Originally published by Lucy Zelic of The Daily Telegraph
01. 08. 2026
If you needed further proof that the publicly-funded Australian Broadcast Corporation hates conservative women, look no further than the latest issue concerning Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
The decision to put to air a program, where filmmaker Kate McGuinness fantasised about shoving “a stick right up Gina Rinehart’s butthole, stirring it round, mixing her guts up nice and smooth, to make one big sausage roll to make something out of nothing?”, is both disturbing and incomprehensible.
That it managed to outlive the cutting room floor, or even a quizzical second-guess from an editor is mind-blowing, much like the broadcaster’s refusal to apologise and admit that satirising violence against women is a shocking error of judgement.
Apparently, the words “I am sorry” are hard to come by for an organisation that prides itself on being “diverse”, “unbiased” and “inclusive”.
According to a statement released by Hancock Prospecting on Friday, Rinehart’s legal team first wrote to the ABC board on 23 July requesting that the segment be removed, a public apology be issued and a “comprehensive investigation” into how it was approved and published be undertaken.
The outcome?
No apology from the broadcaster itself but a statement conveying McGuinness’s apology and confirming that the Race Around the World episode had been referred to the ABC Ombudsman “in accordance with the ABC’s complaints handling process”, which had only occurred following the backlash.
As such, Rinehart has been forced to take matters into her own hands and has threatened the ABC with legal action.
One can only imagine, that if similar comments were made about left-leaning politicians or public figures, just how swift the outrage would be, but it appears that only women who vote for the Labor, Greens or Teals parties are worthy of safety and protection.
Who could forget when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sprang to the defence of then-Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan over the Ditch the Witch billboards that were rolled out across the state in June.
The PM was strong in his opposition to the advertisements when he told reporters, “you can have a disagreement with people’s policy position, by all means. You don’t have to denigrate people in such a personal way. It has got to stop.”
“What I don’t want to do is to have a press conference in this courtyard after a tragedy.”
But imagining sexually assaulting someone with a stick and turning their insides into a sausage roll is fine as long as it’s under the guise of “satire”?
This isn’t the first time the broadcaster has shown just whose side they’re on.
In June, former Australian of the Year Grace Tame received the public backing of director Hugh Marks after she dismissed the rape of Israeli women and girls on October 7 as “propaganda”.
In the same month, we learned that the broadcaster also rejected a submission for an opinion piece by Giggle app founder Sall Grover, who has been sued successfully by trans-identified male Roxanne Tickle.
ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens refused Grover’s revised works twice, citing “overstatements” regarding threats to women and “inaccuracies.”
At a time when devastating gendered violence rates are being discussed almost daily by the ABC and the government of the day, what a bitter disappointment it is to learn that these statistics only matter, when it concerns one of their own.
