Criticism mounts over Alan Jones' 'we need Stolen Generation' comment

'We need Stolen Generations', talkback host Alan Jones responded to a listener who scorned a minute's silence at the NRL All Stars game over the weekend for Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families.

Alan Jones

Radio broadcaster Alan Jones. Source: AAP

"We need Stolen Generations," Mr Jones replied to a listener on his 2GB radio show on Monday. 

"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.

"And suddenly they go back into an environment where children are brought up in those circumstances.

"Those children for their own benefit should be taken away."

The listener had just told Mr Jones she was unimpressed by the NRL All Stars game over the weekend.
Greg Inglis, captain of the Indigenous All Stars.
Greg Inglis, captain of the Indigenous All Stars (centre) and his teammates perform a war dance before their annual clash with the World All Stars at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. Source: AAP
"What a load of coddle," she said.

"They even had to end with a minute's silence for the Stolen Generation.

"When are they going to believe that half the Stolen Generation were taken for their own protection."

Mr Jones responded "mm…correct."

Joe Williams, Wagga Wagga Citizen of the Year, suicide prevention advocate and former NRL player, called Monday for Mr Jones' resignation.
NSW Greens David Shoebridge said via Twitter the views of Mr Jones and his listener are ill informed.
Other social media erupted with criticism about the conversation.

Reddit user Leanback said: "It's like someone saying 'We need another Holocaust' to describe the need for national infrastructure that the Third Reich built."

"If this stupid simple line of thinking would have solved everything the stolen generation would have 'fixed' all these issues but it didn't at all, all it did was create it's own issues. Often the easiest stupid option is not the best," chimed in Reddit-Incarnate.

Some Twitter users are also unimpressed.

But others echo the sentiments of Mr Jones and his listener.

A history of Australia's forced child removals

Two days ago marked the seventh anniversary of former prime minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generation.

His apology came 11 years after the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission released its  report, which accused the Australian government of cultural genocide for assuming legal guardianship of Indigenous children, now referred to as the Stolen Generation.

Policies in the 1950s and 1960s, including the 1961 Policy of Assimilation adopted by federal and state government, intended for Indigenous people to practice European culture by forcibly removing children from their families.

The commission used the definition of genocide as described within the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" with the intent to "destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."

In the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, just under 3,000 children were noted as being in out-of-home care.

On 30 June 2014, there were 14,991 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care in Australia.


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3 min read
Published 15 February 2016 2:43pm
Updated 16 August 2022 3:04pm
By Andrea Booth
Source: NITV News


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