“It’s pretty cool that I keep getting used, to be honest, and my child’s grown up now, they’re now 13,” Freeman said, her daughter Ruby was 9 when the photo was taken.
“Looking back at the photos, they were just a little girl but it keeps popping up all the time, it’s kind of cool because it always happens around my birthday.
“It’s almost like a reminder that, hey, don’t forget you did this.”
When talking about her new life in Australia, Freeman said it has become “another hard place to live” but not unlike the rest of the world at the moment.
“There’s a lot of people struggling to get rentals and I’ve been one of those people and it’s not, it’s not nice,” Freeman said.
She said a friend had joked she should apply for a loan with ASB, a bank she had never used, to buy a home because she was the new face of the bank.
In a statement, a spokesperson from ASB said the photo is “one of a few stock images we paid for the rights to use.”
“Now that we are aware of the issues raised by the model in this photo in relation to another campaign, we are taking steps to replace the photo as a courtesy to her,” the spokesperson said.
“We have also raised this with our advertising agency which will flag with the image library.”
Rachel Maher is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. She has worked for the Herald since 2022.
