While News Corp attacks on Australian national broadcaster the ABC continue with an address by Lachlan Murdoch, former ACCC chair Rod Sims has spoken out in favour of the “vital institution”.

“Damage the ABC and Australia is damaged,” he said at a book presentation in Melbourne. “That would represent poor economic and public policy.”

Sims was the power behind Australia’s media bargaining code, which has so far proved the most effective legislation worldwide to force Google and Facebook to pay for the use of publishers’ content.

Meanwhile News co-chairman Murdoch again took aim at the ABC in an address to launch a new group named ‘The Centre for the Australian Way of Life’.

He told an audience at the right-leaning think tank the Institute for Public Affairs, that the broadcaster – and “much of the media elite” – presented a view of a “uniquely racist, selfish, slavish, and monochromatic country”.

He also said Australia had suffered through lockdowns, the popularity of which was “fuelled by the alarmist language and fear-mongering of politicians and much of the media”.

Murdoch recalled the group’s challenge to Google-owned YouTube over its ban on Sky News Australia’s coverage. “We must always be wary of the suppression of information,” he said.

The IPA event was also attended by News Corp hierarchy including group chief executive Robert Thomson and HWT chairman Penny Fowler. Chair of the IPA is News columnist Janet Albrechtsen.

In Melbourne, Rod Sims said the national broadcaster needed to be able to depend on guaranteed funding over a five-year cycle, not influenced by the government or forced to narrow its focus.

Funding of the ABC is a potential election issue given the Coalition’s cuts – which resulted in the ABC having to cut staffing – while Labor has promised to extend the funding cycle for both the ABC and SBS.

Sims suggests that those in power “might even get better coverage” were they to nurture the ABC. “With all such public goods there is a certainty that public interest journalism will be under-provided if left to the commercial sector alone,” he said.

Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins’ book, ‘Who Needs the ABC?’ delivers an “impassioned defence” of the national broadcaster, which is celebrating its ninetieth anniversary.