Australia’s youngest MP has slammed the Nine Network for airing a doctored photograph of herself during its Melbourne news bulletin on Monday night.
Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, 31, lashed out at the network via X (formerly Twitter) for using a photo that was Photoshopped to make her breasts look bigger.
Ms Purcell was featured in the Nine News bulletin after she publicly slammed Premier Jacinta Allan’s decision not to ban duck shooting in Victoria.
In her post, the heavily tattooed politician shared the image from the segment alongside the original photo, which was taken last year.
‘I endured a lot yesterday. But having my body and outfit photoshopped by a media outlet was not on my bingo card,’ she wrote on Tuesday morning.
‘Note the enlarged boobs and outfit to be made more revealing. Can’t imagine this happening to a male MP. What gives?’
The image used by Nine also showed Ms Purcell wearing a crop top that showed her bare midriff.
Ms Purcell noted this couldn’t have been her body for one very obvious reason – she has had her stomach tattooed since 2020.
‘Hot tip 9 I’ve got my whole stomach tattooed,’ she wrote.
Director of 9News Melbourne Hugh Nailon issued a grovelling apology to Ms Purcell on Tuesday after Daily Mail Australia approached the network for comment.
‘I would like to sincerely apologise to Georgie Purcell for a graphic error that occurred in last night’s bulletin,’ Mr Nailon’s statement read.
‘Our graphics department sourced an online image of Georgie to use in our story on duck hunting. As is common practice, the image was resized to fit our specs. During that process, the automation by Photoshop created an image that was not consistent with the original.
‘This did not meet the high editorial standards we have and for that we apologise to Ms Purcell unreservedly.’
Ms Purcell is the youngest woman in any Australian parliament and the second youngest ever to be elected to Victoria’s Legislative Council.
She recently opened up to Daily Mail Australia about the horrifying moment photos of her working as a stripper while studying law at uni were leaked online.
Then aged 19, she thought her future dreams of working in law or politics were over she came across the photos posted on Facebook.
‘I worked far away from where I studied and grew up so I wouldn’t meet anyone I knew, and while I felt there was nothing wrong with that line of work, I knew many others would think otherwise,’ Ms Purcell said.
‘Then one day I was sitting at the hairdresser and when I logged into Facebook, I saw I was tagged in a picture without my consent which showed me working as a stripper and there were tonnes of comments.
‘I grew up in a small country town in Geelong so everyone kind of knows everyone and it just spread really quickly and viciously.’