A guest on ABC’s Q+A has branded Australian television a ‘neo-Nazi’s wet dream’ after Indigenous host Stan Grant slammed it for being dominated by white faces.
Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf – whose parents moved Down Under from Lebanon in the 1970s – blasted networks for being stuck in the era of the 1960s’ White Australia policy.
Ms Lattouf lashed out at the representation of multicultural Australia on mainstream local television shows, saying it was now badly lagging behind the rest of the world.
‘Australia’s really far behind the UK or the US,’ she raged on Monday night’s show.
‘We still have networks or programs that look like a neo-Nazi’s wet dream. We still do despite the fact that more than half of the population are culturally diverse.
‘[But] we’re just gonna kind of ignore those voices.’
ABC’s Indigenous Q+A host Stan Grant (pictured) has slammed Australian television for being dominated by white faces
Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf – whose parents moved Down Under from Lebanon in the 70s – branded local TV networks a ‘neo-Nazi’s wet dream
Her comments came after Grant hit out at the lack of representation for people of colour on local television.
Monday night’s show featured an otherwise all-white line up of 80s British pop star Billy Bragg, Labor MP Josh Burns, economist Gigi Foster, and Senator Perin Davey.
Grant claimed the lack of diversity was giving viewers a false impression of the multicultural society they actually live in.
‘People like you and I are still rare on our screens,’ the veteran broadcaster and outspoken racism activist told Ms Lattouf.
‘And stories are still told by people who look like other people on the panel here tonight.
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‘What does it take to break through, because the world doesn’t look like that? It looks like us!’
Grant, along with Ten’s The Project host Waleed Aly and Malaysian-born ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez, are among the few people of colour regularly seen on mainstream Australian TV.
Aly, a Muslim with Egyptian parents born in Melbourne, won a Gold Logie in 2016 and declared: ‘Do not adjust your sets, there is nothing wrong with the picture.’
Waleed Aly, (left) a Muslim with Egyptian parents born in Melbourne, won a Gold Logie in 2016 and declared: ‘Do not adjust your sets, there is nothing wrong with the picture’. Malaysian-born ABC newsreader Jeremy Fernandez, (right) is among the few people of colour regularly seen on mainstream Australian TV
Ms Lattouf, a mother-of-two who founded Media Diversity Australia in 2017, said it required grit-teethed determination to succeed as a non-white in Australia.
‘It takes patience. It takes a thick skin,’ she told Grant.
‘It takes having to fight the urge to go into Tourette-style swearing spiel when you get the opportunity.
‘Because sometimes it’s frustrating that the change is glacial. You take one step forward, four steps back.
‘Even in the year of the referendum [on the Voice to Parliament], we still have all-white panels discussing things like the referendum.
‘We still have all-white panels talking about refugees and asylum seeker policy – that baffles me.’
She added: ‘At least in the UK, when you see politicians when you flick on the telly, even the Prime Minister, though arguably he’s not a great win for progressive politics.
‘All our all our storytellers, all our institutions of power – they have all been largely white men.
‘There’s a bit of progress now. We’ve got white women. And so there is a lot more work to be done.’
