Culture warrior returns as communications spokesperson.
It’s second time round for Senator Sarah Henderson who was the coalition’s communications spokesperson from June 2022 to February 2023. After six months, Peter Dutton shifted her to the education portfolio in a reshuffle. However, Dutton did not release her education policy before the 2025 election. After the 2025 election Sussan Ley removed her from the front bench.
In making the appointment, Angus Taylor has signalled his interest in continuing the barren culture war against our public broadcasters that Senator Henderson has waged for most of her 12 years in parliament. A favourite tactic is to cherry-pick extracts from ABC coverage in attempts to claim bias – or perhaps to intimidate ABC management – in senate estimates hearings.
At senate estimates on 10 February, for example, she asked about ASIO’s dire warnings regarding the ABC’s Four Corners program on the Bondi attacks, which ASIO released before the program aired. But, it transpired, Henderson hadn’t actually watched the program.*
In November 2025 the senator used a defamation action by Donald Trump against the BBC (a standard tactic by which Trump seeks to silence the media) to manufacture a crisis for the ABC. Henderson argued that the Four Corners program Downfall (aired in 2021) had deliberately doctored Donald Trump’s January 6 Capitol speech. Not true, as Hugh Marks, the ABC’s Managing Director explained.
In fact, said Marks, “Downfall’ is powerful journalism of the highest standard. The ABC is proud of it”.
With the fervent support of News Corp, Henderson then demanded an urgent senate inquiry into the ABC, claiming it was no longer fit for purpose and calling for a rewrite of the ABC Act ‘to hold the ABC to account’.
More than 7,000 of our members and supporters signed a petition opposing this blatant attack on the ABC’s independence, which was then roundly defeated in the senate.
We can usually make an educated guess on Henderson’s attack lines by reading the Australian or watching Sky News where she is a frequent guest. (Sky News has now been renamed News24).
Somehow, we’re not surprised that Sarah Henderson has voted consistently to cut ABC funding.
Henderson said she looked forward to “fighting hard every day for media competition and free speech”. We wait with interest to see her communications policy.
In the meantime, we’re trying hard to think of one positive thing the good senator has said about her ex-employer, the ABC, in her dozen years in parliament. So far, we’ve come up with blanks. Let us know if you have any examples – [email protected]
* ASIO and the ABCFour Corners broadcast claims by a former undercover agent that Sajid and Naveed Akram were showing signs of being radicalised years before they killed 15 people at Bondi beach. In 2019, ASIO assessed Naveed, then 17, over his alleged associations with individuals involved in an Islamic State cell, but later concluded he was not an ongoing threat. Before the program aired, ASIO released a statement claiming that the episode contained “significant errors of fact” and stating that “If the ABC chooses to publish claims it cannot substantiate – particularly ones it has been told are untrue – we will reserve our right to take further action.” ASIO did not follow up with any further action.See the Media Watch episode that concluded the program “was a vital and extraordinary piece of journalism which was honest about its weaknesses and … served the highest of public interests, getting to the heart of what is clearly the worst possible failure of Australia’s security apparatus.” |