Studio 10 star Kerri-Anne Kennerley has fired up over the election, just days before Australia goes to the polls – launching into an explosive attack against Bill Shorten, including a spray on trans issues that has since sent social media into a fury. Railing against everything from taxation reform to proposed transgender support services funding, Kennerley ranted, ‘If Bill Shorten gets in, it’s the end of life as we know it.’
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In an outburst that has seen her pilloried on Twitter as ‘privileged’ and ‘terrified of change’, the star started by firing up over Labor’s franking credits policy – complaining that the plan would hurt retirees who don’t want to ‘leach off the government pension’.
‘They look after themselves,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a plan. He’ll rip that off them.
‘He’ll put in negative gearing – no more investment into houses so your rent will go up.’
But it wasn’t just financial issues that had her blood boiling, with the star incensed that Labor plans to establish a National Gender Centre, which would provide support for transgender people.
‘One thing I’m seriously outraged about, the millions and millions they’ll spend on a Gender Commission,’ she complained.
(The Labor media unite advised, in an email later read out on air by the star, that there was no budget yet allocated to the centre – and described her claims as ‘fake news’).
But Kerri-Anne was clearly fired up, leading co-host Sarah Harris to interject at one point, ‘Tell us what you really think.’
Apparently furious about the trans issue, Kerri-Anne raged on: ‘These kids out there who are gender confused, and there’s a percentage of people out there gender confused, they will put up this Commission and we, like Tasmania, will have a child and it won’t be male or female, it will be gender-free.’
Tasmanian-style reforms, including not adding gender on some birth certificates, are not a part of Shorten’s platform, but KAK continued to let fly.
‘If your child is confused, the rights of your child will go to them, you will have no rights as a parent. That child will go, “I want to be either a boy or girl, please give me whatever I need” and you as a parent will have no choice.’
The star’s rant has been met with a wave of condemnation on social media, with one poster writing, ‘Just in case it flies under the radar I’d like to point that Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s disgust about ‘gender confused’ children [sic] is extremely misinformed and transphobic.’
Another wrote: ‘What a year for Kerri-Anne Kennerley… she’s gone full Boomer and is just hating every who is different to her in general (and reporting her incorrect opinions as fact).’
A third demanded an on-air apology, describing the star as ‘transphobic, small minded and incredibly irrelevant.’
Kerri-Anne has yet to respond to the backlash.