Andrew Bolt: Why many Australians have had it with chancers playing race card

The fashion of damning and rejecting colonial culture is a fraud as many activists pushing the new separatist agenda seem to be enjoying the fruits of colonialism while hating the tree.

Former Aboriginal Liaison Officer in Tasmania’s government Jim Everett is refusing to turn up to a court hearing on charges over an anti-logging protest. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Jim Everett is one of the Aboriginal activists who still don’t realise how much things have changed when Australians a year ago voted No to the Voice.

Many Australians have had it with chancers playing the race card. And now dare say so.

Yet there’s Everett, poet and former Aboriginal Liaison Officer in Tasmania’s government, refusing this week to turn up to a court hearing on charges over an anti-logging protest.

The court had no say over Aborigines, he said: “The colonial court of Tasmania has no jurisdiction over my actions to protect Palawa law in country”.

Everett claims he has an “Aboriginal passport”, but his rejection of our colonial system goes only so far.

He also keeps an Australian passport “so that I can get money, jobs, Centrelink, the age pension”.

So Everett doesn’t want our colonial courts, but does want our colonial money, colonial jobs, colonial Centrelink and colonial age pension.

Jim Everett doesn’t want our colonial courts, but he does want our colonial money, colonial jobs, colonial Centrelink and colonial age pension.. Picture: Elise Kaine

He rejects our rule of law but is hungry for the riches it produces.

This is an important point, because Everett represents a wider faux rejection of Australia and its Western civilisation.

States like Victoria even want to negotiate “treaties” with people identifying as “First Nations”, as if they, too, aren’t Australians.

This is a dead-end movement fed by endless counting of bruises, not blessings.

Thomas Mayo, a Yes campaign leader, was at it again yesterday, still blaming colonialism for all the dysfunction we see in Aboriginal communities: “These things are not to do with Indigenous culture”.

This fashion of damning and rejecting colonial culture is a fraud. Many activists I see pushing the new separatist agenda seem to me to be enjoying the fruits of colonialism while hating the tree.’

I see black-identifying academics in comfortable university jobs. I see the nattily-suited Mayo – actually with substantial Filipino, Dayak, Polish, Jewish and English ancestry as well – flitting between TV studios as he flogs his latest book. I see race-baiting Lidia Thorpe, paid well as a Senator, lolling in the Qantas chairman’s lounge.

I see Everett, insisting on his right to welfare benefits no Aboriginal “nation” had.

None strikes me as serious. They rage against colonial society, but would do more good by giving thanks for the luxuries in which they now loll.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Why many Australians have had it with chancers playing race card