Regarding the Departure of Stan Grant

Stan Grant’s Departure from the ABC

Racism in all its forms is to be abhorred and condemned. So it is with any attack on Stan Grant based on the grounds of his race.
The condemnation rightly directed at Stan Grant for abusing his privileged position as an ABC employee to hijack the coverage of the historic coronation broadcast nevertheless stands.

Australians were rightly appalled at his commandeering of the occasion of the coronation of the King of Australia for his gratuitous and outrageously jaundiced monologues seeking to lay the blame for every perceivable injustice at the feet of the Crown which should somehow be held responsible for events over two centuries ago.

Viewers of the ABC were rightly expecting their tax payer funded national broadcaster to provide an unbiased factual broadcast explaining the rich history of the coronation parts of which date back one thousand years. All the commercial stations did so as did the ABC’s equivalent in the BBC. Why couldn’t the ABC?

A telling point in Mr Grant’s statement is that he was invited on to the show. It begs the question as to who made that gross error of judgement and why? There was no stand out reason suggesting Mr Grant had expertise to comment on the coronation. Given that lack of expertise his invitation must’ve been to provide a commentary unrelated to the occurrence of the day. Was this the thinking of the management which provided the invitation to Mr Grant? Was this the thinking that also saw a panel of five to nil in favour of The Voice and a panel of four to one in favour of a republic. This imbalance and inappropriate discussion for the occasion needs to be flushed out.

The ABC must come clean and answer the Australian Monarchist League’s freedom of information requests as a matter of urgency to help clean the stench it created into what is fast turning into a debacle of crisis proportions for the ABC. Having received over 1000 complaints on the night’s coverage of the coronation the ABC might reflect on the reputational damage it has inflicted on itself.

Criticism of the ABC’s and Stan Grant’s hijacking of the event is justified. Any criticism based on race is not and is to be condemned.

Hon. Eric Abetz
Chairman
Australian Monarchist League Campaign