ABC changing editorial policy after Rinehart furore prompts concerns of overreach from academics and advocates

Published 12 August 2026 · india

A pledge by the ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, to change editorial guidelines on satire and violence after the broadcaster aired a program featuring offensive

A pledge by the ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, to change editorial guidelines on satire and violence after the broadcaster aired a program featuring offensive comments about Gina Rinehart, has sparked concerns about overreach. The four-minute film, titled A Very Relaxing Video, ran on documentary-reality show Race Around the World on 12 July and sparked a furore over comments made about the billionaire. The segment concluded with the film-maker, Kate McGuinness, stating: “When the revolution comes will you hide under the bed or will you know exactly how to shove 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?” After sustained backlash in News Corp and The West Australian, and threats of legal action from Rinehart, Marks issued an apology last Thursday. He said while the ombudsman, Fiona Cameron, had found that the film didn’t breach editorial policies on harm and offence, it fell short of “community expectations”, and the ABC would change its editorial guidance. On ABC Radio North Queensland last Thursday, he said the ABC’s guidelines will now demand that “no individual should be the subject of comedy that is violent in its description in our programming”. “And I think the ABC has to hold itself to a higher standard and I think it’s really important we make that change.” Journalist and professor of communication at Deakin University, Matthew Ricketson, said it was poor satire but once McGuinness had apologised for the joke, as she did on 30 July, that should have been “the end of it”.

“It’s a very ill-advised move,” he said of the promised change. “It’s virtually unenforceable … and it’s literally throwing fuel on to the News Corp fire. They will bank that and they will move straight on to the next demand which will be a curtailing if not the abolition of the ABC.” The ombudsman initially received eight complaints about the program in the week after was broadcast. A further 988 complaints were made after criticism from “several media outlets”, it said in its report. News Corp’s major mastheads have published 46 articles critiquing the program since it aired, and The West Australian has published 15. The ombudsman found “a reasonable audience member would be likely to understand the remarks as part of a satirical and exaggerated commentary” rather than encouragement of violence. The former editorial director of the ABC, Alan Sunderland, agreed with the ombudsman’s findings, which didn’t discount that the joke was in “poor taste”. He said he wasn’t “perturbed” by the ABC reviewing its guidance, which could help program makers interpret editorial principles if it wasn’t enforceable. But he said “if it’s more elaborate than that then you start to get into problems”. “You wouldn’t be able to put much [satire] to air,” he said, pointing to Aunty Jack in the 1970s, who threatened to “rip yer bloody arms off” if viewers didn’t watch the next week. Sunderland said it was a “repeated pattern” to see ABC content picked up and “amplified” by some media and politicians, thereby giving it a “second life”.