Daily Life
  1. Home
  2. Lifestyle
  3. News & Views
  4. Opinion
COMMENT

Why First Contact was a ratings opportunity for SBS and a bonanza for bigots

Celeste Liddle

If there is one thing Australia needs more of, it's bigots telling us all about Aboriginal people on TV. 

When Pauline Hanson appeared on The Bolt Report on Monday night and made the absurd claim that there is no "definition of Aboriginality", the Twittersphere rightly reacted via the #defineAboriginal tag.

Up Next

Trailer: Passengers

null
Video duration
02:35

More Trailers Videos

null
Video duration
01:38

Trailer: First Contact season 2
null
Video duration
02:35

Trailer: Passengers
Video duration
01:44

Trailer: Underworld: Blood Wars
null
Video duration
00:59

Trailer: Midnight Sun
null
Video duration
01:42

Trailer: Coral: Rekindling Venus
null
Video duration
01:00

Trailer: Beaches
null
Video duration
02:25

Trailer #2: Assassin's Creed
More videos

Trailer: First Contact season 2

Hosted by Ray Martin, First Contact is the journey of six European Australians who are challenged about their perceptions of Indigenous Australians.

Not to be outdone, this week saw the second series of SBS' First Contact air on our screens featuring none other than her One Nation co-founder David Oldfield. This season of First Contact has received an increased amount of derision from the Indigenous community, with many questioning the use of Indigenous experience and the revisiting of our traumas in order to "educate and entertain" white people. Aboriginal people are the means for which ignorant white celebrities can "better themselves". In New Matilda, Amy McQuire unpacks the extent of this negative Indigenous response while highlighting that Aboriginal people are engaged in First Contact to "to 'perform' in order to change the ignorant views of racists who thought blackfellas get a 'free ride', who claimed we were 'petrol sniffers' and who thought others were hard done by because Aboriginal people somehow were 'advantaged'".

And certainly, some moments within First Contact have reflected exactly that. All of the participants of the show exhibited some form of racism commonly encountered by Aboriginal people in our daily interactions with the mainstream. It didn't matter whether it was through their unthinking naivety around our cultures and experiences (shown by Natalie Imbruglia) or through their offensive stereotyping and dismissiveness (Renae Ayris, Ian Dickson and Nicki Wendt).

Related Content

If Aboriginal people are there to play the rarely (rightfully) angry educators, each of the non-Indigenous people play a role too. Oldfield's role is the abject racist who rejects every experience Aboriginal people convey to him and rejects any notion of white wrongdoing.

For me, it was traumatic enough to see Stolen Generation children relay their stories of institutionalisation and so revisit the fact that many people in my family went through similar experiences. To see Oldfield completely reject what he was being told openly and honestly was another thing entirely. He was more intent on putting the onus back on the men talking to him to prove that they had been technically "stolen" than he was actually listening to their stories.  

Advertisement

This rejection of Indigenous experience was also mirrored when Oldfield continually asked why residents living in dilapidated and overcrowded housing in Elliott in the Northern Territory didn't pick up the rubbish around their houses. Or when he refused to go fishing for dinner while in Bawaka, claiming he could "see it all fine" from the shore.

So why then would a man like Oldfield, who is never going to be convinced, engage with this show in the first place to pass judgement over Indigenous experience? And why does his female counterpart Pauline Hanson get ample airtime to also pass ill-informed judgement over Indigenous identity?

It is bad enough that Aboriginal people's lives are tainted by the softer racism exhibited by so many other participants on First Contact. Or that we are excluded continuously by the structural racism which permeates our society and governs our lives whether we want it to or not. It is bad enough that we continually have to prove our worth and our culture to those who have been refusing to listen for well over two centuries.

When the views of bigots are fetishised for network ratings, though, the cuts go extra deep. These views are being shown as being "just another opinion" Aboriginal people have to work hard to correct. Both Oldfield's and Hanson's actions show Aboriginal people gain nothing from engaging with them and people like them. So why, apart from ratings boosts, are we always expected to do so?    

Advertisement

0 comments