The Bolt Factor: Andrew Bolt and the Making of an Opportunist @themonthly

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Anne Summers

On the morning of Sunday, 11 October 2009 the guests appearing on that day’s Insiders program gathered in the green room at the ABC TV’s Southbank headquarters in Melbourne before the show. Annabel Crabb was there, as were David Marr and Andrew Bolt. Marr, who had just returned from Bayreuth, Germany, chatted amicably with Bolt, who is a huge Wagner fan. “He is very intelligent about opera,” Marr told me. Soon they were in the studio, ready for the live broadcast.

Host Barrie Cassidy introduced the first segment, ‘The Sunday Papers’, in which guests comment on a story from that day’s newspaper given to them by the producers. Bolt ignored his item and instead started talking about a report on the BBC that, Bolt claimed, demonstrated the Earth was not warming. Marr remonstrated with him, both for deviating from the script and for the absurdity of his claims. When Bolt persisted, Marr picked up a newspaper and in a show of mock exasperation turned his back on Bolt.

A couple of hours later, Bolt posted on his blog an image of Marr with pursed lips, seemingly in mid-sentence, with the invitation to his many followers to click on it and watch the segment. Over the next few hours 133 comments were posted, some remarking on Marr’s apparent rudeness, others commenting on the picture itself.

“I saw an expression like that on an egg-bound chook once,” said ‘Jackie of Gaia!’.
“Poor fellow is chronically constipated,” responded Fay of Charlestown.

“I doubt that, Fay,” chimed in Alan Jansen. “Given what Marr proudly admits to, constipation is unlikely to be a problem.”

Marr was outraged when he was alerted to these remarks two days later. “We’d been talking about opera and then you go on and get this blinding thing,” he told me. He immediately rang Bolt, who had the offending comment ‘snipped’, formally apologised to Marr and posted the following statement on the blog: “David has alerted me to a comment which snuck through our moderation and which abuses him in homophobic terms. I am mortified it got through, and have instantly removed it. I apologise to David and have banned the person who put it up.”

Marr accepted Bolt’s apology and his assurance he had not seen the posts. What Bolt did not disclose was that the person who was moderating the blog and past whom these comments had “snuck” was his wife, Sally Morrell. “It was an official arrangement, for his wife to moderate his blog,” Phil Gardner, editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times, told me. That arrangement ended about a year ago, he said, and Bolt’s blog is now moderated in house at the Herald Sun.

[ED: Sally Morrell has assured the Monthly that she had no part in moderating the blog posts that referred to David Marr and Annabel Crabb. The Monthly accepts that assurance and apologises to her for any embarrassment in saying that she did. The author has also received a communication from Andrew Bolt which includes the following: “I did much of the moderating myself on those days and through sheer carelessness through pressure of work, I almost certainly let those through myself. Sally helped on the blog for just a couple of hours a day and did not work the particular shift on which those mistakes were made. I deeply regret my error.”]

A few months earlier, on 5 July, a similar thing had happened to Annabel Crabb after she, too, had had an argument with Bolt on air during Insiders. Some of the comments were “grotty, sexist stuff”, Crabb told me, “about my appearance, or what my sexual performance would be like after a few drinks”. The episode in which the fight occurred marked the eighth anniversary of Insiders, and the ABC took the guests to lunch at a restaurant in Carlton afterwards: “The unnerving thing was that [the comments were] all going up while Andrew and I were having lunch together,” said Crabb. “I found it confronting because we’d always got on well together.”

Such attacks became so common, Michael Bodey reported in the Australian in April this year, that some people were unwilling to appear on Insiders with him, “because Bolt’s minions harass them afterwards”. Jason Wilson, a lecturer in digital communications at the University of Wollongong, described being “Bolted” in early August 2009 after he criticised Bolt’s performance on Insiders. Bolt’s post the next day featured a photograph of Wilson and an inaccurate description of him as working for GetUp!, and it accused him of using the Pravda model of journalism. For the next week Wilson was subject to abusive emails, many of which contained Bolt’s post cut-and-pasted into the message. One was even c.c.’d to Bolt, like a dog bringing a stick back to its master. Some of the emails threatened violence although most simply offered abuse, calling Wilson “a prick”, “an insignificant, parasitic socialist wally”, “a smug little shit” and a “leftoid, as in haemorrhoid, as in a continual pain in the arse …”

These incidents illustrate how readily readers of the blog can be revved up without Bolt explicitly directing them. “He was influenced by Howard’s nod and a wink,” says Jonathan Green, editor of the ABC online journal The Drum and a colleague of Bolt’s at the Herald in the late 1980s. “That’s why the blogosphere works so well. You don’t have to say much; you keep your hands clean but it comes out in the comments. You are setting up the discussion.” By claiming not to read the comments, Bolt was able to absolve himself of responsibility for what was said, apologise and remove posts if a complaint was made. But always after the event.

