Alan Jones Defends Comments That Australia Needs Another Stolen Generation

The talkback host has refused to back down.

Controversial 2GB radio commentator Alan Jones has defended his comments about the need for Australia to have a new Stolen Generation of Indigenous children in a fiery tirade.

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"We’re pushing ideology up a hill and kids are being the losers," Jones told listeners. "Now, if there have been children in the past wrongly taken from their families on the basis of their Aboriginality, well, that is appalling and Kevin Rudd apologised for that years ago, that’s not the point I'm making."

Yesterday a woman named Del called into Jones' show and complained about Saturday's Indigenous NRL All Stars game, specifically the traditional dancing and the minute of silence for the Stolen Generations.

"Half the Stolen Generation were taken for their own protection,” she said.

Jones agreed with her saying, “We need Stolen Generations, there’s a whole heap of kids going before the courts now or their families going. Mums going before the courts or dads who are on top of the world with drugs or alcohol.”

Dan Peled / AAPIMAGE

Following public backlash and furore from prominent Indigenous leaders and community members, Jones went on air this morning to defend his stance, extensively quoting conservative columnist Andrew Bolt, who believes the Stolen Generations are a lie.

Julian Smith / AAPIMAGE

"In 2014," Jones said, "Andrew Bolt wrote this: 'The Stolen Generation is a myth. No academic or Aboriginal group has yet met my challenge ... to produce even 10 names of children stolen for being Aboriginal, even so no politician even dares question the myth for fear of seeming racist.'

"[Bolt] wrote, which I thought was quite brilliant, 'To be abandoned by your mother is quite tragic, but to be saved by strangers is not to be stolen. Such language feeds the myth that kills. ... Let's rescue the truth and the children.'"

In 2011, Bolt was found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act over two articles he wrote in 2009 racially vilifying several Aboriginal people.

The Stolen Generations refers to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders forcibly removed as children from their families between the early 1900s up until the 1970s by the government.

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Eight years ago former prime minister Kevin Rudd made a historic apology to the Stolen Generations, acknowledging the trauma and pain caused by former government policies.

Last week hundreds of Aboriginal grandmothers, most of them members of the Stolen Generations themselves, converged on Canberra protesting the staggering rate of Indigenous child removals today.

In the past 15 years the rates of children being removed has increased by almost 400%. Today, there are around 15,000 Aboriginal children currently in care, compared with 2,400 in 1997.

Jones’ fellow 2GB talkback colleague Ray Hadley has come out and defended the shock jock.

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“He looks after the education and interest of Indigenous children and non-indigenous children regularly – he’s many things, Alan Jones, but he is not a racist,” Hadley told listeners this morning.

Hadley was speaking about an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy who had been charged with murder in Western Australia when he brought up Jones’ comments about Australia needing a new Stolen Generation.

Since Jones made the comments on Monday, a petition lobbying prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to “stand against Alan Jones” has attracted over 16,000 signatures online.