Q+A host Stan Grant has revealed his anger at the ABC over its coverage of the Queen’s death

The Q+A host reveals ‘no-one got it’ at the ABC after the Queen died and he was left feeling angry – ‘everyone donned black suits, took on a reverential tone’.

ABC Q+A host Stan Grant on the program on Thursday, March 10 discussing debate around gender, equality and justice.

ABC presenter Stan Grant has revealed his betrayal by his employer and colleagues in the days after Queen Elizabeth II’s death and conceded the upcoming voice referendum had resulted in “deeply wounding” judgment on Indigenous Australians.

Speaking on ABC’s Radio National breakfast program on Monday, Grant – a Wiradjuri, Gurrawin and Dharawal man – conceded he had “visceral anger” following the Queen’s death on September 8 last year, which prompted him to spend the next eight weeks writing his new book, The Queen is Dead, which looks into his Indigenous past and faith following her death.

“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,” the 59-year-old told ABC host Patricia Karvelas.

“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.”

Grant, who hosts political discussion program Q+A, said he had met the Queen numerous times and while he had nothing against her personally, he initially didn’t participate in the ABC’s coverage of her death.

He refused to “put on a black suit and mourn”, and it wasn’t until later that he said he finally received love back from his colleagues.

“My own colleagues at the ABC who I felt betrayed by, the love that was returned, showed me that when you speak truth to history you can open people’s minds,” Grant said.

In the 16-minute interview, Karvelas asked Grant: “Did you feel that wall to wall from your colleagues at the ABC, did you get a sense that no-one got it?”

Grant replied: “Yeah, initially no-one got it”.

He said there was no attempt to accommodate him refusing to wear black clothes while on TV and the ABC’s coverage was “obsequious”.

It’s not the first time Grant has complained about the ABC’s handling of news events – last month he wrote to the ABC’s managing director David Anderson to voice his disgust at the “entire white panel” that was delivering results and commentary on NSW election night apart from Malaysian-born presenter Jeremy Fernandez who he said was merely used as a “cameo” during the broadcast.

During this RN breakfast interview, Grant also spoke about the upcoming Indigenous voice to parliament referendum and said the debate had been “splitting people in our own community” and history had left “searing” wounds.

“There is a judgment on us in this moment, I feel as a First Nations person incredibly observed and judged and it can be a deeply wounding, lonely thing,” he told Karvelas.

“I feel as a First Nations journalist it’s hard to walk that line between being able to ask the questions, which I’m quite happy to ask of all sides, but also reflect on those answers that can cut so deep.

“Whenever we get close to the flame of our history we know that we get burned and it seers, it’s a searing wound within us.”

During the interview Grant also said colonisation and the “racial hierarchy of whiteness” had ruled across the world including in countries including Britain and the US.

“I experienced that personally as a First Nations person because my people lost our place in the world, our land, our sovereignty which we have never ceded,” he said.

“The crown, the symbol of the crown, that my people continue to suffer under and I wanted to explore the full dimensions of that and her death was a cathartic moment I thought to tear open that idea.”

Grant explained that his grandmother was a “white Australian woman living with an Aboriginal man” and she was turned away from hospital while having a child and was “constantly harassed by police to the point that it mentally broke her”.
Grant’s book, published by HarperCollins, will be released on May 3, three days before the coronation of King Charles III in London.