Andrew Bolt: Business figure hunted for one bad joke as ‘race-shifters’ do far more harm

After one bad joke, Danni Hunter has been forced out as the Property Council’s Victorian chief — but “race shifters” do far more harm.

Danni Hunter resigned as Victorian executive director of the Property Council.

Poor Danni Hunter. If she’d just said she was an Aborigine – not just wanted to be – she’d still have a job.

Hunter has been forced out as executive director of the Property Council of Australia’s Victorian division for telling a bad joke at an industry awards night.

All frocked up and with a fake tan, she reportedly said she “needed lots more fake tans because she wanted to look Indian or Aboriginal”.

One staff member took offence, as is the unforgiving way now, and complained. Hunter is now out, and her career prospects damaged. That’s a huge penalty.

Bruce Pascoe refuses to release any evidence he’s Aboriginal.

In fact, The Age newspaper was so horrified by Hunter’s joke it said it would not print the “racially insensitive comments to protect the privacy of the people involved”.

Wow. That, of course, invited
its readers to imagine horrors far worse than anything Hunter actually said.

But here’s the irony. Many Aboriginal activists, lawyers and writers tell me they’re appalled by all the “race-shifters” – whites claiming to be Aboriginal.

These white fakes can often cause real harm to Aborigines,
not with a dumb joke but by hogging services, benefits, grants and jobs meant for poor or disadvantaged Aborigines.

Take Bruce Pascoe, probably now Australia’s most famous “Aborigine”, and hailed as an “Aboriginal author” and “historian”. In fact, every one of his ancestors in his genealogy are of English descent, and Pascoe refuses to release any evidence that he’s Aboriginal.

The difference with Hunter is that Pascoe didn’t just joke about wanting to look Aboriginal, he went out of his way to seem and even be one. But look how he’s protected. The Age that tut-tuts about Hunter’s “racially insensitive comments” about appearing Aboriginal, has, along with its Sydney Morning Herald stablemate, promoted Pascoe with a photo of him wearing an Aboriginal head band and brandishing clapping sticks. It has also photographed him in very low light, making his very pink skin look kind-of brown.

Pascoe has meanwhile snaffled prizes that should have gone to Aborigines, including a Deadly award for one of his books, and a NSW Indigenous Writers’ Award. His Black Duck Foods business won an Aboriginal business grant, and Melbourne University made him an Enterprise Professor of Indigenous Agriculture, citing his Aboriginal identity.

About all this, The Age has raised not a squeak of protest. The moral: seriously pretending to be Aboriginal is fine, but joking about wanting to look Aboriginal, too – sack that witch!