The battle for the ABC is a battle for the centre of Australian society. As Coalition members with rural seats now know, the rhetoric about the ABC being an enclave for Greens and the hard left is simply not true. The ABC has broad support.

The first thing to be said about the ABC is that there is such a thing as quality in the media. Anyone who tries to raise a defence of the ABC on the grounds of quality gets shouted down as a mouthpiece of the Greens and the left, the idea being that you support the ABC only because the ABC supports your politics. This is another attempt to mislead.

'I fully expect the News Corp blitzkrieg against the ABC to continue unabated.' Credit:Wolter Peeters

No media outlet is perfect but some are better than others. In Britain, no one on any side of politics would seriously argue that The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, is not a better quality newspaper than The Sun, also owned by News Corp. The Sun, it is hoped, is better than the now-defunct News of the World, also owned by News Corp. For an understanding of how the criminal practice of phone hacking grew out of that newspaper's culture, read Nick Davies' book, Hack Attack.

I support the ABC because it is better in crucial areas such as news and current affairs than its commercial competitors. Some people will argue loudly with that, but polls show that the ABC is the most trusted news source in Australia. The BBC is the most trusted in the world. Last year, in a tweet, Rupert Murdoch described the BBC as a "massive taxpayer-funded mouthpiece for tiny circulation leftist Guardian".