April Fools' Day for Andrew Bolt

It may be April Fools' Day but is Andrew Bolt joking when he posts something like this:

Reader Sian, hoping to get an ABC internship, was excited by the first half of this ABC announcement:

"Many people would love the opportunity to be introduced to the ABC, and we have created an introduction for you via our ABC National Indigenous Internship Program."

Ah, well. Sian misses out, but a few lucky Aborigines will get an opportunity that people of their colour are rarely offered.

In fact, let’s now meet some of the ABC’s officially “Indigenous Staff”, including lucky beneficiaries of the ABC’s policy to give employment preference to Aborigines, or employment to Aborigines in Aboriginal shows:

 


 (Post modified to remove implication that all the above received indigenous internships.)

Are these people too white to claim their Aboriginal heritage? Should they only be hired if they look black enough? Is Andrew Bolt proposing that we go back to the pre-1950’s policy in which people’s heritage and identity was judged solely by their look?

The policy that judged people by the degree of Aboriginal blood in them was obviously outdated and luckily changed. There are many definitions of what it means to be Aboriginal, which cannot be simply dictated by the colour of someone’s skin.

Without directly being critical of the ABC’s selection process, he satirically jabs the identity of these people by purposely selecting the most white-looking employees from the ABC website.

Although the current definition sits perfectly well with the UN Working Group on Indigenous Population’s definition, Bolt continues to cry out against political correctness and people rorting the welfare system. What should we do Bolt? Just forget that dark page of Australia’s history or on the other end of the spectrum, should we fill a black quota?

The current legislation is based on a three-part definition of descent, self-identification, and community recognition, rather than solely bloodline. 

Or rather we can just look at the definition used in the Mabo case:

“Membership of the indigenous people depends on biological descent from the indigenous people and on mutual recognition of a particular person's membership by that person and by the elders or other persons enjoying traditional authority among those people.”

Whichever way you look at it, Bolt's views are continuing this anti-Aboriginal attitude, are outdated, racist, and opening the gap. 

He is the April fool.