Former ABC Host Stands Firm on Call for Non-Indigenous Australians to Pay Reparations

Former AFL player Tony Armstrong wins the Logie for Most Popular Presenter while working for the ABC, during the 63rd TV Week Logie Awards presentation ceremony at The Star in Sydney, Australia on July 30, 2023. AAP Image/Steve Markham

The former host of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) flagship Breakfast programme, Tony Armstrong, announced his support for an Indigenous funding program while calling for “redistributing”—an allusion to reparations.

The “#Wealthback” campaign sets a target of $400,000 to “support our First Nations partners in continuing their integral work for community and country” and works by signing up 250 people to contribute $5.00 or more each week.

But Armstrong went further, saying an Instagram Reel that all Australians who have “benefited from the ongoing colonisation of First Nations lands” to pay voluntary reparations.

“Reckon it’s time everyone starts redistributing ayyy,” Armstrong captioned his Instagram post.

He didn’t resile from that position despite receiving a large number of comments opposing his stance.

Stephen Chavura, history lecturer at Campion College, wrote on X, “How many white Australians are there who are living as well as Tony? If this is Aussie racism, I’ll take some please.”

In response to the pushback, Armstrong responded that he “love[d] living rent free in these losers’ heads.”

Armstrong, a 35-year-old and former AFL player, started with the ABC programme as a stand-in sports presenter in 2020.

He went on to win the Graham Kennedy Award for most popular new talent at the 2022 Logie Awards, as well as the 2023 Bert Newton Award for most popular presenter. He announced he was leaving the show last year and presented his last broadcast in October.

In the past he has been equally vocal about Indigenous issues.

In October 2023, after Australia overwhelmingly voted against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, he shared a picture to social media which showed the Aboriginal flag with a broken heart in the middle. He captioned it: “Shattered.”

He is currently hosting a new six-part series for the ABC, Eat the Invaders, which investigates whether consuming invasive species like cane toads and deer could help protect Australia’s native environment.

Last year, ABC executives told the Senate that employees’ social media activity “is not considered ABC content ... is not subject to the editorial policies and the ABC does not take editorial responsibility for it.”

But Board Chair Kim Williams said on a March 2024 podcast that he was concerned about staff posting their views online, regardless of whether or not the public broadcaster took responsibility.

He said if staff weren’t impartial they should leave the organisation.

And despite the ABC’s response to the Senate, its social media policy states that workers must abide by standards, including not damaging its reputation for impartiality and independence, not mixing the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute, and not implying it endorses their personal views.

In December 2023, the Corporation fired journalist Antoinette Lattouf, who was filling in on ABC Sydney mornings, for breaching its social media policy over Instagram posts addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has taken her case to the Fair Work Commission.