Still a dickhead

By Jeremy

I confess I haven’t been reading Bolt at all lately. But I was clearing out my RSS feed reader this morning and the last post it caught, from late November (before Bloglines hit the 200 unread post limit and started ignoring him) was such a spectacularly awful effort that I can’t just let it pass. Even though it’s almost a month old.

Racist, where race had nothing to do with the issue at all. Misleading and dishonest, where he pretends not to understand what is meant by the word “murder”. And contemptible pandering, as he sets his readers off for some absolutely despicable “let’s slaughter the insane” and “avoid getting in taxies driven by Africans” drivel.

The story (via actual discussion and debate on the other week’s Law Report) is about a man who killed his wife eighteen years ago and was acquitted of the murder on the grounds of insanity. He subsequently spent several years detained in mental health facilities before in 1999, after a rigorous process in which his condition was carefully scrutinised and considered, he was placed on a non-custodial treatment order which was discharged in 2004. In the almost-decade he’s been in the community, he has done considerable community work and is the primary care giver for his a son, who is 19 months old, and suffers from leukaemia. Consequently, rather than living off the taxpayer, the man looked for a job that could support him and his son. He needed one with flexibility, so he could look after his son. He applied for a licence to drive taxis.

Note – to be released, he was determined to be no more a threat to the community than any of the rest of us. The mental health illness from which he once suffered had long been cured. The people whose job it is – the people who have trained in the field, who are experts – carefully reviewed his case to determine whether he was a risk to the community. They determined that he wasn’t. Taxi passengers face no appreciable risk of violence from the bloke.

Did you notice any detail missing from that description? Anything that leapt out at you as important?

Andrew Bolt did:

A Victorian tribunal gives an African refugee a chance:

Aha! The man was an African refugee! That’s relevant somehow! Bizarrely, it’s the part of the issue that Andy bangs on about the most:

But I wonder whether helping one unfortunate murderer actually hurts the interests of many hundreds of taxi drivers – and especially those of them that are African, too.

(What?) And:

This is just the kind of decision that will lead to this – and how will VCAT rule, then?:

A BBC radio presenter who asked a taxi firm not to send a Asian driver has been sacked. Sam Mason made the comments while ordering a taxi for her 14-year-old daughter who she said would be “freaked out” by a turban-wearing driver.

He’s bloody fixated, he is. So, of course, are his readers -

Of course there’s one simple solution – don’t get into any taxi with a black driver.

And

On the offchance that I ever visit Melbourne I’ll be definately ensuring that any cab I catch has a non-African driving it.

I’m not being racist, just practical.

And

Relax infidels, you are just as safe in this brothers cab as in any other fundamental Moslem’s one.

And many more.

Also note that Andy describes the man as a “murderer”, which isn’t the case – he was acquitted of the murder. You can call him a “killer”, which sounds enough like “murderer” that it’s usually enough for people like Bolt, but you can’t call him a “murderer”. I presume Andy does actually understand the difference.

When he’s got his obsession with evil Africans off his chest, Andy makes a ham-fisted attempt to discuss the actual issue in question:

Of course, the tribunal vice president knows this will actually make taxi passengers wonder whether they should now walk instead:

“I accept that the ordinary man in the street would probably say, ‘I would prefer not to have as a taxi driver somebody who has killed in whatever circumstances’,” he said.

But what would the public know?

Well, since they haven’t heard any of the evidence and Andy hasn’t reported it, not much.

VCAT might be wrong. They may have made the wrong call. I don’t think they have – I think that if there’s no appreciable risk of the man harming taxi passengers (and they’re in the best position to evaluate that) then the community is better off with him doing that than living on Centrelink payments – but of course it’s a difficult issue. It deserves serious commentary. Serious, honest commentary, in which the facts are fairly considered.

Andrew Bolt clearly has no interest in providing anything of the sort.

148 Comments

Filed under Andrew Bolt

Tags: crime, mental health, racism, refugees