Although Bolt has been writing two or more provocative columns per week for the Herald Sun since the late 1990s, it has only been in the past five or so years that he has expanded his reach – and his influence – to the huge national audience he has today. He is now syndicated in Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and Adelaide. Almost 12 million people around Australia pick up the newspapers that carry Bolt’s columns, and 3.5 million actually read those columns. His blog, which he only started in 2006 and which he updates as often as 12 times per day, received just over 3 million page views from 272,000 unique visitors in August this year. But Bolt’s ambition is not confined to print. He seems to understand the greater influence that comes from radio and television and, at the same time as he started to harness the power of the internet to promote his conservative views, he began his quest to become the Bill O’Reilly of Australia.

Bill O’Reilly is the combative and inflammatory ‘conservative with a capital-C’ star performer on the Murdoch-owned Fox News network in the US. The O’Reilly Factor is the most watched cable news program on American television. O’Reilly is also a syndicated columnist, author and commentator, who until 2009 also had a high-rating syndicated radio program. O’Reilly was hired by Roger Ailes in 1996, when Fox News was starting up, and the two men are synonymous with the stunning success of the network.

In 2006, through a third party, Andrew Bolt sought guidance from Roger Ailes on how he could replicate the Fox News model Down Under. “He saw the political power that comes from right-wing ranting,” says a colleague of Bolt’s, “and he appointed himself to do it.” Roger Ailes, formerly “one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party”, according to a 2011 Rolling Stone profile, is the chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group. He is responsible for the network outstripping CNN and all other rivals to become the number one cable network in the US and, to quote theNew York Times, for making Fox News “the profit engine of the News Corporation”. Although Murdoch publicly defends Ailes, his family begs to differ: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,” Matthew Freud, who is married to Elisabeth Murdoch, said last year.
Bolt had been introduced to Ailes earlier in 2006 at a three-day, high-level gathering of News Corporation editors, managers, columnists and their spouses hosted by Rupert Murdoch at the legendary Pebble Beach Resorts, on the Monterey Peninsula in California. ‘Imagining the Future’ enabled key News staff to hear world leaders address the big issues: the invited speakers included Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, Bono and former US Vice President Al Gore, who showed his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Afterwards, Bolt and fellow conservative columnist Piers Akerman asked Gore some confronting questions, disputing the information contained in the film. Maybe Bolt saw himself as auditioning for bigger things because the exchange deteriorated into “a full-on barney”, according to someone present, with Gore shouting at Bolt.

Roger Ailes rebuffed the approach from Bolt, who had to wait until May this year to get his start on television. Some have been surprised that Sky News (part owned by News Corporation) had not picked him up. It was Network Ten that started The Bolt Report, a half-hour political show airing at 10 am on Sundays – just after Insiders, Bolt’s television launching pad. In November last year Bolt had written a column referring to “my strong and not entirely uninformed hunch” about mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s reasons for buying a sufficient stake in the Ten Network to get herself a seat on the board. “Rinehart is on a mission,” he wrote. “Channel 10 is just the vehicle.” One of Bolt’s former colleagues thought it read like a job application. This impression was reinforced by a reader comment on Bolt’s blog. “If Ms Gina Rinehart is reading this column, or someone in her office is, then I’d like to pass on this piece of advice,” posted Rosemary of Queensland. “Australia desperately needs Conservative voices in the media – especially in free-to-air media. In America they have Fox News …” Whether or not there was a connection, five months later Andrew Bolt had his own show on Ten.
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'Name 10': the journalism of Andrew Bolt @abcthedrum

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Robert Manne

 

On September 28, 2011 Andrew Bolt was found to have committed an offence under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

He had written two articles in the Herald Sun which had the capacity to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate members of the group about which he had written - a group Justice Bromberg called "light-skinned Aborigines". Bolt had not breached the act because he had written critically about the question of racial identification. He had breached the act because his articles were filled with "errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language". The full judgment is a brilliant forensic analysis of the Bolt technique. Of this technique I can boast some personal experience.
In 2000 and early 2001 I was working on a Quarterly Essay called In Denial: The Stolen Generations And The Right. The essay documented the campaign conducted by the editor of Quadrant, PP McGuinness, and a dozen or so sympathetic journalists debunking the supposed myth of the "stolen generations", the name given to mixed descent Aboriginal children removed by government from their mothers, families and communities. Shortly before the essay was concluded, Andrew Bolt, one of the journalists involved in the campaign, wrote a story that appeared on the front page of the Herald Sun. The article claimed that Lowitja O'Donoghue, an Indigenous woman involved in the fight for the recognition of the injustice done to these children, had "confessed" that she had not been "stolen" at all but had simply been "removed" by her white father to a South Australian Christian mission. According to Bolt, here was vital evidence that the left-wing stolen generations myth was indeed a fraud.

