Actor Rachel Griffiths rings talkback line to congratulate student protesters

TWO days after phone sex worker ‘Gloria’ called talkback radio to criticise Federal Budget cuts, a celebrated Australian actress has done the same.

ON Wednesday it was ‘Gloria’, but today it was a more famous Australian using talkback to air her anger about the Federal Budget.

Australian actor Rachel Griffiths joined the ABC Melbourne airwaves this morning, introduced as ‘Rachel from St Kilda’ before host Jon Faine realised it was “the Hollywood star”.

“I’m just ringing up to celebrate the girls, the teenagers who apparently wagged school, which everybody is up in arms about, (who) defended their right to a quality education,” she said.

Griffiths, who is no stranger to political protests, said she was calling after it was reported students from her former school Star of the Sea College in Brighton were caught up in the demonstrations.

“The fact that the Star girls were yesterday as part of that protest I thought was fantastic,” she claimed.

The actor said it was “disturbing” to hear people saying the girls should not have aired their views.

“It’s pretty clear that these are bright girls who in two years will be going into a higher education system that’s unlike anything we’ve seen probably since the 1950s.”.

No stranger to protest ... Rachel Griffiths staged a solo demonstration as a topless Jesus at the opening of Melbourne’s Crown Casino in 1997.

She argued it was “annoying” that the generation which had free education and that took “entitlement after entitlement” keep “slamming the door in the generation X and Y’s face”.

“The middle class are really going to get slaughtered,” the Golden Globe winner claimed, by the decision to give universities the power to set their own fees.

When Faine remarked that the actor was maintaining her “bolshie approach to Australian politics”, she laughed.

“I don’t think it’s politics. I’m very strong on social equity.”

Griffiths recalled the story of a nanny in the US who had a $150,000 debt and had interest rates of up to eight per cent.

“These were beautiful young people, that didn’t buy a house, that didn’t get the big return supposedly on their education.”

The actor, who is preparing to play Julia Gillard in a television drama, made headlines in 1997 when she stripped during a protest at the opening of Melbourne’s Crown Casino.

Originally published as Actor Rachel Griffiths rings talkback line to congratulate student protesters