Former ABC Q+A host Stan Grant calls out “balance”

Stan Grant told a Sydney audience the ABC required him to have on Q+A ‘someone who will deny the truth or reduce the truth’.

Stan Grant speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival. Picture: Noah Yim / The Australian

Former Q+A host Stan Grant claims the ABC has misconstrued the concept of balance, leading to at least one occasion on which the program invited as ­a panellist “someone who will deny the truth … and say that’s balance”.

Grant appears to have been referring to an episode of Q+A on September 15 last year, a week after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which included Australian Monarchist League chair Eric Abetz. Grant cited the decision as an example of his concern the media industry was incapable of having the “honest, respectful conversations” he sought.

“When the Queen died, we were told not to talk about these things,” he told an audience at the Sydney Writers’ Festival amid a discussion of Indigenous Australian history. “It wasn’t appropriate, it wasn’t the right time.

“Finally, we came around to doing it on Q+A. And I had Sisonke Msimang, a South African – brilliant, beautiful, brilliant writer, stunning human being, and Teela Reid, a Wiradjuri and Wailwan lawyer and my cousin.

“They were on, talking the truth – just the truth. And yet for balance, we have to have someone who will deny the truth or reduce the truth.”

Earlier in his talk, Grant said: “We’ll take someone who may represent a tiny minority view, a hate-filled minority view, and put them on with someone who may be speaking from more broader representation and say that that’s balance.

“I don’t think (the media has) got the language for the love, for what’s required of us. This adversarial, conflict-based, hate-filled us and them, you against me, I don’t think we’ve got the capacity.”

Grant appeared at the festival on Friday with UNSW constitutional law scholar George Williams to talk about Grant’s new book, The Queen is Dead.

Stan Grant speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival. Picture: Noah Yim / The Australian

Mr Abetz, a former long-time Tasmanian senator, said he “assume(s)” Grant was talking about him when he referred to “someone who will deny the truth or reduce the truth”.

“Given how stacked the panel was, I found myself to be a lone voice,” Mr Abetz said.

“I assume I am the person to whom he made reference, but it is for him to publicly identify to whom he was referring.”

Mr Abetz said Grant’s language “tells you everything you need to know about the bias of the ABC”.

“They have somebody on so they can say there was an alternative point of view, but they are then portrayed as truth deniers.

“Just because you disagree with somebody doesn’t mean that they are denying the truth or reducing the truth. Matters of history are open for interpretation.

“This sort of belligerent, ham-fisted … it is an ugly approach to the discussion of history that does nobody any favours.”

It follows Grant last Friday announcing he would step down from the Q+A host chair citing “relentless racial filth” and expressing disappointment in a lack of support offered to him by ABC executives following reception of the network’s coronation coverage.

On Friday, ABC chair Ita Buttrose told ABC radio she did not know of the abuse Grant faced “until fairly late in the piece”.

“If I’d known earlier, I would have spoken to him about it.”

On Monday’s Q+A, Grant said he was stepping down from his role in part because he thought the media industry was “the poison in the bloodstream of our society”.

“I fear the media does not have the love or language to speak to the gentle spirits of our land.”