Bolt's story had influence. Even the prime minister, John Howard, thought it "highly interesting". Lowitja O'Donoghue was distraught by the manner in which her story had been twisted. She hadn't realised the kind of a journalist Bolt was. Eventually Lowitja's true story was revealed by Stuart Rintoul in the Australian magazine. At the time of her birth the policy of the South Australian government had been to separate "half-caste" children from their Aboriginal surroundings. Lowitja and her brothers and sisters had been removed by their Irish-Australian father who then abandoned both the children and their Aboriginal mother. Thirty years later, by accident, Lowitja discovered her mother's identity and whereabouts. Lowitja's mother who, in turn, learned that her daughter would visit her as soon as she could, waited patiently by the roadside each day for several weeks. When they were reunited, Lowitja found that her mother had spent her life in grief over the loss of her children. For her part, Lowitja had never overcome the pain of separation. What kind of journalist would manipulate a story as tragic as this, entirely consistent with the interwar policy and practice of "half-caste" child removal, for a cheap and false polemical point?

I was angered by Bolt's attack on Lowitja O'Donoghue and agreed to debate Bolt on the subject of the stolen generations. Bolt at first agreed, and then at the last minute pulled out. Later, Russ Radcliffe, events manager of Readers' Feast at the time, the person who had set up the debate, explained to me what had happened: "I telephoned Andrew Bolt – he was affable, amused by the prospect, and keen to participate. I subsequently called on Bolt on several occasions leaving messages to confirm the date. He did not reply. When I eventually reached him his tone had changed drastically … He became irate, saying he had no intention of helping Manne 'flog' his book…" On April 2, 2001 in the Herald Sun this was also the reason Bolt gave for his change of mind.

After this time, in the Herald Sun, Bolt launched scores of attacks on me over the question of the Stolen Generations. One of the lines of attack was defamatory, namely that I was what he called the chief Stolen Generations "propagandist", a claim that he has repeated, according to a Factiva search I made in preparing this piece, on no fewer than 32 occasions. Some claims were stunningly dishonest. In In Denial I had outlined four biographies of mixed descent children who had been removed from mother, family and community as a way of demonstrating the policy and practice in different states and territories and in different historical periods. Time and again Bolt told the readers of the Herald Sun that in all my research I had only been able to find four cases of "stolen" children. Bolt also entangled himself in contradiction. On the one hand, he very frequently accused me time and again of being a propagandist. On the other, he repeated hardly less frequently the criticisms I had made of Bringing Them Home, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity report into Aboriginal child removal. "Even Manne acknowledges…" If I was indeed a propagandist why would I have been critical of the major report into Aboriginal child removal? Moreover while outlining my criticisms of Bringing Them Home often Bolt suggested to his readers that I rejected all the conclusions of the report. This was not true. In general, I praised the report. Finally, on several occasions Bolt suggested to his readers that I was profiting from the research I was undertaking into mixed descent Aboriginal child removal. I had profited, he claimed, by winning a Queensland Premier's Prize for In Denial. I had profited by being paid the standard fee for writing a Quarterly Essay. It was even suggested that I had profited personally from a comparatively modest grant I had received from the Australian Research Council to work in the Commonwealth and state government archives. Bolt called the grant a "top up" of my salary. Not true, and deceptive. Grants are carefully audited and must be spent on nothing but research. They are not income.

Between March 2001 and May 2006 Bolt had written in the Herald Sun attacking me, mainly although not exclusively as the Stolen Generations chief propagandist, on no fewer than 47 occasions. More importantly, by May 2006 he had written no fewer than 70 entirely ill-informed articles on the supposed myth of the Stolen Generations. Apart from ad hominem attacks on scholars working in the field, Bolt's articles had three main interconnected characteristics. Firstly, as a "terrible simplifier", Bolt distorted beyond recognition the individual histories of mixed descent children who had been removed from mothers, families and communities in order to demonstrate they had not been "stolen". Secondly, Bolt treated the general name Indigenous Australians by now attached to the phenomenon of child removal – the "Stolen Generations" – not as a metaphor but as a literal description. The result was to exonerate cruel and inhumane but lawful policy on the ground that it did not involve the crime of kidnapping. Most weirdly of all, in his discussion of the question of the Stolen Generations, Bolt ignored entirely the problem that was central to any sane historical discussion of mixed descent Aboriginal child removal, namely the policies and practices of the states and territories in the decades between 1900 and 1970. He simply assumed, without any evidence provided, that Indigenous child removal was motivated by concerns about neglect. How far in all this Bolt was driven by ideological zeal and absence of empathy and how far by limited historical understanding or intelligence, it was difficult to decide.

In June 2006 Bolt wrote a column arguing that the left was frightened of engaging in argument with the right. In response, I sent a letter to the Herald Sun pointing out the hypocrisy. Five years ago, I argued, Bolt had fled from a debate on the Stolen Generations. In a private email, Bolt now argued that the reason he would not debate me was that he had not been sent a copy of the Quarterly Essay. He apparently forgot that this contradicted the public reason he had offered in 2001 for pulling out of the debate at the last moment.

