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Ex-ABC Q+A host Stan Grant and wife Tracey Holmes criticise taxpayer-funded broadcaster

Former Q+A host Stan Grant has criticised his former employer and the show he once hosted, while his wife Tracey Holmes said the ABC is not what it used to be.

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Stan Grant has taken another public swipe at his former employer, the ABC, while being interviewed on one of its radio shows – saying there are too many people on programs, including Q+A, that he simply doesn’t “need to hear from”.

The latest gripe with his former employer comes as his wife, ABC sports presenter Tracey Holmes, also hit out at the ABC in an interview with Nine Entertainment’s The Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend, blaming the “treatment” of Grant as part of her decision to leave her job at the end of the month.

Grant quit the public broadcaster in August, saying executives failed to offer him any support following the fallout from controversial coronation coverage in May, and he has continued to be critical, most recently on ABC NSW radio’s Afternoons program with Josh Szeps’s last month.

Grant, a Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man, attacked the format of Monday night talk show, Q+A, now hosted by Patricia Karvelas, arguing the program is flawed because its panels of guests with varying areas of expertise are expected to pontificate on a range of issues they know little – if anything – about.

Tracey Holmes and Stan Grant.
Tracey Holmes and Stan Grant.

“If you do a Q+A program and you put a range of people on, suddenly you are expected to be expert about everything from … what’s happening in the Middle East to taxation policy or the Indigenous voice or whatever it may be,” Grant told Szeps.

“Sometimes there are people on these programs that I don’t need to hear from and what is their expertise?”

During a Q+A episode he hosted in 2022, Grant controversially evicted University of Melbourne student Sasha Gillies-Lekakis from the audience while live on air, after he made pro-Russia claims regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

Grant told Szeps the mainstream media spends too much time “filling space”.

“I think (that’s) another thing we’ve lost in the 24/7 world of media, [now we are] just constantly filling space,” he said.

“There is a time to just say, ‘it’s not the time for me to speak and I don’t need to be on all platforms’.”

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In August, Grant was appointed inaugural director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific at Monash University.

He continues to air his views via interviews, speeches and podcasts and, when he was an ABC presenter, regularly took part in interviews and wrote a weekly column. Grants comments were followed by some from Holmes whose interview with Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons was published over the weekend.

She said the ABC has changed for the worse and said she contacted the public broadcaster when there was an attack on Grant while the pair were out of the country earlier this year.

“I rang the ABC to say, ‘Are you going to try and correct the record?’ and they wouldn’t,” she told FitzSimons.

“And so I realised: how can I walk back into that place?

“It’s not the ABC it was, and I hope it finds its way back.”

An ABC spokeswoman said it “wishes Tracey well in her future endeavours”.

Sophie Elsworth
Sophie ElsworthEurope Correspondent

Sophie is Europe correspondent for News Corporation Australia and began reporting from Europe in November 2024. Her role includes covering all the big issues in Europe reporting for titles including The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, daily and Sunday Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail and Brisbane's Sunday Mail and Adelaide's The Advertiser and Sunday Mail as well as regional and community brands. She has worked at numerous News Corp publications throughout her career and was media writer at The Australian, based in Melbourne, for four years before moving to the UK. She has also worked as a reporter at the Herald Sun in Melbourne, The Advertiser in Adelaide and The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast. Sophie regularly appears on TV and is a Sky News Australia contributor appearing on primetime programs including Credlin and The Kenny Report, a role she continues while in Europe. She graduated from university with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees and grew up on a sheep farm in central Victoria.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/exabc-qa-host-stan-grant-and-wife-tracey-holmes-criticise-taxpayerfunded-broadcaster/news-story/06caf6eee4372f221e3224941b9d11ad