Morning Reading -- Andrew Bolt

When I first came to Australia, I went out to breakfast and grabbed a local newspaper, largely out of habit.
This habit didn’t always serve me well, especially when travelling. A couple of times, I absently grabbed the Los Angeles Times Sunday edition and tossed it into my baggage cart. That thing’s a couple of large books printed on newsprint. On one of my runs to Australia, it served better as a pillow than reading material.

Over breakfast one morning, I grabbed a copy of the Herald Sun to compare with The Australian I’d read in Sydney. At first I wasn’t very impressed. It’s format is similar to a scandal sheet in the US called The Inquirer. The Inquirer is really just a gossip sheet, and the Herald Sun even reads like it. The stories aren’t very well developed and they’re obviously written for the quick read, not for in depth understanding of issues.
Doing the usual shuffle and grab between coffee and paper, I worked my way through the Herald.
On the Editorials page, I saw a story by Andrew Bolt. I don’t remember the topic, but Ob said that he was very outspoken and right-wing; and that she agreed with most of what he had to say on many things. My experience since then has taught me she really didn’t believe in much other than her pocketbook.

In the last 5-6 years, I’ve read Bolt’s commentaries occasionally, and liked what I read. To an American, he sounds very much like a Democrat or (American) Liberal. On that side of the Big Water, Bolt would be a left-winger. Newt Gingrich would have him on a Neo-Conservative hit list. To me, he sounds pretty much centrist, maybe left of center a little.

Bolt is a thinker, that’s for sure. He is an independent thinker, and like most Americans, I respect that. I can imagine in Australia he’s often told he thinks too much.
I don’t agree with everything he has to say though. I never have. The idea of a fast-growing Australia being the source for much of the world’s uranium yet resisting a nuclear power industry of it’s own sounds silly to me. Australia needs low cost power to grow.

And he is opposed to the Charter of Rights initiatives. -- There’s one area where I agree even with Rob Hulls. -- Citizens need the overriding protections of a Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers of American saw clearly that law is brutality, and citizens need protections against the whims and flagrant promises of lawmakers.
Australia is the only English-speaking democracy where civil and human rights are not guaranteed above all other law, and it has led to some true atrocities in the law.

Bolt is not an activist, but a commentator. He reports the reality of situations accurately and with the cynical honesty of someone who is not going to be in the forefront of some movement. He avoids the sloganeering and political correctness of so-called ‘reporters’.

One area where Bolt is clear and outspoken is the need for fathers in a child’s life. He doesn’t focus on the issue. I can see why in the contemporary climate of law in Australia. He does put the facts about domestic violence before the public better than any other nationally read columnist or reporter. Mr Bolt may be one of the very few real journalists in Australia.