A Melbourne-based journalist encouraged his Twitter followers to make a complaint to the Australian Press Council after a blog post by commentator Andrew Bolt that branded the Stolen Generations a "myth" before lodging his own.
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The post, published on the websites of The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun, begins with a YouTube clip of a song from the Opera Australia adaptation of childrens' book The Rabbits. The award-winning production is based on a picture book by John Marsden and Shaun Tan that uses the tale of rabbits arriving in a strange land as an allegory for white settlement of Australia.
The opera is funded in part by government arts initiatives and deals with issues surrounding colonisation and the forcible removal of children from their families.
After describing the production's themes, Bolt said "the courts cannot find" children who were taken from their families simply for being Indigenous.
"It is now a sin - even a crime against high art - to mention that despite all the apologies, all the teaching, all the ceremonies and all the newspaper stories, no one to this day has been able to name even 10 of the children allegedly stolen by officials just for being Aborigines," Bolt wrote.
"Even the courts cannot find them, for all the activists now appointed to the judiciary. Yet I predict that questioning the 'stolen generations' myth will soon be ruled unlawful."
The claims attracted backlash on social media, including from journalist Ben Eltham, who branded the blog "utterly false" and called for editors and news broadcasters to force Bolt to "put up evidence for racist claims".
Eltham, the National Affairs Correspondent for New Matilda, urged his followers to make a complaint to the Australian Press Council before making one of his own on Saturday evening and posting it on Twitter.
I have lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Press Council about Andrew Bolt's blog post today pic.twitter.com/UkwGN6XaTA— Ben Eltham (@beneltham)
August 1, 2015
"The historical record very clearly establishes that children were indeed removed from their parents' custody on the basis of their Aboriginality, particularly where they were of mixed race background," the complaint reads in part.
"Mr Bolt has made a claim that is false and inaccurate.
"He should retract the statement and apologise to his readers for misleading."
Bolt's views on the Stolen Generations have been expressed in writing since at least 2004, including repetitions of his claim that no one can name ten children taken from their families solely for being Aboriginal.
In previous blog posts, he has claimed the Stolen Generations were "a giant intellectual fraud with unforgivable consequences" and "no one has yet produced a single child who was stolen under a government policy to remove children just because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help."
In a post from December 2013, Bolt asked: "When will politicians, journalists and academics have the courage - and honesty - to concede there were no "stolen generations" as usually defined?"
It is not the first time Bolt's controversial comments on Indigenous Australians have generated headlines.
In 2011, the Federal Court found Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act with two articles that implied high-profile Indigenous academics and business figures identified as Aboriginal for personal gain.
