Andrew Bolt: Let’s face facts on ‘stolen generations’

When it comes to the real number of Aboriginal children who were stolen by racist whites, facts don’t seem to count.

Today we remove even more Aboriginal children than ever from homes where they are beaten, neglected or abused. Picture Gary Ramage

A quiz, to test how you’ve been misled.

Guess how many Aboriginal children were of the “stolen generations” – stolen by racist whites.

Is it “up to 100,000” as claimed in 1997 by the Human Rights Commission and by the ABC? Up to 25,000, as claimed in 2006 by Professor Robert Manne, citing an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey?

At least 33,600, as claimed in 2019 by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey?

At least 13,800 (counting only survivors aged over 50), according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2018.

No, wait, at least 27,200 people aged over 50, said this same institute on Wednesday?

Sorry, but do you get the idea people are just making stuff up?

Look closer and there’s yet more reason to suspect that very little is as it seems with these new government figures.

The institute’s latest report admits its guess is based on a survey of people who “report having been removed from their families” but were not asked why.

This missing detail is critical. Today we remove even more Aboriginal children than ever from homes where they are beaten, neglected or abused.

Under the institute’s method, these children would also be called “stolen”, rather than “saved”.

In the “stolen generations” test case run in the Federal Court in 2000, several witnesses claiming they were stolen turned out to have actually been sent away by their families to go to school, as was Peter Gunner, one of the two claimants.

In fact, for two decades I have challenged activists to name just 10 children stolen for just being Aboriginal.

Not once could anyone give me these names, with proof.

Nor have any been found by our courts to have been stolen like that.

That brings me to another highly dubious claim in this latest government report: that Victoria alone has 2700 “stolen generation” survivors aged over 50.

That’s extremely odd.

A Stolen Generations Taskforce, set up by the then Bracks Labor government and chaired by Aboriginal spokesman Jim Berg, admitted Victoria never had a law permitting the stealing of children just for being Aboriginal.

And while it could find 36 organisations to help the “stolen generations”, it failed to identify a single truly stolen child, despite advertising for them.

But do such facts now count?