The day after my letter was published, I was invited onto 3AW in Melbourne. Bolt challenged me to name 10 stolen children. This was, I must admit, a cunning move. Unless one is prepared for a challenge of this kind, lists of names of the victims of a policy do not trip off the tongue. I doubt I would have done better if I had been asked to name 10 victims of the Stalin terror or the Armenian genocide, matters I have read a very great deal about. Bolt's "name 10" myth was born.

Soon after this radio encounter – the transcript of which was published in the Herald Sun – I asked the director of the Melbourne Writers' Festival if she was interested in inviting Andrew Bolt for a debate with me on the Stolen Generations. What then followed was truly bizarre. Bolt made it a condition of his participation that I send him a list beforehand not merely of 10 "stolen children" but of "a hundred" or even "hundreds". I emailed Bolt to let him know that I found his request peculiar. The issue dividing us was whether or not there were 10 or a hundred or indeed thousands of "stolen children". What Bolt seemed to require, as a condition of agreeing to a debate, was that I first provide him with the evidence proving that he was wrong. Although we had by now entered an Alice In Wonderland world, I told him I was happy to meet his condition so long as he provided me with a definition of what counted for him as a "stolen child". Bolt refused to answer this question. Nonetheless I decided to send him a reasonably detailed list of mixed descent children removed in the different states and territories between 1900 and 1970.

I divided the list sent to him into four categories. The first involved cases outlined in detail in books. Here there were 12 names. The second category was of "half-caste" children seized in Queensland at the beginning of the 20th century. As I explained to Bolt: "The origin of the policy of 'half-caste' child removal began in Queensland at the turn of the century. All these children were 'half-castes' who came to the attention of the Protector Walter Roth. He authorised for them to be formally arrested. None of them received a welfare assessment of any kind. All of them were found guilty of being neglected after a perfunctory hearing of a magistrate's court." According to the relevant law, the Industrial Schools and Reformatory Act of 1865, being Aboriginal was in itself evidence of neglect. In this category I provided Bolt with some 65 names. The third category was of children sent to "half-caste" institutions in the Northern Territory in the interwar period. As I explained to Bolt: "In the Northern Territory from the early 1920s 'half-caste' children were picked up by authorities of the Commonwealth government (which administered the Territory) and sent to one of two extraordinarily overcrowded 'half-caste' homes, in Darwin and Alice Springs. None of the children received any welfare assessment. None was taken before a court … The aspiration of the policy was to pick up all these children …" There were some 120 names in this group. Finally in the fourth category I sent Bolt a list of 60 names of those who had been removed and had subsequently provided testimony to a Howard government-funded Stolen Generations Oral History Project. Simply to convince Bolt to debate me I had provided him with some 260 names of mixed-descent children who had been removed by government from their mothers, families and communities and sent to institutions. At last Bolt agreed to a debate.

I had a special reason for wanting to drag Bolt along to a debate. Prior to the occasion, I decided I would prepare a documentary collection which I intended to hand over to him on the night. Simultaneously I would make the collection available electronically on the website of the Monthly. Nothing Bolt had written in the Herald Sun on the un-Australian "myth" of the "Stolen Generations" – amounting by now to scores of thousands of words – had displayed even the remotest understanding of the history of mixed-descent child removal. I calculated that if he was presented in full public view with the kind of evidence historians work with, and if he felt compelled to read it, he would either understand his ignorance and quietly vacate the field, or be exposed to the public as a fraud. Somewhat alarmingly, on the night of the debate Bolt referred to the documents collected as "bits of paper". This is not an attitude to historical evidence that even David Irving takes. It was an inauspicious start.

The documentary collection (still available at the Monthly) contained several different kinds of evidence. The first kind was statistical. In 1994 the Australian Bureau of Statistics carried out a detailed survey of Indigenous Australians. One question asked concerned separation from natural family. What the survey revealed was that for those born after 1980, 1.6 per cent of Indigenous children had been taken away from their natural families; that for those born between 1970 and 1979, 4.6 per cent had been removed; and that for all Indigenous children born before 1970 over 10 per cent had been separated from their natural families. The almost inescapable conclusion was that prior to 1970 separation of a considerable proportion of Indigenous children was government policy and practice across Australian states and the Northern Territory. It also largely falsified Bolt's strident claim that Indigenous children in danger had ceased to be afforded protection because of the "myth" of the "Stolen Generations" that had been popularised by Bringing Them Home. The survey, which revealed that Indigenous child removal had declined radically after1980, was conducted three years before the publication of Bringing Them Home.

The second kind of evidence I provided Bolt in the documentary collection was of explicit statements of government policy. There was, for example, the following statement from the 1911 report of the NSW Board for Protection of Aborigines: "Of these children, a number who are half-castes, quadroons, and octoroons are increasing with alarming rapidity… Present experience has shown that the children cannot be properly trained under the present environments, and it is essential that they should be removed at as early an age as possible." And there was the following statement from the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory, Dr Cecil Cook in 1931: "Briefly, the halfcaste policy in this Territory embraces the collection of all illegitimate halfcastes, male and female under the age of 16 years, for housing in institutions for educational purposes…" This policy statement made it clear that at this time children were not removed in the Northern Territory because of suspected, let alone proven, neglect. The word "all" is not difficult to grasp.

