What will it take for someone in the federal government to hold the ABC to account? What will it take for the federal opposition to demand a royal commission into the behaviour of a taxpayer-funded agency which for decades has shown the finger to the public, its boards and government ministers, and which pays lip service only to its Act, Charter and editorial policies?

How many millions of dollars in defamation and legal costs will have to be paid, how minuscule will its audiences have to become, before the taxpayers’ representatives decide that enough is enough?

It’s time to face the reality that the national broadcaster is a national joke, a conclusion seemingly being reached by its rapidly diminishing audiences.

Apart from die-hard, inner-city cafe-dwellers, climate activists and the nostalgic, the ABC has lost its sense of public duty. Indeed it has cogently made the case for its own demise as a taxpayer-funded entity. How can the outlay of $1.1 billion a year be justified when its main distinguishing features are a lack of professionalism and journalistic integrity?

The latest example is the pre-dawn positioning of a Four Corners camera crew at Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill’s home in a Perth residential suburb, to film an alleged trespass by protesting climate activists, Disrupt Burrup Hub.

Initially the ABC denied collusion saying, ‘just prior to the action, the team received a tip to go to an address, they had no knowledge what was at the address or that it was someone’s house’. (Google maps would have been a guide). It also maintained, ‘The ABC team remained on public land throughout observing what was happening’. Yet Sky News obtained a photo of an ABC camera crew standing in the driveway.

The collusion denial always lacked credibility. First it was an east-based Four Corners crew, not a Perth-based news crew, who attended. Second, the protesters had a link to Four Corners which, only last July, filmed a ‘climate meeting’ they held.

Following intervention from Minister Michelle Rowland, at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, in a lengthy statement replete with weasel words, the ABC finally admitted it had lied.

Similar artfulness was on display when broadcasting an Alice Springs community meeting. Initially viewers were led to believe it was a ‘disgusting show of white supremacy’. Only when threatened with an official investigation, did the broadcaster apologise for it’s ‘incomplete reporting’.

This wilful blindness was behind the ‘Fox and the Big Lie’, double-episode Four Corners attack on arch enemy, News Corporation. The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that the documentary breached the Code of Practice on accuracy and fair and honest dealing. Demonstrating its contempt, the ABC aired the show again.

In the news at present are the defamation proceedings brought against the ABC by former commando Heston Russell. It seems ABC journalists took the flimsy word of a US Marine who heard ‘a pop on the radio’ and assumed it was a member of the commando’s November Platoon executing an Afghan prisoner, implicating Russell. This story neatly fitted the narrative of ABC journalist Marc Willacy’s book, Rogue Forces, which ‘documents the disturbing truth about war crimes committed by Australia’s SAS forces in Afghanistan’.

Under pressure, the broadcaster issued a private, qualified apology over sloppy journalism and breach of standards, but it was not published. In court, Mr Russell’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou SC, accused the broadcaster of ‘an inexcusable abuse of power’. She said, ‘It is so unusual and so improper that it’s really revealed conduct that is quite breathtaking in its audacity.’

In the ABC’s defence, Mr Willacy asserted ‘free speech and public interest rises well above truth’. This may excuse sloppy and biased journalism but it’s not what the Act, the Charter or, editorial policies require.

Nor does it conform to the philosophy behind Labor’s proposed crackdown on media misinformation and disinformation.

And how far it is from its longest-serving chair, Sir Richard Boyer’s vision. He wanted the ABC ,‘To stand solid and serene in the middle of our national life, running no campaign, seeking to persuade to no opinion, but presenting the issues fairly and fearlessly for the calm judgment of the people’.

Sadly, even on administrative issues nothing seems straight forward.

When the Coalition government announced a temporary ‘freeze’ on indexation it was claimed it would ‘rip the heart out of the ABC…’.Chief executive David Anderson anticipated ‘that despite our best efforts some of our services will be affected and, regrettably, there will be redundancies’. Up to 250 was mentioned.

Yet when asked at a Senate hearing about staff numbers, Anderson could only answer that he didn’t believe the organisation’s headcount had increased over the past year. Subsequently it was revealed that the corporation had added 120 employees. It is surprising that this important detail escaped the CEO.

But then, when it comes to scrutiny, the ABC is invariably hypersensitive. It claims it has no record of how much money it spent settling legal claims brought over the past six years. This makes its total expenditure on defamation payouts and associated costs difficult to determine. However, total outlays are estimated at around $30 million. Many of these cases appear to have been defended for vanity reasons and should have been settled long before they went to court.

It is time for the federal parliament to acknowledge the ABC is a Potemkin village, the facade of which is now 91 years old and increasingly unmoored from reality. Even the nostalgic can no longer deny the fake-news production line and the cohort of left-wing journalists who operate behind it. Their Aunty is ailing and putting her on the proposed digital platform will only postpone the inevitable.

Australians deserve better and are entitled to expect their parliamentary representatives to demonstrate the necessary courage to hold this brazen collective to account. The ABC may hide behind independence but that does not exempt it from accountability.

Nothing short of a royal commission will suffice.