EXCLUSIVE:
Members of the Paxton family featured in a 1996 episode of A Current Affair (ACA) as a pack of lazy dole bludgers (left in main picture) have sent a special message to its then host Ray Martin after he was attacked last week by his old program (right in main picture) and other media outlets.
I well recall how the Paxton siblings, notably long-term unemployed siblings Bindi, Shane, and Mark, came under nationwide attack in March 1996 after ACA flew them from their Melbourne home to a Great Barrier Reef tourist resort where they were filmed rejecting job offers.
In those pre-social media days they quickly became a national punchline and a byword in the media for “job snobs”, “dole bludgers”, and “welfare spongers”.
Breaking decades of public silence Bindi, Shane, and Mark Paxton have revealed exclusively to me that they could identify with the attack Martin found himself facing and had sent him a special message.
Martin has found himself attacked by his old program and numerous News Crap Australia outlets and columnists (below) who all ignored his explanation for remarks he made in a speech at a “yes” campaign rally for the indigenous voice to parliament.
The media pile-on began after the Daily Mail claimed Martin had labelled “no” voters as “dickheads” and “dinosaurs”.
Most outlets brushed aside his attempts to explain that his remarks were directed at the leaders of the “no” campaign for using the simplistic “If you don’t know vote no” slogan which treated voters like “dickheads” and “dinosaurs”.
Bindi, Shane, and Mark Paxton – who today together operate a highly successful job training and placement company (below) – all told me that they knew exactly how Martin felt which was why they sent him a special message.
In their personal note to Martin they said: “We read the actual words you spoke about the ‘no’ campaign and totally believe your interpretation of them.
“That’s why we truly know exactly what you are now going through. Being pilloried by the media when you have really done nothing wrong is both unfair and personally traumatic and deeply upsetting and hurtful.
“We can wholeheartedly appreciate the position you find yourself in right now.
“That’s why we can’t help but think that if you hadn’t been such a hypocritical arsehole all those years ago by lending your supposed good name, minimal talents, and bulletproof hair to a tabloid TV open sewer like A Current Affair which helped accelerate and normalise the downward slide in media standards in Australia, then maybe you wouldn’t now be the victim of the same program’s undiminished yet undeserved self-righteousness.
“Nor would you be facing the volley of screaming and unbalanced accusations aimed at you by the flaming bin fire of dog excrement that masquerades as the Australian media today,” they wrote, ending with a cheery: “Best wishes from the Paxtons.”
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