Bolt claimed that Indigenous "half-caste" child removal was not racist. The documents also made it clear that the Commonwealth at this time supported Cook's policy of "breeding out the colour". Was a policy of "breeding out the colour" not racist then in his opinion? Or again. If the policy concerned neglect and not race why were no "full-bloods" removed in the Northern Territory or indeed elsewhere? And if no racism was involved in the policy and practice of "half-caste" child removal, why had the New South Wales Board of Protection referred to the high birth rate of the zoological categories – "half-castes", "quadroons" and "octoroons" – as representing a positive "menace" to the future of their state? And, for that matter, why had the under-secretary of the Home Department in Queensland, WJ Gall, written that the only solution to the problem of the "half-caste" was a state-sponsored policy of sterilisation?

The third kind of evidence was of the occasional expressions of moral repugnance felt by those who observed or carried out the child removal policy. The document collection quoted a magistrate in Cardwell, Queensland, in 1903 who was approached by an Aboriginal mother whose 14-year-old son, Walter, had been seized and who then wrote on her behalf to the Protector Roth: "All the sophistry you can bring to bear upon it, cannot alter it from what it is viz. a barefaced case of kidnapping, dare you assert that under English law you have a better right to this boy than the mother who reared and fed him…" It also quoted the 1919 exchange of letters between the Police Inspector at Broome, Drewry, and the Western Australian Protector, A.O.Neville. Drewry wrote to Neville: "I desire to submit that this seizing and removing of these children is obnoxious to the Police and I trust that some official of the Aborigines Dept. will be appointed to do it … in these cases no cause has been shown, yet he can seize all aboriginal or half-caste children under 16 years of age. No neglect has been shown by the mothers in these cases … The children have the natural love for the mother …" To Drewry's letter, Neville replied: "If the duty of bringing in half-caste children is obnoxious to the Police, it is strange that this Department has not previously been advised of this, in view of the hundreds of cases that have had attention …" I wondered what Bolt would make of this exchange? If the policy was one of removing children in danger why did a tough police inspector from Broome believe it to be "obnoxious"? Why did he argue that in these cases of child removal there had been no shown cause of neglect? And, above all, how would Bolt be able to continue to claim that in Australian policy and practice there have not been even 10 cases of "stolen children" between 1900 and 1970 when he discovered the Chief Protector in Western Australia referring to "hundreds" of removals, of a kind Inspector Drewry regarded as obnoxious, effected just in his state and just by 1919?

The final kind of evidence in the documentary collection came from letters and memoirs showing policy and practice in the different states and territories at different times. The case of 'Walter' was revealed in a detailed correspondence. It illuminated the cruelty of Queensland policy in the early days under Roth, where "half-caste" children were routinely seized. The memoir of Margaret Tucker, If Everyone Cared, was quoted to show the tragic human impact of the post-1911 New South Wales removals policy. The conservative Christian memoir, Mt Margaret: A Drop in the Bucket, written by Margaret Morgan, the daughter of missionaries in Western Australia, documented the crippling fears of the police felt by mothers of the children of mixed descent. The memoirs of Bob Randall, Songman, and John Moriarty, Saltwalter Fella, showed vividly how the policy operated in the Northern Territory during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Randall was sent to the Bungalow at Alice Springs to the outrage and distress of his Aboriginal family. Moriarty was one day taken by authority from school at Roper River. His mother simply did not know what had befallen him. Doris Kartinyeri tells us in her memoir, Kick The Tin, how in South Australia in 1945, shewas removed to a mission after her mother died in childbirth. Her entire Indigenous family was distraught. In the collection there is a letter Lang Dean wrote to The Age recalling how his father, a policeman who worked on the Murray River during the 1930s, would weep openly in the evenings after his work that day had involved seizing the "half-caste" children living on the station at Cumeragunga. What would Bolt make of this evidence? Would he have the temerity to claim all these people were lying? And if he would not, why precisely did cases such as these not meet his demanding but also secret "stolen children" qualification test?

Bolt received this documentary collection in front of an audience of 700 people. Shortly after, I wrote in The Age: "Before the debate I prepared a 46,000 word documentary collection on 'half-caste' child removal. No one could read this collection without understanding how widespread, cruel and racist the policy and practice was … I handed Bolt a copy on Sunday. If Bolt, without taking this evidence into account, continues to claim that the stolen generations is a myth, the nature of his journalism will be plain."

Not only did Bolt ignore the evidence presented in the documentary collection. After the debate, almost everything Bolt wrote about the Stolen Generations was not merely false, but provably so on the basis of the evidence he had in his possession.

