Andrew Bolt: I have more opinions than is healthy in a normal person

In news that will concern his fans and please his detractors, Andrew Bolt is planning to take his foot off the pedal | LISTEN

Andrew Bolt at home with dogs Kees, left, and Ralf: ‘I do feel passionately’. Picture: Aaron Francis

Andrew Bolt is planning to take his foot off the pedal.

In news that will concern his fans and please his detractors, the columnist, blogger, TV presenter, radio host and author plans to cut down on work.

There’s a mid-year break to see his daughter in Europe and then plans next year to rebuild his weekender, when he and his wife, journalist Sally Morrell, finally become empty nesters after raising three children.

“Work less and enjoy more will happen quite shortly,” Bolt tells The Australian’s Behind the Media podcast from the kitchen table of his Melbourne home.

“That will involve perhaps reading more than writing ­because I think there are so many absolutely wonderful works that have been written that I haven’t had the time to read.”

The columnist, rarely if ever mentioned without the words “controversial” and “conservative” appended to his name, is mindful that he turns 60 next year and plans to reduce his work output. “Yes, yes, build a new home, a library with bedrooms and walls for my paintings and, like (Roman statesman) Cincinnatus, lay down the sword and take up the plough — well, plant some citrus trees anyway.”

The columnist and blogger for News Corp’s Herald Sun, syndicated in other papers, Sky News host and Macquarie Media radio co-host had a slightly delayed start to work this year after he fell from a ladder and hurt several ribs and his wrist, which had to be pinned. Bolt wants to discuss politics, journalism and ideas; I want to discuss him. Events start slightly on edge when he doesn’t get the answer he wants after asking if I am convinced by his arguments that the stolen generation, as ­described by commentators such as Robert Manne, didn’t exist.

“When you say no, my heart sinks because I really think I’ve presented the case factually so overwhelmingly and then emo­tion­ally, as in you can dare believe that it didn’t exist without feeling that you’re racist or lacking compassion. I think that shows the limitations of my so-called power.

“Journalists have far less power than people like to think. I shouldn’t say this because I’d like to think that I have power but it’s not true.”

Does he get a fire in his belly each time he writes? “Not quite a fire in my belly. But I do feel passionately what kind of things that I fight for.

“And sometimes I do think I’ve got more opinions than is healthy in a normal person. I shouldn’t care so much about so much but to some extent I’m paid to care. Otherwise I couldn’t fill a column.”

But he couldn’t handle the criticisms unless he felt the issues were important. “Why would you put yourself out there? You’d be nuts.”

Bolt regards his portfolio ­career as “happenstance”, not ­design, and his blog (he was a digital early adopter in 2005), is central to it, feeding into his print, TV and radio appearances.

But he will pursue causes, such as indigenous affairs, even though online statistics show the audience isn’t there. “Oh well, everyone feels the pressure. I mean, that clip meter is ruthless, it’s ­relentless. There’s a metric that tells you that you’ve failed, in one sense, to tell someone that what you think is important, is important, because they’d rather hear about, you know, a sex scandal at Melbourne housewives.”

Bolt used to write, still does, with his late father-in-law in mind. “Loved him to bits. He was a taxi driver and sort of introduced me to the real Australians, as a migrant son of a migrant family that was quite insular. If I was being read by people like Claude and a lot of other people locked out of the political class and its processes and its codes, it was up to me to try and interpret all these things for people.”

But it is not long before he arcs up about his friendship and support for Tony Abbott. Isn’t it time to let go, I ask, thinking of all the columnists and colleagues who no longer support him.

“A friend is a friend. What should I let go of? I like him and I respect the character that he is. What is it you want me to let go of? Because he’s a public figure of embarrassment, you think I should drop him? Is that what you’re arguing?” Bolt is building up a head of steam.

“What has he done that I should not be his friend? Well, because it’s hurting me to be his friend, I should not be his friend? That would be dishonourable.”

He notes the many occasions he has written tough columns about Abbott, over the knighthood to Prince Philip, so significant it made the ABC News, or his column where he said Abbott must change or die, months ­before he lost the leadership.

This didn’t affect the friendship. “Because it’s business, ­Michael,” he quotes, bafflingly. “The Godfather,” he explains. “I owe my loyalty to the readers and the viewers. Otherwise I’m useless to them.”

Is there a worthy leader on the horizon? “That’s a scary question. I have some hope for Andrew Hastie but, then again, he is so Christian that I wonder whether he’d be acceptable and whether he needs to rephrase how he comes to certain views, for his own mind too.”

Bolt always wanted to tell stories and got a cadetship at The Age. He felt he was so hopeless at journalism he left it twice, once to work for the Labor Party and to work in a flower auction hall in The Netherlands and with the State Opera of South Australia.

In 2011 Bolt was taken to court by a group of indigenous Australians over two columns questioning the identity of fair-skinned Aborigines. They took a class ­action claiming Bolt wrote they sought professional advantage from the colour of their skin. The judge found Bolt had breached section 18C of the ­Racial Discrimination Act and the ruling was not appealed.

Bolt says the columns were about whether people had a choice to choose their identity. “I find it still staggering that two of my columns have been deemed too dangerous for people to even read them. They’ve been banned. I mean, the ban is so comprehensive I can’t even describe safely what I did.

“I got hissed at by people outside court. I felt there was a great public shaming that I didn’t know I’d survive or whether I could keep going, it was just so horrible.”

He says that to be called a racist for an article arguing against the politics of racial division was “just so horrible”. “I mean, it’s precisely ­because I’m not a racist that I wrote the stories, and yet I was condemned for the exact ­opposite.”

In court, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Bolt’s columns were akin to a “eugenics approach” and similar to writings that led to the Holocaust.

But he kept going. Why? “I discovered quite a few Australians who share my concerns. And who don’t want me to stop. There is an audience.”