Karl has resigned from Channel 9 and is moving on to bigger and better things, free to speak with no censorship.

An interview that put Channel Nine star Karl Stefanovic alongside British far right activist Tommy Robinson has been wiped from the internet within hours of going live, and nobody will say who pulled it or why.

The episode of Stefanovic's independent podcast, the Karl Stefanovic Show, went up on Tuesday and was gone by Wednesday morning. As the Guardian reported, it disappeared from YouTube, where the old link now reads "Video unavailable. This video is private", from Spotify and from the podcast's RSS feed, while the promo was scrubbed from Instagram.

The clip is still sitting on Stefanovic's own X account, and Pauline Hanson's Please Explain page has since reposted the full interview to YouTube under the title "CANCELLED".

🔴 UPDATED — 8:04am 25 June

Stefanovic resigns from Nine

Karl Stefanovic has resigned from Nine, according to multiple media reports, ending his run as the network's highest paid star. Nine has confirmed it's preparing a statement on its breakfast anchor after a day of speculation, and the company's own papers reported it had been "negotiating terms" for the Today host to leave following his podcast interview with Tommy Robinson. The departure is reported to follow an advertiser boycott threat against Nine earlier in the week.

With about six months left on a contract worth almost $3 million, Stefanovic is expected to walk immediately. Sources say he'd been hoping to be let go early to chase other media opportunities, and will push for a full payout of the kind given to past Nine names like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley. Nine is tipped to resist, citing shareholder objections and arguing he breached his contract by bringing the company into disrepute. His recent comments and support for Ben Roberts-Smith had also unsettled executives.

🔴 UPDATED — 8:10pm 24 June

Nine has reportedly dumped Stefanovic from Today

Nine has reportedly decided to cut Karl Stefanovic loose from Today, according to The Australian, after senior executives held hours of crisis talks on Wednesday over his independent content. The concern reportedly began with his social media post backing Ben Roberts-Smith last week and deepened after the Tommy Robinson interview. Both sides are expected to lawyer up and settle the terms of his departure when he returns from leave in London. Nine hasn't confirmed it, saying only that it's "taking this matter seriously."

The pushback begins: a 'Save Karl' petition

Karl hasn't been left without defenders. Drew Pavlou, the activist Stefanovic recently signed to his own show as its "Chief Chaos Correspondent," has launched a "Save Karl" petition through Revive Australia, calling the situation "a disgrace" and urging Australians to "fight back" and "stand with Karl." The petition casts the row as far bigger than one host, warning that once broadcasters fear the consequences of a difficult interview, "public debate becomes narrower, weaker and less honest," and that Australians are "tired of being treated like children" who can't be trusted to watch an interview and decide for themselves.

🔴 UPDATED — 4:10pm 24 June

Left-Wing Activists launch '#KancelKarl' campaign to get Stefanovic sacked

The activist group Mad F***ing Witches; the same outfit that drove advertisers off Kyle Sandilands' radio show, has launched a boycott campaign to have Stefanovic dumped, branding it #KancelKarl and calling on supporters to help fund it. The group says pulling the interview hasn't satisfied it, declaring it's now "even MORE determined" to run the campaign and that a figure like Robinson has "NO PLACE in Australia." The video's already gone from his page, so the target now is Stefanovic's job and the sponsors who pay his wage.

Stefanovic is entitled to interview whoever he likes, and Australia doesn't censor journalists over who they put in front of a microphone. All this controversay has done is amplify the censorship on display, and expose how hard the left now works to control the narrative across Australian media.

The left wing activists have been busy elsewhere too. On 20 June, about 200 protesters organised by NSW Socialists gathered outside Sydney's Star to oppose a charity ball hosted by the brain cancer surgeon Charlie Teo, because Pauline Hanson was on the guest list. Hanson didn't attend.That protest was run by NSW Socialists, not the Witches, but the method's the same: pick a target and try to shut the event down.

2 Worlds Collide Podcaster, Sam Bamford and Afghanistan Veteran, echoed the same sentiment:

What was actually in the interview

Across the near hour long episode, Stefanovic was warm towards Robinson and did not push back. He closed by praising Robinson's courage.

"It's great to speak with you in person. I really do admire your tenacity and the courage that you're showing in trying to stand up for what you believe is right and to hear your voice."

Robinson used the platform to repeat his central claim, that Muslims in Britain had been "terrorising our country for decades" and were "doing it now in Australia". Stefanovic did not challenge it. Asked how the right would take power over the next three years, Robinson said a "cultural revolution" was already under way. "If we change culture, politics will follow."

