I grew up in the peaceful suburbs of Brisbane in a time before the 24-hour news cycle. Of a weekend morning, I would open the front door and recover the Courier Mail which had been flung down our driveway in the early hours of the morning.
I would peel the sticky plastic wrapping off the paper, which protected it somewhat from the Queensland thunderstorms, and begin to take in the latest happenings in the world.
On the deck, above the yard with its thick lawn, lush garden, and above-ground swimming pool, my parents and I would read the one paper. We swapped sections of it as others finished with them; my mum happy to start with the lifestyle pull-out, me reading a dozen stories about the Brisbane Broncos, and Dad reading the more serious news about politics and world events.
As the day quickly warmed, we spoke infrequently as the pages of the paper shuffled and the birds sang in the surrounding gum trees.
In time, the paper would be digested and we would wash the ink stains off our hands before going our separate ways for the day.
Those mornings now seem so innocent and unreal, but they existed in a time before social media algorithms, content rabbit holes, culture wars, and omnipresent activism and righteousness. It was like there was less judgement back then: we didn’t get enraged so easily, we didn’t entrench ourselves in one camp against another so much. And the ABC was not yet an activist organisation.
But Zen teaches us that nothing is permanent. There came an absurd turning point which changed those peaceful mornings. My father wanted to pause our newspaper delivery while he was away. According to him, he had contacted the newsagent to request this, but to his annoyance, he returned to find numerous newspapers waiting on our driveway. He called the newsagent and asked for a refund; the newsagent, being another intractable old man, refused; so, dad cancelled the delivery service for good, in that moment ending a decades-long ritual because of a perceived slight.
This whole affair turned out to be an unlikely sliding doors moment for the family and particularly my father.
In place of reading the newspaper each weekend morning (because no one, especially not my father, could be bothered going to the shops to buy one), a television was installed on the deck. On it ran the ABC news cycle on repeat. We shared nothing and stared at the television like fools. The magic disappeared.
With the later emergence of smartphones carrying live ABC News, ABC News on his desktop (at which he began to spend ever more hours), and ABC NewsRadio while he showered, his worldview began to shrink.
There seemed to be a remarkably quick change from ‘Europe is losing its culture through mass migration’ to ‘All xx can talk about is Islam’. His climate change scepticism flipped – likely, in part, due to the enormous money he began to earn from exporting rooftop solar.
But it was the emergence of Trump Derangement Syndrome which most signalled the shift. Despite visiting the US dozens of times, he declared (repeatedly) that he ‘wouldn’t be visiting the US while Trump was in charge’. As if somehow the beauty of Half Dome would be tainted by the gloom of Trump’s reign. I felt sad about this because he loved visiting the US and, let’s face it, he’s getting on.
Just like we sacrificed that beautiful morning ritual to spite the newsagent, he seemed to be spiting himself by denying himself the pleasure of visiting that country again.
Mum says Trump is all Dad talks about these days. But perhaps old men need a beef to keep them going.
Granted, Dad is not yet wearing a keffiyeh and protesting in support of terrorist organisations on a weekly basis. He’s too antisocial for that.
But it seems like every time I visit, his views are becoming more predictable and merging closer with the ABC Manifesto of Accepted Thought. Now, despite buying the Courier Mail for decades, I hear him make comments against the Murdoch Press. It’s all very disconcerting.
I won’t pretend I haven’t changed. I was dragged into left-wing sickness for a period in my earlier years. My Dad once lamented having a left-wing radical as a son. I confess, I did vote for the Greens for a period – but in my defence, that was before they went full bonkers.
He recently told me that my views had changed, to which I replied, ‘As have yours.’ I don’t think, until that point, he had actually considered that they had. His views simply matched the prevailing ABC narrative he heard on repeat. This is the danger of a biased national broadcaster; it can move people politically while allowing them to continue believing they have remained perfectly still.
I thought it was natural to drift to the Right as you got older, as I have, but I didn’t think you were meant to move back to the Left in your later years, as Dad has. The ABC must be very proud of itself.
Perhaps the world must have balance; perhaps it was not meant to be that my father and I should hold the same opinions at the same time.
Thankfully, when I visit home Dad is still alive, but things have changed from those quiet mornings on the deck. No one asks, ‘Are you done with the sports section?’ Mum no longer seeks help with a tricky crossword clue. The towering gum trees became a threat to a new neighbour, and they were cut down. Now the sky is stark and you mostly hear the incessant murmuring of pigeons and the stabbing call of crows.
Instead of listening to the tweeting of the native birds, you’re more likely to hear the ABC read out one of Trump’s tweets with its trademark impartiality. Without the counterbalance of the newspaper, the endless repetition of anti-Trump and anti-Pauline bias does its work.
Dad’s hands don’t shuffle a newspaper anymore and catch the ink. They grasp his phone as he scrolls through ABC News articles. Afterwards, his hands are cleaner, but it is what stains his mind that worries me.
Travis Kelly is a Melbourne-based writer who writes about politics, culture and Western society.
