Brooke Boney 'completely heartbroken' over Pauline Hanson's public housing comments
'Today' show reporter and Gamilaroi woman says she’s happy the One Nation leader had been dumped by Today and called her remarks ‘disgusting’
 |
Channel Nine’s Today show host Brooke Boney told the Q+A audience she grew up in public housing and worried about the children who heard Pauline Hanson calling them ‘alcoholics and drug addicts’ Photograph: Channel 9/Today Show |
Today show entertainment reporter Brooke Boney has said she was “completely heartbroken” by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s comments on the Today show about Melbourne residents in public housing put into lockdown.
Nine’s Today show dropped Hanson as a “regular contributor” on Monday, after she described residents of public housing in Melbourne who are locked down due to Covid-19 as “drug addicts” who “cannot speak English”.
Boney, who is a Gamilaroi** woman, told ABC’s Q+A program on Monday night that she was happy Hanson was dropped, noting Hanson had said hurtful comments about Aboriginal people in the past.
** kaytee notes: 'Gamilaroi = Aborogine
Boney said she grew up in public housing, and she was heartbroken to hear the comments.
“I felt completely heartbroken. I grew up in housing commission. To me, I was thinking about all of those kids sitting at home watching, all of those people trapped in their apartments, watching and thinking, ‘This is what Australia thinks of us. This is what the rest of our country thinks – is that we’re alcoholics and drug addicts.’
“And that’s disgusting.”
Boney said a lot of people support Hanson, and those perspectives should be heard, but Hanson had crossed into vilifying a whole group of people.
Labor MP Terri Butler said it was a cop-out to suggest Hanson’s comments were something new for her.
“She’s a public racist since 1996. She used her first maiden speech to say that we were in danger of being ‘swamped by Asians’ and used her second speech saying we were in danger of being ‘swamped by Muslims’.
“We’re not talking about someone who just woke up this morning a racist. Shows have been platforming her. Free speech is one thing, elevating racism in the discourse is another.”
Pauline Hanson is wrong to condemn an entire group of people, residents of public housing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, some of her remarks on the defects of the Australian immigration policy are accurate and should not simply be dismissed as racist.
It is a sign of the opportunities provided by Australia's society that many prominent and successful people came from humble backgrounds, such as residents of low-income public housing estates.
Similarly for USA, though their income disparities are worse than Australia's.