Australia’s communications regulator has come under fire for failing to investigate “revolting” material aired on the Kyle & Jackie O show, including “sexist, racist [and] misogynistic” content.
In a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday night, the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young challenged the chair of Australia’s communications and media regulator, Nerida O’Loughlin, to read out a sample of comments made on Kiis FM’s flagship breakfast show in recent weeks.
Hanson-Young said that the material, which she circulated to the committee, included “jokes about people being gay, jokes about one of the producer’s Asian housemates, jokes about people not being white … violent language about women and sex and … vulgar detail about sex acts”.
The transcript also included a segment in which Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O Henderson held a competition where female staff recorded themselves urinating for the “boys … to figure out whose flaps made that wee”.
O’Loughlin, the head of Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma), refused to read out the transcripts, saying: “I would prefer not to read it out.”
Hanson-Young said that O’Loughlin’s position was “understandable” and made the point that the audience watching Senate estimates was “far smaller than those who listen to the Kyle & Jackie O show”.
“I understand why you don’t want to read these comments out, because they are vulgar, aren’t they?”
O’Loughlin said that she had only skimmed them but she “would not think they were appropriate for parliamentary language”.
“Do you think they would be appropriate for broadcast radio between the hours of 6am and 10am?” Hanson-Young asked.
O’Loughlin said the regulator had received 59 complaints about the show since July but, under the co-regulatory system, complaints were dealt with by the licence holder in the first instance.
Hanson-Young challenged O’Loughlin on whether the material would breach the decency standards included in the industry’s code of practice, and questioned why Acma had not used its powers to initiate its own investigation regardless of complaints received.
“Why haven’t you? This is revolting, sexist, racist, misogynistic, divisive stuff on free-to-air radio from 6am in the morning … to 10am in the morning and you have not investigated it.”
“We have investigated a number of matters previously,” O’Loughlin said, but confirmed the regulator had not instigated an investigation into the program.
In regards to the potential breach of decency standards, O’Loughlin said she was “not here to give an opinion on particular programming” but would consider the material circulated by the senator.
“I think we would like to take that off-line and assess it, I think it would be unreasonable for us to give you an opinion at the table.”
Hanson-Young said she believed the material was “blatant” in its breach of decency standards and said that the code of conduct that covered commercial broadcasters was “pretty useless if it doesn’t get enforced.”
Kiis FM station owner Australian Radio Network has been contacted for comment.
