MEDIA RELEASE
18 August 2026
Captured, not impartial: ABC has lost the plot
Family First Party National Director Lyle Shelton has backed Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher’s formal complaint against the ABC over its lopsided euthanasia coverage, saying it is only the latest proof that the taxpayer-funded broadcaster has abandoned any pretence of balance on euthanasia, gender ideology and abortion.
Archbishop Fisher’s letter to the ABC Ombudsman, revealed this week, details four occasions across nine days in July when euthanasia campaigner Andrew Denton was handed unchallenged platforms across Compass, the ABC News website, Radio National and 7.30 — three of them timed to land in the four days before Labor’s national conference voted on scrapping the federal ban on telehealth access to voluntary assisted dying. No opponent of euthanasia was offered comparable access, and when the Catholic Church’s position was raised at all, the Archbishop says it was misrepresented.
“Archbishop Fisher has done every Australian a favour by putting in black and white what conservative and religious Australians have known for years — if you want a fair hearing on the ABC, you’d better already agree with the newsroom,” Mr Shelton said.
“Nine days, four platforms, one point of view. That isn’t coverage of a contentious debate — it’s a campaign, run with taxpayers’ money, for one side of it.”
Mr Shelton said the euthanasia complaint fits a pattern the ABC will not admit to. In June, ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens spent three weeks and 37 emails knocking back an opinion piece from women’s rights advocate Sall Grover defending sex-based, single-sex spaces — reportedly objecting that terms like ‘biological reality’ and ‘truth’ were offensive — before rejecting it outright. The Australian published the piece in full days later.
“A women’s rights advocate can’t get the word ‘truth’ past an ABC editor, but Andrew Denton gets four uncontested platforms in nine days to campaign for a change in the law. That’s not journalism — that’s activism with a production budget,” Mr Shelton said.
Family First said the same imbalance runs through the ABC’s treatment of gender ideology and the abortion debate. The broadcaster has spent years positioning itself as a promoter of LGBTQIA+ causes — from blanket Mardi Gras coverage to giving activist voices a clear run on harmful gender-affirming care — while gender-critical women and concerned parents are barely acknowledged. Its coverage of abortion follows the same script, treating pro-choice advocates as neutral experts while pro-life Australians are, at best, an afterthought.
“Whether it’s a man wanting help to die, a woman defending a single-sex space, a child being told their body is wrong, or an unborn child’s right to life, the ABC has already picked its side — and it isn’t the side of ordinary Australians,” Mr Shelton said.
Family First Party is calling on the ABC Board and the ABC Ombudsman to commission — and publish in full — an independent audit of the broadcaster’s coverage of euthanasia, gender ideology and abortion over the past two years, and for the Federal Communications Minister to refer Archbishop Fisher’s complaint to a Senate inquiry into ABC impartiality.
“We’re not asking the ABC to agree with us. We’re asking it to do the one job taxpayers actually pay it to do: report the news straight down the middle. On these issues, right now, it isn’t even trying,” he said.
Family First Party is also calling on the ABC to publicly release its criteria for accepting or rejecting opinion submissions, so Australians can judge for themselves how many legitimate viewpoints are being filtered out before a single word goes to air.
ENDS
Lyle Shelton is Family First’s National Director, NSW Legislative Council lead candidate.
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