Ziggy Ramo Accuses The ABC Of Censorship After He Wasn’t Allowed To Sing ‘April 25th’ On ‘Q+A’

First Nations artist Ziggy Ramo appeared on Q+A last night as both a panellist and a performer during an episode dedicated to Australian media’s shortcomings, and, in a meta-moment, mentioned that Q+A denied his original song choice, ‘April 25th’.

While discussing representation and diversity across Australian media — yesterday, a report ‘revealed’ that Australian TV is overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic and unrepresentative of our population — Ramo questioned what his presence actually offered to fix this, if he wasn’t allowed to perform his original song choice.

“For example, on this show today the song that I’m going to perform is called ‘Stand For Something’,” Ramo said. “The song I initially was going to perform was called ‘April 25th’, and this was a song that I was not allowed to perform. I was basically censored, in the fact that the ABC said that it was not appropriate.”

“Me sitting on this panel ticks off a box for the ABC that is cultural diversity, but if I’m not able to express my perspective, is it performative or is it actual cultural diversity?”

The song contains lines such as “just remember how much you hate it when I say, ‘fuck those Anzacs'”, which Ramo was given the opportunity to contextualise in the discussion. Host Hamish MacDonald said the song’s more incendiary lyrics had a “lot of context, which we did want to talk to you about tonight to understand where that comes from, but without context there may be issues”.

“The whole point of a song about April 25th is saying that I’ve seen this country recognise the sacrifices that have been made so that we could all sit here today,” he said. We can’t just pick parts of our history that we want to recognise, and bury the others. If in World War II, we fought against genocide, yet we don’t recognise the genocide in our own country, that’s a double standard.”

“So the whole reason why the song says, ‘I hate the Anzacs,’ is to demonstrate, that how outrageous is that? If we can recognise how outrageous that is, why can’t [we] recognise that on January 26?”

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce was also on the panel, and sided with the ABC’s decision to veto the song, despite previous comments about the importance of freedom of speech.

“I imagine when we say April 25th, we are looking at Anzac Day or something like that,” he said. “You have to be careful what you say. You go to a point where you insult people. I could talk to Indigenous people where I grew up … and there are so many Indigenous people who are part of the RSL movement, and what are you saying to them?”

The ABC confirmed that it denied the song choice, but invited Ramo to discuss the issue on-air.

The discussion on ‘April 25th’ takes place around 9 minutes into the Q+A episode — you can watch it and Ramo’s ‘Stand For Something’ performance below, at the 58.45 mark. Listen to ‘April 25th’ below, released in June on Ramo’s album Black Thoughts.