Andrew Bolt: ‘Truth and justice’ commission won’t show whole story

Victoria’s government says it is “committed to acknowledging the truth” of our colonial past but truth is the last thing we can expect.

Victoria’s scarily Orwellian government has set up a “truth and justice” commission to declare the “truth” about how white colonialists ruined it for Aborigines.

It says it “is committed to acknowledging the truth” of our past, but “truth” is about the last thing anyone can expect.

Take Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, a race warrior who declares this “healing” journey should declare the “truth” about child removal — the “stolen generations” — and deaths in custody.

Victorian Greens senator Lidia Thorpe. Picture: AAP

No, it won’t tell the truth about the 100,000 children the Human Rights Commission once deceitfully claimed were stolen from their parents in a “genocide”, just because they were Aboriginal.

We won’t hear anything that undermines the idea that it is our “systemic racism”, as Thorpe claims, that is not allowing “Aboriginal people to prosper”.

I bet this commission will not admit the Stolen Generations Taskforce set up by a former

Victorian Labor government found 36 organisations helping the state’s “stolen generations” but could not find one truly stolen child.

Nor will we hear that Australia’s courts have identified just one stolen child — Bruce Trevorrow, stolen by a social worker in Adelaide, but only because she thought he’d been neglected and abandoned.

And I doubt we’ll hear the truth about the even higher rate of Aboriginal child removal today — that it is in large part because Aboriginal children are 6½ times more likely to be the subject of substantiated reports of harm or danger.

As for deaths in custody, let’s see if this “truth” commission admits Aboriginal prisoners are less likely than white prisoners to die in jail, and the reason Aborigines are more likely to be prisoners is because Aborigines as a whole are more likely to commit crimes.

Yes, there is racism.

Bruce Trevorrow was stolen by a social worker in Adelaide, but only because she thought he’d been neglected and abandoned.

But there are many other reasons for Aborigines not succeeding, on average, as well as our ethnic Chinese, Indians and Jews.

Will we hear the truth about those factors, which go more to Aboriginal culture than white racism?

For instance, Aboriginal children are twice more likely to skip school.

Aboriginal families are more likely to live out where there are few jobs.

Aboriginal women are more than 30 times more likely to be hospitalised by family violence.

If we don’t hear such truths, what do we conclude?

That this commission isn’t about telling “truth” but fanning a dangerous racial grievance.