ABC host Stan Grant joins King’s coronation coverage despite ‘visceral anger’ after Queen Elizabeth II’s death

Stan Grant will appear in the ABC’s coronation coverage despite revealing he felt ‘betrayed’ by his employer and colleagues following Queen Elizabeth’s death.

Stan Grant has just released his book The Queen is Dead

Q+A host Stan Grant will appear in the ABC’s coverage of King Charles III’s coronation despite revealing he felt “betrayed” by his employer and colleagues following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.

Days after the release of his book The Queen is Dead, Grant is among the ABC’s line-up, which will be hosted by Julia Baird and Jeremy Fernandez on Saturday night.

Grant, a Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man, only recently spoke out of his disgust at the way the ABC handled the Queen’s death in September last year, telling Radio National breakfast host Patricia Karvelas he felt “visceral anger” in the days following.

He then began writing his latest book on his Indigenous past and faith and he lashed out at his employer and colleagues for paying little attention to how he was feeling at the time.

“How dare the Queen just die and this country go into mourning, what about my own people who continue to be the most impoverished and imprisoned people,” Grant said on ABC radio last week.

“I felt in my own organisation … a sense of betrayal because the ABC, everyone donned black suits, everyone took on a reverential tone.

“We know that the Prime Minister said: ‘Now is not the time to talk about empire and colonisation, this is not the time to talk about the republic.’ Well, it is always the time.

“We saw Aboriginal people being attacked because they voice another view and an angry view and they are entitled to our anger. It was time I thought to open it all up and we didn’t.”

During Saturday’s broadcast, Grant will be part of a two-hour special that will discuss the type of monarch King Charles might be and also the relevancy of the monarchy to Australians.

Grant says in the new book that at times like the Queen’s death “my role is impossible”.

“As journalists, we cling to our objectivity. But that is a lie. Who is objective? What a bloodless idea,” he said.

He also said that during a Q+A episode he hosted on the Queen’s death he found his “anger rising” after Australian Monarchist League chairman Eric Abetz talked about the nation’s history.

Other guests to appear during the ABC’s coronation coverage, which begins at 5pm (AEST), includes the co-chair of the Australian Republican Movement, Craig Foster, Liberal MP Julian Lesser, author Kathy Lette, Indigenous lawyer Teela Reid, Turbans 4 Australia founder Amar Singh, professor Anne Twomey and Australian Women’s Weekly editor-at-large Juliet Rieden.

Hours before Grant takes part in the broadcast he will attend the Melbourne Writers Festival to deliver a one-hour session, titled Stan Grant: The Queen is Dead.

The session has been promoted and says Grant will discuss how Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne and “how in the wake of her passing we might fully reckon with our colonial past and redefine our future”.

He will appear alongside Divinity’s head of School of Indigenous Studies Anne Pattel-Gray and the event flyer says the pair will also discuss “our place in the monarchy, the path to becoming a republic through the Voice to Parliament and beyond, and the necessity of a just settlement with First Nations people”.

The ABC has been contacted for comment.