ABC News presenter Jeremy Fernandez has described the moment he was kicked off a Sydney bus after enduring verbal racial taunts.

After boarding a State Transit bus to drop his daughter off at preschool on Friday, Fernandez was the victim of racist abuse from a woman in her mid-30s with two young children of her own.

He said he endured 15 minutes of racial abuse - where the woman claimed she would drag Mr Fernandez off the bus if he didn't get off. But then it was the bus driver who eventually kicked Mr Fernandez off, claiming it was his fault for the altercation.

“The bus driver stopped the bus and yelled to the back of the bus, ‘you, get off or move’,” Mr Fernandez told news.com.au.

"She said, 'there’s no way I'm getting off the bus, he's filthy, this black paedophile'."



But the driver was in fact referring to Mr Fernandez.



"He turned to me and told me to get off or move."



"I craned my head down the aisle and I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere, I have a right to be on this bus and on this seat'. I didn't want to cower because of my colour, I’m staying here on principle."



The bus driver - whom Mr Fernandez describes as of Southern European descent - then asked, ‘What do you want me to do, stop the bus?’



It was then that Mr Fernandez exited the bus, but not before his own stoush with the driver.



“As I got off I spoke to the driver, ‘I’ve spent 15 minutes copping the most severe racial abuse and you’ve done absolutely nothing’," Mr Fernandez said.



"How can a migrant sit back as the captain of the bus when physical threats are being made, when children are on the bus and not step in?



"He said, 'well, what are you going to do? Blame me for the abuse are you?'



"I said, 'no, I’m not going to blame you, but you allowed it to happen'."

State Transit were this morning trying to get a hold of Mr Fernandez.



"State Transit has been in contact with the ABC to try to speak with Jeremy about this incident and to get more details on where this occurred and on what bus," a State Transit spokesperson told news.com.au.



"Once we have those details we can assist him and the police, if necessary, with any investigation. We obviously expect all passengers to behave in a respectful manner to each other.



"We also expect our drivers to be courteous and respectful to passengers. This is conveyed in bus driver training."



"If an incident of anti-social behaviour such as this occurs, the bus driver may try to intervene and ask the passenger to leave the bus. If required, the driver can contact a supervisor via radio and organise for police to meet the bus."

Mr Fernandez said he told the driver he would not move because he felt he had done nothing wrong, that the woman was obviously unstable and that he deserved to be on the bus.



“He said, ‘mate, it’s your fault'.”

It all began when the daughter of the woman started "flicking and pinching" Mr Fernandez's daughter on the arm and head.



"It was completely harmless stuff, but over time my daughter started getting a bit uncomfortable, just recoiling away from the pinching," he said. "She was visibly becoming quite uncomfortable, I put my arm around her."



It was then that the girl turned her attention to Mr Fernandez.



"I said darling that was my arm you just flicked."



It was at this point that the mother, who had been on her mobile phone, turned around and asked what happened.



Mr Fernandez then explained the situation, which the woman refuted, instead hurling accusations of paedophilia.



"She launched into this tirade that just came straight out of a fiery belly, launched into telling me to turn the other way and not talk to her.



"She said to me, ‘do you like five year olds do you? Because you've been touching her'.



"She started telling the bus her daughter had been touched by a black paedophile. She told me to go back to my own country, that I should move or get off the bus, as she was holding her fist up to my face."



Mr Fernandez said the woman proceeded to take her phone out and take photographs of him, asking her children which relatives should they round up and that they would come find me and teach me a lesson.

Fernandez went into considerable detail through his Twitter account this morning to describe the abuse he called his "own Rosa Parks moment".

"I thought I could move and then I had a flashback to a very famous case of a woman on a bus in the US, a black woman, who was told to give up her seat," he told ABC radio.

"And I thought no, I'm having my own Rosa Parks moment, I'm not moving from this seat because it has turned into a racial issue.

"I said I'm not going anywhere, I've just been called a black c-word, I am not going anywhere, I've not done anything wrong, I have a right to sit here, I'm going to stay here."

According to the ABC News journalist, his two-year-old daughter who was travelling with him, heard the racist rant in full and had to "hold his nerve" for the sake of the young girl.

"All I could think at the time was just hold your nerve, my little girl is with me, she needs to see a strong father right now," he said.



He described having to restrain himself from punching the woman in the face because he knew that "would not be the smart, nor the right thing to do", instead, he had to "just sit here and cop it".

Racial abuse is "not uncommon" to Mr Fernandez, but he told news.com.au he felt the need to tweet today's experience "to put this on the record".



"People cop abuse like this all the time, they're not articulate like me, they don't feel empowered to stand up. I wanted to put it on the record for that reason and highlight it's still a problem.



"It’s appalling in so many ways, it's not about race, it's about discrimination."

Fernandez's tweets combined had garnered more than 1500 retweets at the time of writing and an extra 500 followers since the incident.

Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in the coloured section to a white passenger in 1955 on driver's orders.

Her defiance sparked the civil rights movement in the US and lead to collaborations with fellow activists of time, including Martin Luther King, Jr and Edgar Nixon. This week marks the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Fernandez's began his career in Perth after studying at Curtin University and the WA Academy of Performing Arts.



He was a voice-over artist with Channel 7 before becoming a producer for ABC radio in Albany.





If you saw the racist attack on Jeremy Fernandez, contact Matt Young via Twitter @the_mattyoung

Follow the conversation on @newscomauHQ

Originally published as Abused newsreader kicked off bus