The blogger and commercial broadcaster Andrew Bolt has been declared a racist “by your own criterion” on his own television program by the former Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson.
The two men locked horns on Sunday morning during a dispute over the “Recognise” campaign.
Recognise is a government-funded organisation spearheading the push to acknowledge Indigenous Australians in the constitution. Bolt took exception to a decision by Qantas last week to work with Recognise in promoting the constitutional campaign.
The campaign for recognition enjoys in-principle multi-partisan support. But Bolt is a vocal opponent of the constitutional recognition of Indigenous people because he contends it divides Australians on the grounds of race, and is therefore racist.
The commentator made that argument in opening remarks to a segment on The Bolt Report on Sunday morning.
But Emerson, a panel guest on program, took sharp exception to Bolt describing Recognise as a “racist” campaign.
“I take fundamental issue with your introduction to say this is a racist campaign,” the guest told his host.
Bolt persisted in his analysis, and said: “Dividing people on the grounds of race is racist.”
“Then you are a racist,” Emerson said, “because of the comments you made in relation to Indigenous people. By your own criterion, and that’s what you did. You identified a group of people and went for them.”
Emerson’s remark relates to the legal case in which Bolt was found to have breached racial discrimination laws in articles that implied light-skinned Indigenous people identified themselves as Aboriginal for personal gain.
A clearly furious Bolt said on Sunday Emerson’s observation was wrong, and completely offensive.
Emerson appeared undeterred by the shocked reaction of the host. “Well, I’m offended by you describing this [Recognise] as a racist campaign,” he persisted. “This is not a racist campaign.”
“I said let’s not divide people on the grounds of race,” Bolt said.
“You went after a bunch of Indigenous people. You know you did,” Emerson said.
“I said don’t divide by race. This is dividing by race,” Bolt said.
Emerson persisted in describing Bolt’s characterisation of constitutional recognition as offensive and incorrect.
“We should be mature enough to recognise there were people here before 1788,” Emerson said. “If we are going to talk about racism, let’s talk about the racism in the constitution.”
It’s not the first time Bolt has been confronted with rebuttals using his own rhetorical criteria. The academic Marcia Langton apologised to Bolt after mounting an almost identical argument to Emerson’s during an ABC current affairs program.
Langton noted that his “singling out of ‘fair skinned’ Aboriginal people goes to the issue of ‘race’ and could be construed as racist”.
Langton later apologised, as did the ABC for broadcasting her comment, when Bolt said the observation had left him devastated.