Bolt claimed on a dozen occasions or more that I had challenged but had failed to name even 10 "stolen" children. Usually he failed to mention that I had sent him some 260 names. He never mentioned that I had asked him to supply a definition of what counted for him as a stolen child and that he had refused. On one rare occasion when he did acknowledge that I had sent him more than 200 names, Bolt claimed that the names I had sent him all came from Queensland. They did not. He claimed that in these cases neglect had been proven at court. In fact, as I had already made clear to him, having Aboriginal blood was itself sufficient proof of neglect under Queensland's 1865 Industrial Schools and Reformatory Act. Bolt also claimed that the children in the "half-caste" homes in interwar Darwin and Alice Springs were sent there because of neglect. As the documentary collection shows beyond ambiguity, they were not. The policy set out in 1934 was explicit: "It is the policy of the Administration to collect all half-castes from the native camps at an early age and transfer them to the Government Institutions at Darwin and Alice Springs."

Bolt continued to claim that no racism was involved in the policy of mixed descent child removal. As already argued, the documentary collection revealed that the Commonwealth government in 1933 supported the policy of "breeding out the colour" of the "half-castes" whose removal it had organised. The collection published the 1909 view of the Western Australian Protector James Isdell. "I would not hesitate for one moment to separate any half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic their momentary grief. They soon forget their offspring." Indeed anyone reading the documentary collection would discover that a vicious racism concerning the "half-castes" was pervasive during the period before the Second World War. Bolt continued to claim that because now Indigenous children in danger were not being removed "my" Stolen Generations myth was responsible for killing children. As already argued, the Bureau of Statistics had shown that the practice of removing children had greatly diminished by 1994, three years before the publication of Bringing Them Home.

As Bolt had ignored evidence in his possession, it was indeed perfectly plain by now what kind of journalist he was. Given his obvious disregard for truth, it is no surprise that he has been found guilty of a serious case of defamation (Popovich) and of a serious breach of the Racial Discrimination Act (Eatock et al).

My story has a curious ending. When the erstwhile anti-Murdoch campaigner, Bruce Guthrie, was still editor-in-chief of the Herald Sun I emailed him asking for a thousand words to refute Andrew Bolt's "name ten" challenge. Guthrie replied that he could not give me an answer while Andrew Bolt was on holiday. This was a curious answer. I thought the editor-in-chief might actually run the paper. On several occasions I repeated my request. Guthrie did not respond. Recently Michael Kroger delivered an address to the Institute of Public Affairs in honour of Andrew Bolt. "It was Andrew Bolt who challenged Robert Manne to name just 10 members of the Stolen Generation, something Manne has yet to achieve." Nothing I will ever write will make the slightest difference to people like Kroger. My supposed failure to name 10 members of the Stolen Generations is now a settled part of contemporary right-wing mythology. Following the devastating Bromberg judgment that found Bolt in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1,000 well-heeled members of the Australian right donated money for a full page advertisement in his defence. That a journalist of his type is now a hero of what passes for Australian conservatism is a telling indication of what has happened to the political culture of this country over the past 20 years.


This article was first published on Robert Manne's Left, Right, Left blog.

Robert Manne is Professor of Politics at La Trobe University.


 
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@abcthedrum Why the left should support Katter's Australian Party

Honest Bob

Jade Connor

There's one thing that's more wrong than our politicians: our political scientists' complete misdiagnosis of what's happening in the formation of Katter's Australian Party, and what it might mean for our politics.

What the intelligentsia doesn't get is that the hard left of politics will find a lot of common ground with our Bob. The left, and Greens supporters, should vote for the Australian Party at the next elections.

Apparently, the right-wing Mr Katter is going to split the conservative vote. But has anyone even read the policies on the party's website?

Apparently, Mr Katter represents the latest version of Hansonism. But one of the party's main platform policies is this:

Governments must ensure that every Australian is, and in particular employees, farmers and franchisees are able to bargain collectively to protect and promote their economic interests and that all, wherever practicable, have access to compulsory arbitration.

And as for the far right, some commentators have even compared the Australian Party swell of support to the rise of the US Tea Party. Umm... really? The Tea Party is a radical, extremist, free-market and small-government party - almost the complete opposite of the Australian Party.

The left should support Katter's Australian Party. It's got a hard-line position on coal seam gas. It's against economic rationalism. It's deeply concerned about the state of our hospitals. It's opposed to further privatisation.

Currently, the Australian Party is seeking to contest upcoming Australian elections. It is opposed to the Tea Party on most economic matters. It also differs from the One Nation Party in that it has an active economic agenda (conservative, anti-free market policies; and support for collective bargaining).
The Australian Party is also a non-racist party, and it actively supports egalitarian policies for Indigenous Australians. The party (mostly) does not actively pursue socially conservative policies. Have a look on the website and you'll see most of the issues aren't social ones, they're economic. Although social conservatism is usually associated with issues such as abortion, the party doesn't have a position on this (or most solely social policy issues): that's a matter of social conscience for individual party members.

An important phenomenon in the Australian ideological debate is that few everyday left-wing people in our country ever focus on economic issues: they almost exclusively are interested in social issues. A very intelligent left-wing friend of mine was actively engaged when we were watching Lateline one night, but when Lateline Business came on his eyes glazed over, and we had a good conversation about why.

