Andrew Bolt: The ABC divided Australia, now it wants more money to fix it

The ABC has always been on the side of division, and now its chairman says it needs more of our money to encourage “patriotism”.

Now I’ve heard it all. ABC chairman Kim Williams says the ABC should get even more taxpayer money because we need more patriotism.

Yes, he really did tell the National Press Club on Wednesday that stressing “a set of common beliefs that can bind us together as citizens” – “all the ingredients what we used to call patriotism” – was a “national task” that “will necessarily fall mostly to the ABC”.

The ABC! If that’s so, we really are stuffed.

I totally agree we face a national crisis. We’ve let identity politics, mass immigration, corrupt multiculturalism and a toxic retelling of our history tear Australians apart.

Yet when I once pointed out we were becoming a nation of tribes, I was denounced as “toxic” and accused of trying “to stir up hated”. Yes, by the ABC, of course.

But now its chairman claims we must trust this same ABC, and especially the ABC, to fix things.

Kim Williams thinks the “national task” to unite Australia “will necessarily fall mostly to the ABC”. Picture: Martin Ollman

Boy, is there a lot to fix. Take Wednesday, another typical day in our rapid decline.

In South Australia, a representative of its Aboriginal-only Voice to Parliament was allowed on to the floor of the state parliament to say how rotten and racist Australia was.

That was Leeroy Bilney, claiming to speak for Aboriginals even though he got on to the Voice with just 36 votes in an election shunned by 90 per cent of the state’s Aboriginals.

Then, in our federal parliament, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson had the race card played against her when she asked if Fatima Payman was eligible to sit as a senator, given she had not checked with Afghanistan’s Taliban government whether she could renounce her Afghan citizenship.

In response to that reasonable question, Payman shouted that Hanson brought “disgrace to the human race” by being “racist to anyone who does not look like you”.

Race-baiting senator Lidia Thorpe then seemed to deliberately throw papers at Hanson, later saying she’d defend “black or brown” people. Thorpe identifies as “blak” because one of her eight great-grandparents had Aboriginal ancestors.

Meanwhile, we have Jews too scared to go down the street, and pro-Palestinian extremists intimidating families at the Christmas window display at Melbourne’s Myer.

And where has the patriotic ABC been as the glue dissolves and we crumble into warring tribes?

On the wrong side of every debate.

Payman clashing with Hanson in federal parliament. Picture: Martin Ollman

Williams himself started his speech on Wednesday with a long acknowledgement of country, as if non-Aboriginal Australians do not truly belong.

His presenters routinely announce they are on “Gadigal land” or “Naarm” or “Nipaluna”, though Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and our other cities never existed before white settlement.

The ABC also cheered on the Voice, monstered critics of multiculturalism, and referred to Australia Day as “Invasion Day”.

I was particularly struck by Williams’ warning against “misinformation”: “Most dangerously it is targeting the next generation of Australian children, teenagers and young adults, compromising their confidence about and knowledge of Australian history.”

Yes, Kim, yes! As you say, “This is damaging our social cohesion … weakening us.”

But hang on. The ABC has pushed the divisive “stolen generations” myth harder than anyone, despite the courts not identifying even one child stolen from their parents just for being Aboriginal.

The ABC also promoted Bruce Pascoe to schoolchildren in videos falsely claiming he was Aboriginal, and that Aboriginals had in truth lived in “houses” in “towns” of “1000 people” until wicked whites destroyed it all.

The ABC has spent years dividing Austlirans over “Invasion Day”. Picture: Getty

As for Williams personally, he founded the Australian Film Finance Corporation which later funded Rabbit-Proof Fence, a film that trashed Australia as a racist hellhole, claiming to be the “true story” of how a “racist” official, AO Neville, stole three Aboriginal girls in his genocidal plan to “breed out the Aborigine”.

That film was shown to hundreds of thousands of students, and repeated on Tuesday on SBS as a glimpse into our shameful past.

But the film lies. In fact, Neville ordered the girls removed from their bush camp after reports they’d been ostracised for being part-white, and were at risk of sexual abuse. One, just eight years old, had even been promised in marriage to a grown man.

A constable took the girls with permission of the tribe’s head, and brought them to a home where they’d get a schooling.

Did the ABC ever tell the truth about that film’s “true story”?

As if. It’s always been on the side of division, and Williams’ claim that it’s critical to encouraging “patriotism” is delusional. No, patriots should demand not more millions for the ABC, but none at all.