Julia Gillard’s time as the first female prime minister of Australia”.

Even more surreal, this concert featured taxpayer-supported artists playing taxpayer-supported works which the ABC said included “instructions from goldfish, spoken phrases turned into musical gestures, mouth organs and more”.

Swear to God.

On it goes. Tonight, the ABC screens the first of a two-part biography called Just Call me Bob to honour a third Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke.

It’s a show which the ABC’s publicity department reveals asks the hard question: “Why was Bob Hawke so popular?” You get the picture.

Of course, the ABC understands it must by law be balanced, so it did also screen a show last week which briefly mentioned Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Soul Mates, an ABC2 “comedy”, showed an attempted hit on Adolf Hitler, with one actor protesting: “Why does everyone always want to kill Hitler? Why not Pol Pot? Why not Stalin? Why not Supreme Chancellor Abbott?”

BLOG WITH ANDREW BOLT

Mocking Abbott as a modern Nazi is a running joke at the ABC.

Last month, Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell “joked” that Abbott was a neo-Nazi with his own Wolf’s Lair. Oh, and Liberals were friends of the Ku Klux Klan.

The ABC loves “jokes” like those. Last year, ABC television showed a conservative commentator in a doctored photo sodomising a dog, with a sign spelling it out: “Chris Kenny — Dog F---er.”

In August, another ABC “comedy” broadcast a cartoon purportedly showing Abbott’s mother having sex with a solar panel.

Let’s now compare. Can you imagine the ABC ever mocking Gillard as a Nazi, or wondering why people didn’t shoot her or showing her mum have sex with a nuclear reactor?

Can you imagine the ABC showing prominent Leftist commentators — say, David Marr or Waleed Aly — having sex with a dog?

Can you imagine the ABC broadcasting night after night of loving shows dedicated to past Liberal prime ministers?

As if. Indeed, the ABC happily showed O’Brien, a former Labor staffer, asking former Labor prime minister Paul Keating to explain what a genius he was over four nights, but refused to show conservative Janet Albrechtsen interviewing Liberal John Howard, our second-longest serving prime minister and more fondly remembered.

Almost every conservative politician will privately confirm the ABC is indeed hostile territory — a place where a host like Virginia Trioli was caught making he’s-crazy circles with her finger when listening to Nationals frontbencher Barnaby Joyce.

And here is the point: the ABC has given up all pretence. It is now openly campaigning against conservatives in breach of its legal requirement to be balanced.

The ABC, itself, concedes it’s meant not to be biased in exchange for having taxpayers forced to give it $1 billion a year. It admits it must therefore “reflect the cultural diversity” and “support the diversity of perspectives”.

What a joke. Instead, it makes not the slightest effort to get diversity of perspectives among presenters of its main news and current affairs shows.

Against Leftist presenters such as O’Brien, Aly, Trioli, Tony Jones, Phillip Adams, Jonathan Green, Jon Faine, Mark Colvin, Linda Mottram, Emma Alberici, Paul Barry, Fran Kelly, Barrie Cassidy, Geraldine Doogue, Leigh Sales, Peter Goers, James Carleton and so many others there are ... which known conservatives?

The ABC has only former minister Amanda Vanstone, actually from the Liberals’ Left, to present just one hour a week on the little-heard Radio National — a program called Counterpoint to warn it’s different from everything else on the ABC.

Or take this measure: in the 25 years of the ABC’s Media Watch, policing alleged crimes against journalism, every single host has been of the Left.

Or judge by the debates the ABC deliberately skews or muzzles.

The ABC’s two main science presenters are both fervent global warming evangelists, with Robyn Williams preposterously suggesting seas could rise this century by as much as 100m, and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki falsely insisting there’s been no pause in atmospheric warming over the past 16 years.

Who on the ABC corrects them?

Choose any of the other debates now dividing the Left and conservatives — boat people, multiculturalism, immigration, Islam, euthanasia, WikiLeaks, the “stolen generations” and recognition of Aborigines in the constitution.

Can you doubt the position collectively pushed on each by the ABC?

Here’s a hint. Remember how anxious the ABC was to believe claims by boat people that our sailors tortured them by deliberately burning their hands?

Here’s another: remember radio host Jon Faine announcing he wouldn’t report or discuss the massive Climategate scandal, in which warmist scientists were exposed colluding to bully sceptics and massage or hide inconvenient data?

This bias would be indefensible even if the ABC were just the size of the SBS, itself lacking balance.

But what makes that bias not just indefensible but dangerous is the ABC’s astonishing size.

It is now easily the biggest media outlet in the country, with five radio stations, four TV stations, an online newspaper, a huge social media presence, a publishing house and a string of bookshops promoting ABC-approved writers and journalists.

Meanwhile, every private media company struggles to survive the competition on the internet, especially with the ABC giving away free the same kind of content many newspapers must sell to survive.

If it weren’t that many journalists share the ABC’s political orientation — 73 per cent of ABC journalists vote Greens or Labor, according to a University of the Sunshine Coast survey last year — this would be a controversy.

Instead, it’s more a conspiracy — against all those Australians forced to pay for an ABC that then campaigns against exactly the kind of politics they support.

How much longer will the Abbott Government endure the ABC’s insults and abuse of power? Why so meek in response? Is it because ambitious ministers of the Liberals’ Left know that defending the ABC guarantees them the ABC’s support in any leadership battle against Abbott or, say, a Scott Morrison?

If so, may I suggest Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull be replaced by a minister more prepared to enforce the ABC’s own charter on an ABC now completely out of control?

Originally published as Your ABC needs to reflect us all