When I was studying economics in university, I was almost always the only 'annoying' left-wing student in the tutorials. I remember always being the odd person out, in classes full of mostly business-minded, centrist and free-market-liberal-minded students. Left-wing people tend more often to study history, nursing, education, sociology, and other such subjects. Basically, the left does not engage in the economic policy debate in any meaningful way. The left vacates the debate, and leaves it up to the economic liberals to decide our country's economic policies and the future.

This leaves social democrats with a background in economics looking for other alliances, including with conservatives. On social policy, policies where most members of the public can understand the basics, social democrats like the Greens and social conservatives like Hansonites are worlds apart. But on economic policies, social democrats and economic conservatives have a very similar mindset. They are natural allies who must combine their forces and cooperate in the political debate between the community and economic rationalists.

It is doubtful that a Tea Party agenda would be politically influential in the Australian context. But the question remains: might the Australian Party be the type of conservative party that could be successful in Australia? Consider, firstly, that one of the main weaknesses of the existing right-of-centre parties in Australia is industrial relations or 'work choices' policies - which the Australian Party is opposed to. Trade unions form a significant portion of the Australian Party's supporters.

So here's the rub. True Conservatives aren't liberals. Conservatives never were liberals, until the "New Right" Thatcherism and Reaganism changed things. But true conservatives aren't liberals. Just like the far left, or the left faction of the Labor Party, true conservatives support government intervention in the mixed economy, and they oppose rich, powerful business interests that exploit the little guys - like farmers or workers. The Australian Party also supports proper care for disadvantaged people in genuine need, and the elderly.

In fact, there are centuries of conservative or Christian thought that believe in workers' rights; and support the institution of the family against exploitation from business interests. Conservatives also support proper care for the ill, weak and needy. They believe in the importance of financial security and stability - rather than economically liberal policies, which have done so much to undermine job security for workers and income security for farmers.

Too often the left focuses just on social issues, but ignores economic policies. Ask yourself this: are the Greens winning the debate on economic issues against the free-market radicals who want to privatise everything and who still insist on so-called labour market flexibility (which just means lower wages for employees). Honestly, do the Greens have expertise in economic issues, or is it more just a passing interest? Of course, the Greens focus on environmental and social policies, which is fair enough - but who is left to challenge the major parties on economic issues?

Okay, okay... but what about gay marriage? Well, you've got me there. I'm sorry, the Australian Party doesn't support gay marriage. But except for left voters who are of the view that gay marriage is the single most important issue, the only issue out of the thousand issues you could consider when determining your vote, most of the left will find they have lots in common with the true conservatives in the Australian Party. But remember, Labor and Liberal both oppose gay marriage, too. And remember, gay marriage is a federal issue, not relevant to state elections.

Okay, okay... One Nation was a bit of a fail. But ask yourself whether Katter's Australian Party is exactly like One Nation, or whether it's actually really different. Both Katter's and One Nation are very different to the radical free-market Tea Party.

Let's look at something even more fundamental, too: a strong belief in parliamentary democracy. The Australian Party strongly opposes the current two-party system where Labor and Liberal MPs are forced to vote along party lines in all matters - even where it can be demonstrated that it is directly against the interests of an individual MP's electorate. Labor actually enshrines this in its constitution. It's plain wrong: MPs should always vote in the interests of their electorate, not according to what factional bosses or Treasury officials dictate.

So, if you're truly left, and you're still keen on sticking with the Greens, please do. But make sure you give your preferences to the right party. Preference the party that agrees with the left on biofuels, coal seam gas, empowerment for our First Australians, policies to support an equitable distribution of income, collective bargaining, bank lending that favours families and small business, more money for public hospitals, and public ownership rather than more privatisation.

There are parties worse than the Australian Party: namely, Labor and Liberal. On social issues, the left and conservatives are worlds apart. But conservatives and the left do share something in common: a common view on economic policies.

So are the left and mad-hatter Bob Katter strange bedfellows? Only for political commentators who don't know what they're talking about.

Jade Connor is a former postgraduate student of UQ's School of Political Science and International Studies; currently studying a Master of Arts in writing; a left-wing, vegan social democrat; and a member of Katter's Australian Party.

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Greens reveal new policy for pokies reform, $1 maximum-bet pokies could remove the need for mandatory pre-commitment.

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Productivity Commission report

EMILY BOURKE: The Greens have opened another avenue for poker machine reform which could help the Government's efforts to combat problem gambling.

The Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie has threatened to withdraw support for the Government next year unless his proposed poker machine reforms go ahead.

The other two key independents who are keeping Labor in power have previously indicated that they have concerns about the policy but neither have made a final decision.

At the same time the gaming industry has been campaigning strongly against the proposed restrictions on poker machines.

Today the Greens have put forward an alternative that they say the clubs should accept. They're calling for a $1 bet limit.

Felicity Ogilvie reports.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Greens poker machine policy is set up as an alternative to the reforms that the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie has negotiated with the Government.

