His Grace Archbishop Fisher Accuses the ABC of Bias in Euthanasia Debate

Over nine days in July 2026, the ABC gave a euthanasia campaigner four unopposed platforms to make his case. Three of them were timed to air just before a Labor vote to remove the ban on assisted suicide by phone and video call.

Four Platforms, Nine Days, No One to Answer Back

His Grace Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney has lodged a formal complaint with the ABC ombudsman Fiona Cameron. The complaint documents how the national broadcaster gave Andrew Denton — a former ABC presenter turned euthanasia advocate — four separate appearances in just nine days, across the programs Compass, the ABC News website, Radio National and 7.30. Denton founded the pro-Euthanasia charity Go Gentle Australia in 2016. Denton used his appearances on the ABC’s programs to campaign for scrapping the Commonwealth’s ban on telehealth consultations for euthanasia. Not one of the four appearances put an opponent of the change on air. Where the other side of the argument featured at all, it was, on Fisher’s own account, filtered entirely through Denton’s retelling of it rather than argued by anyone who actually holds that view. His letter puts the real question to the ombudsman bluntly: whether the ABC’s coverage "operated to amplify one side of a contentious policy debate."

It’s worth remembering what "the other side" was actually arguing for: keeping in place one of the only federal-level checks left on how euthanasia is delivered in this country.

Timed to Land Before the ALP Conference

Three of Denton’s four appearances landed in the four days immediately before Labor’s national conference in Adelaide, where delegates were preparing to vote on the very ban Denton was advocating against. His fourth appearance, a 7.30 interview, followed soon after, tied to a foreshadowed parliamentary push to change the law. The timing wasn’t incidental, Fisher’s own complaint notes that offering a different point of view at some unspecified later date does nothing to fix an imbalance that mattered most in the days before an active political vote.

It worked. Delegates in Adelaide backed a platform change committing federal Labor to strip back the Commonwealth law that currently makes it a crime to discuss assisted suicide over the phone, video link or the internet. Go Gentle Australia’s chief executive welcomed the result as a step toward wider access. Even Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, who moved the follow-up resolution guaranteeing a conscience vote, wasn’t fully comfortable with the pace of it. She wanted firmer evidence and stronger safeguards first, warning of risks to vulnerable Australians. A Labor colleague, NSW MP Sally Quinnell, tried to warn her own party from the conference floor that a conversation this serious should not be delivered through a screen. Denton got four unchallenged platforms. Quinnell got outvoted.

Ending a Life Through a Screen Should Worry Every Australian

Euthanasia is already legal in every state, and the Northern Territory is close to joining them. This fight is just the latest in a series of efforts to normalise euthanasia, and to make it more widespread. The Commonwealth ban that Denton and the ALP conference want gone was written in 2005 to stop pro-suicide websites and chatrooms; in 2023, the Federal Court confirmed it also covers euthanasia carried out under state law, with penalties that can run past $200,000 for an individual and over $1 million for a company. Despite the fact that euthanasia should be banned entirely, this law currently does real work: it stops euthanasia from happening over a call where a doctor doesn’t have the chance to notice hesitation, coercion, or a family member hovering nearby.

Also read: Labor Party commits to legalising suicide telehealth calls

Twisting the Archbishop’s Own Words to Make the Case

His Grace Archbishop Fisher’s complaint isn’t only about airtime. He says that when his own views were aired, they were distorted. Fifteen years ago, in 2011, the then-Bishop Fisher gave an interview touching on the Catholic idea of "redemptive suffering" — the belief that suffering, when united to Christ’s, can carry meaning. According to his letter, Denton has been citing that old answer on air without the sentence that came immediately before it, in which Fisher made clear that the Church’s goal is to reduce suffering, not glorify it. Leaving that out doesn’t just create an unfair impression. It lets Denton recast the Archbishop, who has spent his ministry visiting palliative care wards, as someone who thinks pain is good and dying badly is a virtue worth defending. That isn’t a dispute about a telehealth loophole. That’s a public smear, aired via the national broadcaster.

A Pattern the ABC Can No Longer Call an Accident

Family First Party national director Lyle Shelton says Archbishop Fisher’s complaint is only the latest sign the ABC has stopped even pretending to be neutral on issues touching faith, family and the sanctity of life, pointing to the broadcaster’s record on euthanasia, gender ideology and abortion coverage over the past two years. Shelton is calling for an independent, published audit of that record, and for the federal Communications Minister to refer Fisher’s complaint to a Senate inquiry into ABC impartiality. Whatever comes of those calls, the pattern is the same one on display in Fisher’s own documentation: a taxpayer-funded broadcaster, a well-connected campaigner with a direct line to its studios, and a government that voted the campaigner’s way days after handing him the airtime to make his case entirely unopposed. Shelton put the ABC’s actual job in nine words: "the one job taxpayers actually pay it to do." An ABC spokesman has confirmed only that the ombudsman’s office received the complaint; no findings have been announced.

What You Can Do Now

Archbishop Fisher’s complaint is now sitting with the ABC ombudsman. Whether it goes anywhere depends on the same thing that let this pattern go unnoticed in the first place: whether enough ordinary Australians are paying attention to demand better. Share this piece with your family, your parish, and anyone who still assumes the ABC calls this issue straight down the middle. The euthanasia lobby got four uncontested platforms in nine days partly because almost nobody who disagreed with Denton spoke up to make their views known. You can stop that from happening again.

References

1. Michael Cook, "Archbishop complains to ABC ombudsman over VAD coverage," The Catholic Weekly, 18 August 2026. 

2. "Sydney archbishop asks Australia news outlet to investigate its euthanasia coverage," Catholic World Report / EWTN News, 18 August 2026. 

3. "Captured, Not Impartial: ABC Has Lost Plot," Mirage News (Family First Party statement). 

4. "Labor endorses voluntary assisted dying telehealth access in platform shift," ABC News, 25 July 2026. 

5. "Labor backs telehealth for voluntary assisted dying," Australian Associated Press, 24 July 2026. 

6. ABC Editorial Policies, "Objectivity and Impartiality." 

7. Willmott, White, Del Villar & Close, "The ban on telehealth in voluntary assisted dying doesn’t stack up. Here’s why it should be scrapped," The Conversation. 

8. "Court confirms that it’s an offence to provide voluntary assisted dying services by telemedicine" (Carr v Attorney-General (Cth) [2023] FCA 1500), Barry Nilsson. 

9. Willmott, White, Del Villar & Close, "Voluntary assisted dying and telehealth: Commonwealth carriage service laws are putting clinicians at risk," Medical Journal of Australia.