Culture

Turns Out ‘Sunrise’ Has Been Paying Pauline Hanson To Appear On TV All This Time

Thanks for that, Sunrise!

by Alex McKinnon  5 July 2016

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On Sunday, as people woke up to news of a possible hung Parliament and One Nation’s political comeback, Channel 7’s Sunrise asked this:

It’s an interesting question without one cut-and-dried answer, but Sunrise are hardly the right people to ask it, given they regularly paid to have her appear on the program in the months leading up to the election.

BuzzFeed Australia questioned Hanson on whether Sunrise was paying her to appear back in November, with Hanson responding that it was “none of your business” and that she was “absolutely incensed by your questions to me”.

Writing for SBS in November last year, Junkee’s Osman Faruqi pointed out that morning shows have regularly wheeled out Hanson as a commentator on everything from terror attacks to vaccinations to house prices, giving her an unchallenged platform to spout her racist nonsense without providing anything like insight on the topics she was supposedly there to discuss.

“Terrorism and radicalisation are serious issues that deserve to be analysed and publicly debated. But there was no debate on Today or Sunrise,” Faruqi said. “It’s one thing to place Hanson’s view within a framework of pluralist political discussion, where a wide variety of perspectives and solutions can be argued. But that’s not what happened. The leader of the most successful, far-right political party in Australian history was allowed to spout her lazy, shallow, divisive and dangerous thoughts without challenge.”

Now Sunrise is facing increasing heat for its regular broadcasting of Hanson’s views, as well as those of people like Mark Latham, another regular face on the show. Latham was also on Channel 7’s election night panel, and both were regular guests on Channel 9’s short-lived current affairs panel show The Verdict.

Now it looks as if Sunrise have gotten what they paid for, with One Nation likely to pick up three Senate spots in the new Parliament.