Nine's decision to sack Karl Stefanovic over one far-right interview raises questions about where the broadcaster chose to draw the line, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
RIGHT FROM THE START, I want to make it clear that I have no sympathy for sacked Channel 9 Today presenter Karl Stefanovic.
Yet, I do find it interesting to consider the point of no return for Channel 9 was Stefanovic’s interview with influential British far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Why draw the line at Robinson, considering what else Stefanovic has platformed on his podcast?
Since launching his independent podcast titled The Karl Stefanovic Show in January 2026, Stefanovic has steadily morphed from a goofy and mostly harmless Today television host into a far-right provocateur.
This descent into extremism, this mainstreaming of far-right hate, bigotry and racism, is a microcosm of the wider phenomenon of Australia’s descent into far-right politics with rising support for anti-immigration party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
In speaking about Stefanovic’s firing from Nine, The Guardian’s Nour Haydar, Amanda Meade and Ben Doherty characterise Stefanovic’s interview with Robinson as crossing a line. Doherty argues that Stefanovic was not interviewing Robinson, implied to be the act of a journalist, but rather was helping to mainstream Robinson’s lies about rapes and murders (lies about Syrian refugees) by “swallowing it whole”.
Indeed, rather than scrutinise these lies and the racism underpinning them, Doherty details how Stefanovic “giggles along, minimises it” and tells Robinson how much he admires his “tenacity”. In other words, Stefanovic revealed himself to be an activist in support of the Far-Right, not a journalist hosting a podcast.
It is clear from Channel 9’s sacking of Stefanovic that his cuddling up to Robinson was too much for the organisation’s brand to endure.
Nine’s statement said:
‘Nine Entertainment and Karl Stefanovic have agreed that it is no longer possible for him to continue hosting Today at the same time as his independent podcast.’
Yet, Stefanovic could well ask how he was meant to know that Robinson was an interview too far, considering what he has already got away with in his other interviews with far-right figures.
One of these interviews was with One Nation politician Barnaby Joyce. Sitting on hay bales, dressed as a cowboy and even chewing a piece of hay, Stefanovic asked Joyce: “How many migrants should we be taking in every year?”
Joyce responded:
They should be saying, how many houses have you got free, how many hospitals are working well, how many schools are not crowded? What sort of people do you need? Do you need unemployed people having babies or do you need builders?
Then, you say, we can absorb this many people. And, we’re going to say, here is the contract. You want to live in Australia? There’s two things you cannot be. In the crime pages or on social security.
And I don’t care if you’re coming from the Vatican, Central America, Central Africa, or the middle of Europe. If you pine for where you came from and say I really want Australia to be like the shithole I came from, go back there.
While Joyce speaks, the video is cut together with images of Stefanovic grinning, nodding and even chuckling at Joyce, clearly enjoying and agreeing with off-leash Joyce’s putrid statements.
Yet, apparently, Nine had no issue with this interview. Indeed, no major news outlet thought it was newsworthy at all that a powerful politician was spewing racist disinformation about immigrants, accusing them of being criminals, welfare cheats, stealing Australian houses, pressuring the hospital and education system and wanting to make the country like the “shithole” they came from. This interview produced zero push-back against Joyce, nor against Stefanovic.
Yet, no one seems to want to draw a comparison between what Joyce says about immigrants and the very same stories Robinson is telling to whip up hatred against non-White people in the UK for political purposes. They might not use the exact same words, but they’re telling the same story for the same reasons and Stefanovic’s interviews with both of them had the same effect.
Indeed, Robinson and Joyce are not the same. Robinson is a British activist, not an Australian politician. They are equally extreme, but Joyce has far more power to mainstream far-right ideas and to radicalise others because he is legitimised through the institutional power of the Australian Parliament.
Stefanovic also draws on his own institutional power from mainstream media in hosting his podcast. In this highly profitable side venture, Stefanovic portrays himself as an independent journalist, describing his show as ‘where I get real curious. A few decades on the TV has given me a strong BS meter — and the ability to spot a bloody good story’. Stefanovic is using the façade of journalism to promote the Far-Right.
It is incredibly telling that Nine was happy for Stefanovic to legitimise One Nation’s racist and hateful anti-immigration narrative but drew the line at Robinson — an activist most Australians have never heard of.
How was Stefanovic to know that chuckling along with Robinson would get him fired, when he had already done the same thing with extremist and far more powerful Barnaby Joyce?
Dr Victoria Fielding is an Independent Australia columnist. You can follow her on Threads @drvicfielding or Bluesky @drvicfielding.bsky.social.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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