The Greens are keeping the $1 betting limit from Mr Wilkie's policy. But their policy avoids the mandatory pre-commitment in Mr Wilkie's policy where gamblers set limits on the amount of money they're prepared to lose.

The Victorian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale explains their policy.

RICHARD DI NATALE: Most people, 88 per cent of recreational gamblers bet a dollar or less per spin. So it makes for very little difference. People won't notice the change.

The people that will notice the change are the people who bet large amounts of money each spin and lose up to several thousand dollars per hour.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Greens say they're bringing on another poker machine policy to make sure the reforms get through the Parliament.

And Senator Di Natale has indicated the Greens would still vote for Andrew Wilkie's poker machine reforms.

RICHARD DE NATALE: We are not going to jeopardise reform in this area. What we've tried to do is introduce a circuit breaker.

We know that clubs have been running this very strong line about a licence to punt and they are making the argument that it's going to be a huge up-front cost to clubs. Under our proposal that doesn't happen. We hope the Government is interested.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin has put out a statement saying the Government's position of supporting pre-commitment has not changed.

It's not clear if the other independents whose support is needed for the poker machine reforms would prefer the Greens policy. But Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor's votes will be crucial.

The independent who started the reforms - Andrew Wilkie - is undeterred by the Greens' new policy.

Mr Wilkie has put out a statement saying he's please that the Greens policy dovetails with his own bid to limit poker machine bets to $1.

The independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon also says that the Greens policy overlaps with his bid to limit poker machine bets to $1.

NICK XENOPHON: Well Andrew Wilkie's ideas and the Greens' ideas and my ideas and the majority of the Gambling Reform Committee are the same idea - that machines should be $1 maximum bet machines, smaller jackpot, smaller levels of loss, 90 per cent reduction, consistent entirely with the Productivity Commission's report on this but having $1 maximum bets.

Mandatory pre-commitment was another aspect of the Productivity Commission's report which would be optional for high loss, high intensity machines where you can put in $10 per spin at a time and load up the machines and literally be able to lose thousands of dollars an hour.

FELICITY OGILVIE: But the Greens bid to appease the biggest critic of the poker machine reforms has already failed.

The executive director of Clubs Australia Anthony Ball says a $1 betting limit won't stop problem gamblers.

ANTHONY BALL: Problem gamblers will continue to play. And this is what the Greens haven't pointed out. How does it help a problem gambler?

It's the same problem that Andrew Wilkie has with mandatory pre-commitment. How will it help a problem gambler?

If their goal is to simply drive down the amount of gambling that happens on poker machines, well you may well go for both of these.

But if you really are about helping problem gamblers and that's what we should be about, you wouldn't give them a card to gamble and you wouldn't introduce massive change in gaming technology to introduce a $1 maximum bet.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The Greens maintain that the $1 betting limit will help problem gamblers to stop losing so much money on poker machines.

EMILY BOURKE: Felicity Ogilvie reporting.

The Greens have unveiled an alternative gambling reform policy that they claim could help defuse the heated debate about poker machine reform.

They say low-impact, $1 maximum-bet pokies could remove the need for mandatory pre-commitment.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has said his support for Julia Gillard's minority government depends on legislation to combat problem gambling via poker machines, but clubs say they will be crippled under the legislation.

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale says the Greens policy would address Clubs Australia's major concern about the high cost of introducing mandatory pre-commitment.

Senator Di Natale says the policy is simpler and cheaper for clubs to administer and it gives the Federal Government more options.

"Under our policy in fact the cost is negligible ... they can do it in many cases remotely. [They] won't need to send a technician in to change the machines because the parameters already exist," he said.

"We think this actually increases the chance of reform. We think we've got two options now on the table: we've got an option that may be more attractive to government and maybe more attractive to the industry."

Senator Di Natale says the party also wants to see a maximum jackpot of $500 to "limit the volatility of the machines".

He also wants to see changes that would only allow a maximum of $20 to be loaded into a pokie at any one time.

"That provides a bit of a circuit breaker for someone who's in the zone, who's gambling, they have to reach for their wallet," he said.

"They can't front-end a machine with hundreds of dollars."

In a statement, Mr Wilkie welcomed what he called the Greens' "continuing interest" in poker machine reform.

"I'm pleased to see their policy dovetails with my reforms, which include mandatory pre-commitment on high-intensity machines and the roll out of low-intensity machines with $1 maximum bets that can played outside of mandatory pre-commitment," Mr Wilkie said.

"I'm continuing to work with the Federal Government to implement our reforms, which have not changed in any way.

"I also welcome the Australian Greens' preparedness to ultimately support the introduction of mandatory pre-commitment on high-intensity machines."

But the Greens' bid to appease the biggest critic of the poker machine reforms have already failed.

The executive director of Clubs Australia, Anthony Ball, says a $1 limit will not cure problem gamblers.

Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin has put out a statement saying the Government's position of supporting pre-commitment has not changed.

Senator Di Natale has indicated the Greens would still vote for Mr Wilkie's poker machine reforms.

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