Stan Grant Takes Leave From Q&A Amid ABC Hypocrisy

In news that surprised many, the host of Q&A on the ABC Stan Grant recently announced that he was leaving the show temporarily due to repeated and sustained racial attacks against him AND the lack of support from the ABC since his role in the coverage of the King's Coronation earlier this month.

Grant managed to offend "royalists" during the coverage by referring to the monarchy's history in relation to the Indigenous people along with comments about replacing the monarchy. People were so offended by a day of "celebration" being used to bring up the republic and Indigenous history that they came after Stan Grant with criticism and in some cases racism.

Stan Grant: Host of Q&A forced to take leave due to racial attacks

Criticism has not just come from the "dregs" of social media but also right-wing media who basically loaded up with everything they could and fired it at Grant.

Let's dig a bit deeper though because there is a lot more to this.

First and foremost, Australia is unfortunately a racist country. The treatment of Grant is just another example of our inherent racist tendencies. We've been racist against our Indigenous people, racist against foreigners, especially from Asian and African countries and unfortunately, it's something that has been ingrained in our culture. This is slowly changing but it's changing at a very slow pace.

Second of all, while Grant has copped a lot of criticism for his comments during the King's Coronation, he has also copped a lot of criticism in his role as host of Q&A.

For those who don't know, Q&A is basically a show of "progressives" with a token "conservative" who they bash on and a planted audience that slants heavily one way. It's like the Roman Gladiator Arena except the audience are giving a thumbs up or down instead of the Emperor. It is also a show that has completely lost its way to the point where quite frankly, a succession of different hosts and attempted revamps just haven't worked. Our taxpayer's dollars contribute to that rubbish and it should be removed and replaced with something that allows genuine debate with a balanced panel AND audience.

What is astonishing, though not surprising in a way is the reaction to the racist attacks. The ABC kept their head down hoping that it could be ridden out because they didn't want to risk the ire of Murdoch media. The problem is that such an approach is indeed unsupportive in the extreme. It took until news came out of Grant's decision to step away for the ABC to finally come out and publicly support him. This is an abject failure of management in the extreme.

Even more astonishing was the reaction of ABC staff and workers on Monday when they walked off the job in support of Stan Grant. Hashtags sprung up on social media ranging from #WeRejectRacism to #IStandWithStan and #WeStandWithStan. No one for a single second is denying those staff and workers the right to show support and the fact they did, well, at least they tried to stand for something.

There is however one very big problem with the reaction of ABC staff and workers though.

It's their rank hypocrisy!

Fauziah Ibrahim is the host of ABC News Breakfast Weekend.

Last year she made a mistake on Twitter when she made certain Twitter lists she had created public.

Two of the lists in particular were very controversial as they were titled Labor Trolls/Thugs and Lobotomised S**theads.

Was she wrong to make those lists public? Absolutely! Was she wrong to make those lists at all? Absolutely not!

Was she proven right by the subsequent attacks on her from people that ended up on those lists? Bloody oath she was!

Fauziah Ibrahim was yanked from ABC News Breakfast Weekends for a month due to those lists.

Fauziah Ibrahim was yanked from the TV Screens due to controversy surrounding Twitter Lists

She has been subjected to 12 months of sustained attacks from ALP voters and you know when she's trending on Twitter, that the usual suspects have once again thrown the toys out of the cot because they cannot fathom someone having a different opinion to them. These usual suspects have big followings on Twitter (completely undeserved but that's another story for another time).

Many of these attacks have had racial and sexist undertones!

At NO stage was she offered any sort of public support.

At NO stage did staff and workers walk off the job in support of her.

Staff and workers apparently #RejectRacism but stayed silent regarding the flak Ibrahim copped online, especially the criticism with racial and sexist undertones.

Staff and workers didn't #StandWithFauziah at any stage at all.

All ABC staff and workers achieved with their walkout on Monday was exposing their rank hypocrisy of picking and choosing what they stand for. You can't pick and choose which racism or sexism to stand for. You either stand against ALL or stand against NONE!

Since Monday, the ABC has admitted they need to work on their processes regarding staff receiving racist comments from the public and a man was charged by police with making racial threats against Stan Grant. It's a pity police didn't put the same energy into outing those racists who went after Fauziah Ibrahim and charge a few of those people. That would've knocked out quite a few pro-ALP accounts on Twitter and shut a lot of people up.

Whatever way you look at this, the ABC, the "so-called" bastion for progressives is at a real crossroads. They have work to do internally when it comes to racism but they equally need to face up to their hypocrisies surrounding how they reacted to Stan Grant vs how they reacted to Fauziah Ibrahim.