Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt (born 26 September 1959 ) is an Australian conservative social and political commentator.

He has worked at the News Corp-owned newspaper company The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) for many years, for both The Herald and its successor, the Herald Sun.

His current roles include blogger and columnist at the Herald Sun and host of television show The Bolt Report each weeknight.

In Australia, Bolt is a controversial public figure, who has frequently been accused of abrasive demeanour, racist views and inappropriate remarks on various political and social issues.

Bolt was born in Adelaide, his parents being newly-arrived Dutch immigrants.

He spent his childhood in remote rural areas, including Tarcoola, South Australia, while his father worked as a school teacher and principal.

After completing secondary school at Murray Bridge High School, Bolt travelled and worked overseas before returning to Australia and beginning an arts degree at the University of Adelaide.

Dropping out of university he took up a cadetship with The Age, a Melbourne broadsheet newspaper.

His roles at The Age included sports writer, prior to joining The Herald.

His time as a reporter included a period as the newspaper's Asia correspondent, based first in Hong Kong and later in Bangkok.

He worked for the Hawke government on two election campaigns.

Bolt has had various roles on numerous TV networks, radio stations and in the print media.

From 2001 to 2011, he was a regular guest on Insiders.

In June 2003, Bolt published an article criticising Andrew Wilkie in which he quoted from a classified intelligence document written by Wilkie as an intelligence analyst for the Office of National Assessments.

It was claimed, but never proven, that someone in Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office had leaked the document to Bolt.

A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police said that they did not have any evidence to identify the culprit.

Bolt has frequently clashed with Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, about the Stolen Generation.

Bolt has said that there were no large-scale removals of children "for purely racist reasons".

After Bolt challenged Manne to "name just 10" children stolen for racial reasons, Manne replied with 50 names, which Bolt in response said included children rescued from sexual abuse and removed for other humanitarian reasons.

Manne argued that Bolt and others were engaged in historical denialism despite "a mountain of documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony".

Bolt noted many instances of contemporary Aboriginal children being left "in grave danger that we would not tolerate for children of any other race because we are so terrified of the 'stolen generations' myth."

Bolt has questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation.

Bolt stated that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children.

Robert Manne responded that Bolt did not address the documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations and that this is a clear case of historical denialism.

Bolt then challenged Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justified the claim that children were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argued that Manne did not respond and that this was an indication of unreliability of the claim that there was policy of systematic removal.

In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names.

Bolt stated that, prior to a debate, Manne provided him with a list of 12 names that he was able to show during the debate was "a list of people abandoned, saved from abuse or voluntarily given up by their parents"; and that during the actual debate, Manne produced a list of 250 names without any details or documentation as to their circumstances.

Bolt also stated that he was subsequently able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and was unable to find a case where there was evidence to justify the term "stolen".

He stated that one of the names on the list of allegedly stolen children was 13-year-old Dolly, taken into state care after being "found seven months pregnant and penniless, working for nothing on a station".

In 2005, Bolt released a compilation of newspaper columns in a book entitled Still Not Sorry: The Best of Andrew Bolt.

Bolt's column and articles are published by News Corp Australia in the Herald Sun and his column is published in The Daily Telegraph, The Advertiser in Adelaide, Northern Territory News and The Courier-Mail.

In May 2005, Bolt established a web-only forum in which readers could offer comments, feedback and questions in response to his columns.

He posted some of these comments on the Herald Sun website.

The forum changed to a more conventional blog format in July 2006.

Bolt co-hosted a daily radio show, Breakfast with Steve Price and Andrew Bolt, on the former MTR 1377.

Bolt left Insiders in May 2011 to host his own weekly program, The Bolt Report, on Network Ten.

The Bolt Report ended on Ten in 2015 and, in 2016, Bolt became a contributor to Sky News Live.

He appeared weekly on radio station 2GB in Sydney for The Clash with union leader Paul Howes and as of 2016 is a regular guest four nights a week on Nights with Steve Price, which is broadcast on 2GB and Melbourne's 3AW, 4BC Brisbane and network stations across Australia.

The Bolt Report subsequently resumed on Sky News Live in May 2016 as a nightly format.

He has also appeared on the ABC television show Q&A and ABC Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams.