It was a case of "waiting for garbo" outside the SBS studios in Artarmon on Wednesday morning as an epic press pack amassed for the arrival of 10 garbage trucks and their drivers' message: "We love Mount Druitt".
Led by the mayor of Blacktown, Stephen Bali, and flanked by representatives of Unions NSW, the group demanded SBS stop its planned broadcast on Wednesday night of the documentary Struggle Street, which depicts the lives of working-class families in parts of western Sydney.
"The program is garbage so we brought garbage trucks here," Cr Bali said from the steps of the SBS headquarters. "This program must stop because it's not a documentary, it's publicly funded poverty porn."
The broadcaster has been under attack over Struggle Street since it aired a trailer depicting one of the documentary's subjects, Ashley Kennedy, breaking wind on his front porch, a woman calling her cat a "slut" and another woman smoking what appeared to be marijuana.
On Wednesday, the mayor accused KEO Films - the company commissioned by SBS to make the program - of having "engineered scenes" by encouraging participants to perform certain activities.
Mr Bali said that, in one scene to air on Wednesday night, subjects are depicted as having bought junk food using cash they had earned from a scrap metal merchant - but the junk food had been paid for by the producers.
"This is a crap show. It's not a proper documentary. They're not raw scenes of how people act their lives out," he said. "You'll sit back and look at it as a bad comedy."
But SBS says the show must - and will - go on. The broadcaster's chief content officer Helen Kellie told reporters on Wednesday that claims made by Blacktown City Council and the documentary's subjects about unfair and unethical tactics used by the filmmakers were "unsubstantiated" and made "at the 11th hour".
"If the claims are substantiated we will clearly take the proper due action. The accuracy of this portrayal is absolutely paramount to SBS," Kellie said.
"It's a raw reflection, but I do think that the show that you see is a fair reflection of the six months that we've spent with these families, and an important topic to tell."
Fairfax Media was briefly shown an email sent to Kellie and SBS on Tuesday night containing a list of claims and complaints about the documentary, but Cr Bali said the full list and substantiating evidence would not be made public until Thursday - assuming the program was aired as scheduled on Wednesday night.
He said "really explosive allegations that we've put to SBS" would be released if the station failed to investigate the claims.
"When you hear some of the allegations, I think SBS might shut its doors down the next day," Cr Bali said.
Mr Kennedy's wife Peta, also a subject of Struggle Street, told Fairfax Media she was "very shocked, very gutted and very hurt" when she first saw the promo.
The 54-year-old from Willmot, near Mount Druitt, said her husband was diagnosed with dementia during the six months of filming, and that the trailer had led to her 19-year-old disabled daughter being identified and bullied.
"I hate being called a houso, I hate being called a bogan, and I will not stand for my family being attacked," she said.
Mrs Kennedy was shown the full first episode of the three-part documentary in advance and said that, although it was fairer than the trailer, it was still problematic and deeply personal.
"There's some good stuff and there's some raw stuff," she said. "It's that raw stuff that ... some parts didn't need to be in there."
Cr Bali, who has also seen the first episode, felt it was "worse" than the controversial trailer, which SBS has now pulled.
"It was basically the promo but for a whole hour," he said. He was expecting to receive a formal response from SBS today in response to his allegations.
Struggle Street was not just an attack on Mount Druitt and western Sydney, Cr Bali said, but an attack on the working class of Australia.
He said the issue "has united the whole of Sydney" and that the garbage trucks had received hundreds of toots of support on their pilgrimage from Mount Druitt to Artarmon.
Cr Bali said legal advice indicated there was no possibility of getting an injunction against the documentary going to air. But he expected some of the individual subjects of the program would seek legal advice.
Lawyer George Newhouse told the Guardian Australia he was investigating the possibility of legal action, including defamation suits, on behalf of some residents.
It is not the first SBS program to attract controversy; the documentary Go Back To Where You Came From explored Australians' attitudes towards refugees, and the comedy Housos poked fun at socio-economically disadvantaged families living in housing commission estates.
