Waleed Aly has been slammed on social media for mansplaining to his fellow presenter about a new proposal from the Greens.
The segment on last night’s episode of The Project discussed the new proposal from Greens leader Richard Di Natale which would give every citizen $23,000, otherwise known as universal basic income.
The payments, which are taxpayer funded, seek to compensate workers who have lost their jobs to machines or robots.
After Aly had explained the scheme, co-host Rachel Corbett suggested it would only be those who had been impacted by job automation that would receive the payment.
And herein lies the apparent ‘mansplanation’.
Replying to Corbett, Aly said, “Yeah but that’s because you’re thinking about it the way we’re currently thinking about government payments.”
Adding, “The idea is… if everyone gets this amount of money you don’t need to police who gets it… and that costs a lot to do.”
“Once you means test it like we do welfare, it sort of defeats the whole purpose of it,” he said.
Viewers were quick to voice their anger about the apparent mansplaining taking place in front of them, with some social media users asking why Aly is still on the air.
One Facebook user said, “Why is this clown still on the air? Stopped watching it long ago”.
Another added, “I’m not impressed with Waleed Aly’s sense of self-righteous. He’s negative and shuts down community conversations”
“Waleed is a t**t.”
The Greens proposal is causing quite a stir in TV land, with The Project managing editor Tom Whitty taking to Twitter yesterday to accuse Seven’s Sunrise of “mocking the idea”, adding the morning show is “commercial TV at its worst”.