In a clip posted to social media, Stefanovic walks down a London street with his arm around Robinson. Robinson asks him to finish a sentence, "Keir Starmer is a", and Stefanovic answers "wanker" as the pair laugh.

What Robinson said about Pauline Hanson

Robinson singled out Hanson as one of the few public figures who had defended him.

"Looking at her rise, do you know how happy I am for her? Because she's been through what I've been through. She's been condemned, attacked, battered, every name under the sun. And here she is. She's carried on against all of that backlash. She just carried on fighting. And truth comes out in the end."

Stefanovic tied it back home, telling Robinson the major parties were "using some of her policy" and "they're catching fire in the electorate", a nod to One Nation's surge in the polls.

Who pulled it? Nobody is saying

The most striking part is the silence. There was no statement from Stefanovic, his production company or the platforms explaining who took the interview down or why. It simply disappeared overnight, after a wave of public backlash.

It is not Nine's to pull. Stefanovic co owns the Karl Stefanovic Show with media executive Keshnee Kemp and runs it independently of the network. Nine approved the launch late last year in exchange for him taking a pay cut. That leaves the decision on his side of the fence, whoever made it.

Nine has since broken its silence, though not to explain the takedown. In a statement, the network distanced itself from the show, calling it "a completely independent production" with "no involvement, including in the guest selection." It added that it is "taking this matter seriously," and Nine executives are reported to be weighing the future of the network's highest paid star.

Pauline Hanson, who Stefanovic calls a good friend, has gone further. She accused Nine on X of trying to "sack" him over the interview, and asked whether the network had "become just as bad as the ABC."

What Tommy Robinson actually stands for

Lost in the row is what Robinson actually campaigns on. His critics reduce him to one thing, his opposition to Islam, because it's easier than engaging with the cases he raises, and those cases sit in British court records and coroners' findings.

He points to young people failed by the authorities meant to protect them, like Henry Nowak, the 18 year old Southampton student stabbed to death in December 2025, whom officers handcuffed and arrested as he lay dying after believing his killer's claim of racial abuse. The man who killed him, Vickrum Digwa, was later convicted of murder. He points to an asylum system the public no longer trusts, the sort of failure that drove the unrest in Belfast this month, after a Sudanese man, granted asylum after arriving via Dublin, was charged with attempted murder. And he points to the grooming gang scandal, the mass convictions across Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and Huddersfield, and a political class, including Sir Keir Starmer, that resisted a national inquiry before being forced to order one.

Whatever people make of Robinson himself, those are real cases with real victims, and reducing him to his views on Islam is how his critics avoid talking about them.

Robinson's criminal record with context

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founded the English Defence League. His supporters would tell you the record below reads less like a rap sheet than a tally of how hard the state has come at him.

• 2005: Jailed 12 months for assaulting an off duty police officer in a street fight. Nothing to do with his politics.
• 2009: Founds the English Defence League.
• January 2013: Jailed 10 months for entering the United States on a friend's passport. He'd been barred over his record and, his supporters say, had no other legal way into the country.
• October 2013: Quits the EDL, citing concerns about far right extremism.
• January 2014: Jailed 18 months for a mortgage fraud. He used false income details to obtain home loans from Abbey and Halifax he wouldn't have qualified for honestly. Unlike the passport, this one had nothing to do with his record, just a financial offence, now more than a decade behind him and served in full.
• 2019: Jailed for contempt for livestreaming outside to expose a grooming gang rape trial, a case he argues the public was never meant to see up close.
• 2024: A further contempt finding for breaching a court order.
• November 2025: Acquitted of a terror related charge after a judge ruled police had stopped him unlawfully, on what he "stood for" rather than any genuine suspicion.

None of that is hidden, and none of it is new. It also isn't unusual for a major program to interview a divisive figure with a record. Outlets right across the spectrum do it constantly, from convicted criminals to disgraced politicians, because being newsworthy and holding a clean character reference were never the same test. Which is what makes the response here the actual story. The interview wasn't debated or rebutted. It was deleted overnight, with no one prepared to say they did it.

Karl is halfway out the door from channel 9

Stefanovic, who reportedly earns $2.8 million anchoring Nine's Today show and major live events, is understood to be planning his exit from television, with the podcast the first move. According to The Australian, he has effectively dared Channel Nine to sack him over the "wanker" clip, with his television contract winding down.

Strip out whatever you think of Robinson, and the part that should bother everyone is the method. A major interview was published, drew outrage, and was quietly erased inside a day, with nobody willing to put their name to the decision. Pauline Hanson's team watched that happen and did the obvious thing. They put it straight back up.