Rita Panahi: Why Neighbours will turn into Collingwood 2.0

Shareena Clanton’s claims about Neighbours range from the serious to the nonsensical, but are race-baiting “journalists” reporting all the pertinent facts?

Neighbours embraced identity politics and the culture of grievance mongering and is about to reap the rewards.

The show stands accused of creating a racist, misogynistic and homophobic workplace where bigotry is rife and minorities are traumatised.

Actor Shareena Clanton’s claims range from the serious to the nonsensical. The most disturbing charge, that the “n-word” was openly used on set twice, was made without the culprit being named as Clanton feared a “defamation case”.

By not naming the individual nor the context, the whole cast and crew of Neighbours have been unfairly maligned as potential racists.

On Thursday Channel 7’s Peter Ford reported that the person who used the n-word was another person of colour “who was quoting rap music lyrics about reclaiming that word.” If true, that is important information that should’ve been made clear.

Shareena Clanton’s claims range from the serious to the nonsensical.

Clanton’s examples of a racist workplace include an incident where “a senior staff member openly laughed while using the term ‘slave driver’ in reference to him ‘working hard’”. Umm, so what?

Anyone who has cracked open a history book knows slavery has existed since the first civilisations and has not been limited to one race or colour. Terms such as “slaving away” are in common use and without any racial overtones.

Clanton was also aggrieved that the program’s producers would not pay for an elder to be present on set.

“Due to my insistence of engaging a Wurundjeri elder to be included for ongoing cultural safety reasons like cultural protocols followed and debriefing, I was told ‘this is not a film production, Shareena’ and that ‘we simply don’t have the budget,’” she wrote.

A lot of media outlets chose to exclude this detail from their reporting on Clanton’s claims even though it was second on her list of grievances. One can’t help but wonder whether race-baiting “journalists” are more concerned about developing a narrative than reporting all the pertinent facts, even those that may discredit the claims of systemic racism.

Get ready for Collingwood 2.0 with Neighbours’ producers, Fremantle, engaging “an Indigenous-owned creative consultancy” billed as “leaders in Indigenous cultural protocols” to review its workplace and processes.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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