Weekend 4BC host Paul Burt has been found by The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to have breached classification rules during the broadcast of a fishing show on Channel Seven Sydney that included highly inappropriate comments about domestic violence.
The ACMA investigation found that the comments, made during an episode of Step Outside with Paul Burt broadcast on 7mate in March 2025, breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice classification rules for ‘PG’ content, which require themes of domestic conflict to be handled with care. Step Outside airs on 4BC from 6-8am on weekends.
ACMA member Carolyn Lidgerwood said:
“These were disturbing comments. They may have been intended as a crude attempt at humour, but they were totally unacceptable.”
Following a complaint about the episode, Channel Seven issued a public apology and removed the program from 7mate and 7plus. Nine stablemate 2GB’s Ben Fordham weighed in on the matter at the time too saying:
“We’re not going to have someone like that as a guest on this show. So somehow it’s gone through the wicket keeper and it on air and you can’t just expect that some editor is going to take like something like that out. And, look, I understand we record things from time to time and you can say things during a recording that you know is not going to go to air but when people are talking about domestic violence in that way you’ve got to question what’s going on in their head and it sounds like something seriously wrong.”
The licensee submitted that it relied on assurances from the company that produced the program that the episode would comply with the Code. However, the ACMA does not consider that licensees can contract out their obligations to ensure that the content they broadcast is Code compliant and is currently considering appropriate enforcement action which it will publicly announce the outcome once finalised.
You can read more about the this via Brett Debritz‘s substack article here: https://misterbrisbane.substack.com/p/questions-remain-over-burt-show