‘Unperson’. You know the word. George Orwell coined it for Nineteen Eighty-Four, as being someone erased from society, the past, the present, the universe, and existence.

Such a person would be taken out of books, photographs, and articles so that no trace of them could be found.

And in 1984, as there was no ‘Newspeak’ word for what happened to unpeople, whereby it became a thoughtcrime to say an unperson’s name.

The Soviets under Stalin created unpersons by removing those that questioned the Communist party line by removing them from official photographs.

Today, the word unperson has the common meaning attached to a public figure, typically in a totalitarian country, who, for political or ideological reasons, is no longer recognised or mentioned in government publications or in the news media.

What word better describes the ABC’s complete silence on Bob Brown’s newfound opposition to a wind farm in North West Tasmania?

Given that wind farms have been sacred cows of The Greens, however you measure it, having the spiritual leader of the Australian green movement doing a 180° about-face on wind turbines, by pointing out their environmental and economic fallacies this is a story of national significance.

Articles on Bob Brown ‘seeing the light’ and his opposition to this wind farm have been published two days running on the front of The Australian, with the story ranking their second most popular that day.

It’s been widely reported by a variety of other media outlets including; The Canberra Times, SBS, The Mercury, Business Insider, The Daily Telegraph, Sky News Australia and even that leftie Bible in Orwell’s day and now, The Guardian, and has been a hot topic on talkback radio.

Yet, the ABC  (the largest news gathering service in the country that we fund so generously and has acted as cheer-squad for the wind industry for two decades) and who recorded and published Bob Brown’s every move in his opposition to Adani in copious detail, have been completely silent on Brown’s opposition to this wind farm.

The only conclusion is that Bob Brown is now an official unperson at our ABC for this ideological crime of opposing a wind farm.

And further, even mentioning Bob Brown’s name in relation wind turbines could be a thoughtcrime at the our ABC.

Craig Kelly is the Liberal Member for Hughes.

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