Scott Morrison is not keen on ABC interviews
Scott Morrison surprised the fine folks over at the national broadcaster recently, by turning down their invitation for a pre-election debate with Anthony Albanese, instead choosing to have all three of his televised debates take place on commercial channels.
I have also made the casual observation, over the last three years, that Morrison makes few appearances on Aunty in general, compared with the commercial alternatives, particularly Sky News (which I personally have never watched directly, and have no plans to, but I've seen plenty of clips of Morrison on Sky repeated on the ABC and elsewhere).
This led me to do some research, to find out: how often has Morrison taken part in ABC interviews, during his tenure so far as Prime Minister, compared with his predecessors? I compiled my findings, and this is what they show:
It's official: Morrison has, on average, taken part in fewer ABC TV and Radio interviews, than any other Prime Minister in recent Australian history.
I hope you find my humble dataset useful. Apart from illustrating Morrison's disdain for the ABC, there are also tonnes of other interesting analyses that could be performed on the data, and tonnes of other conclusions that could be drawn from it.
My findings are hardly surprising, considering Morrison's flagrant preference for sensationalism, spin, and the far-right fringe. I leave it as an exercise to the reader, to draw from my dataset what conclusions you will, regarding the fate of the already Coalition-scarred ABC, should Morrison win a second term.
Update, 18 May 2022: check it out, this article has been re-published on Independent Australia!