Andrew Bolt

In 2019, Bolt defended Cardinal George Pell, who at that time had been convicted of child sexual abuse (he was later acquitted by the High Court), saying that "I am not a Catholic or even a Christian. He is a scapegoat, not a child abuser." He also stated that "In my opinion, this is our own OJ Simpson case, but in reverse. A man was found guilty not on the facts but on prejudice. ... Cardinal George Pell has been falsely convicted of sexually abusing two boys in their early teens. That's my opinion, based on the evidence." He went on to say that the successful prosecutions case was "flimsy" and that the conviction was the result of a "vicious" smear that formed part of a "sinister" campaign against the cardinal, adding that Pell was being made to "pay for the sins made by his church". Bolt reiterated his support for Pell when the appeal against Pell's conviction was dismissed in Victoria's Court of Appeal. On 7 April 2020, the High Court of Australia quashed Pell's convictions and determined that verdicts of acquittal be entered in place of all previous verdicts.

On 14 April 2020, Bolt interviewed George Pell on Sky News Australia following his acquittal by the High Court. During the interview Bolt asked Pell if he felt ashamed of the way the Catholic church dealt with the ongoing sex abuse crisis. Pell replied that he did and described the crisis as a "cancer", also stating that failures for the church to act still haunted him. Pell said he didn't commit the alleged Melbourne sex abuse and didn't know why the accuser testified against him. He suggested the accuser may have been 'used'.

In early 2020, the feud escalated when Bolt published a letter provided to him by Josephine Cashman, which resulted in Cashman being dismissed from the Federal Government's Indigenous voice to government's Senior Advisory Group. In the blog post, Bolt said the letter had been written by a Yolngu elder, denouncing Pascoe and Dark Emu. However the elder asserted that he had not written the letter, and it was also found to have paragraphs lifted from other sources.

Bolt was widely condemned by child protection advocates who stated that he had minimised the seriousness of child sexual grooming during a segment on his Sky News show on 18 February 2020. Bolt repeatedly used the phrase "hit on" to describe the sexual grooming of a year 9 school boy by his athletics coach at St Kevin's College, Melbourne. Child welfare advocate Dr Katrina Lines said "There is no consensual social situation in which it would be OK for an adult to 'hit on' a child. The adult was grooming the child and building an emotional connection so they could do what they wanted to him".

In July 2019, Bolt made comments about Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in which he questioned the legitimacy of her views on climate breakdown due to Thunberg's autism. "I have never seen a girl so young and with so many mental disorders treated by so many adults as a guru", wrote Bolt. He went on to question why such leaders "treat a young and strange girl with such awe and even rapture". The comments were widely seen as ignorant. Later in the article, Bolt went on to describe Thunberg's younger sister as displaying "a spectacular range of mental issues". Thunberg responded to the article on Twitter, saying "I am indeed 'deeply disturbed' about the fact that these hate and conspiracy campaigns are allowed to go on and on and on just because we children communicate and act on the science. Where are the adults?"

Bolt has spoken out against the changing racial demographics of Australia. In August 2018, Bolt wrote an article titled "Tidal wave of new tribes dividing us" in which he argues that a "tidal wave" of migrants are swamping Australia, forming enclaves and "changing our culture". He also said "Immigration is becoming colonisation, turning this country from a home into a hotel." This article prompted press council complaint.

On 6 June 2017 Bolt was assaulted in Lygon Street, Melbourne by two masked men, while a third apparently filmed the attack. Melbourne Antifa, an anti-fascism group, appeared to claim a connection in the incident on Facebook, posting that Bolt attacked "some of our family in solidarity ... while they were protesting today".

He appeared weekly on radio station 2GB in Sydney for The Clash with union leader Paul Howes and as of 2016 is a regular guest four nights a week on Nights with Steve Price, which is broadcast on 2GB and Melbourne' s 3AW, 4BC Brisbane and network stations across Australia.

Aboriginal author Bruce Pascoe grew up knowing only of his British ancestry. In his 30s he came to recognise that he also has Australian Aboriginal heritage and identified himself as Koori. Bolt objected to this apparent change in Pascoe's heritage following the success of Dark Emu, a book written by Pascoe in 2014 that reexamines colonial accounts of Aboriginal people in Australia, and cites evidence of pre-colonial agriculture, engineering and building construction by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Bolt suggested on his blog that Pascoe had succumbed to "the romance of the Noble Savage… the thrill of the superstitious".

In an earlier article in the Griffith Review (2012, following Eatock v Bolt) titled "Andrew Bolt's Disappointment" (also reproduced in Salt: Selected Stories and Essays), Pascoe had suggested that he and Bolt could "have a yarn" together, without rancour, because "I think it's reasonable for Australia to know if people of pale skin identifying as Aborigines are fair dinkum". He described how and why his Aboriginal ancestry – and that of many others – had been buried.

Bolt left Insiders in May 2011 to host his own weekly program, The Bolt Report, on Network Ten. The Bolt Report ended on Ten in 2015 and, in 2016, Bolt became a contributor to Sky News Live. The Bolt Report subsequently resumed on Sky News Live in May 2016 as a nightly format.

In September 2010, nine individuals commenced legal proceedings in the Federal Court against Bolt and the Herald Sun over two posts on Bolt's blog. The nine sued over posts titled "It's so hip to be black", "White is the New Black" and "White Fellas in the Black". The articles suggested it was fashionable for "fair-skinned people" of diverse ancestry to choose Aboriginal racial identity for the purposes of political and career clout. The applicants claimed the posts breached the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. They sought an apology, legal costs, and a gag on republishing the articles and blogs, and "other relief as the court deems fit". They did not seek damages. On 28 September 2011, Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Bolt to have contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

In 2005, Bolt released a compilation of newspaper columns in a book entitled Still Not Sorry: The Best of Andrew Bolt.

In May 2005, Bolt established a web-only forum in which readers could offer comments, feedback and questions in response to his columns. He posted some of these comments on the Herald Sun website. The forum changed to a more conventional blog format in July 2006.

In June 2003, Bolt published an article criticising Andrew Wilkie in which he quoted from a classified intelligence document written by Wilkie as an intelligence analyst for the Office of National Assessments. It was claimed, but never proven, that someone in Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office had leaked the document to Bolt. A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police said that they did not have any evidence to identify the culprit.

From 2001 to 2011, he was a regular guest on Insiders.

In 2002, magistrate Jelena Popovic was awarded $246,000 damages for defamation after suing Bolt and the publishers of the Herald Sun over a 13 December 2000 column in which he claimed that she had "hugged two drug traffickers she let walk free". Popovic stated that she had in fact shaken their hands to congratulate them on having completed a rehabilitation program. The jury found that what Bolt wrote was untrue, unfair and inaccurate, but cleared him of malice.

Bolt is married to Sally Morrell, a fellow columnist at the Herald Sun. They have been married since 1989 and have three children. Bolt is an agnostic.

Andrew Bolt (born 26 September 1959) is an Australian conservative social and political commentator. He has worked at the Melbourne-based newspaper company The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) for many years, for both the newspaper The Herald and its successor, the Herald Sun. His current roles include blogger and columnist at the Herald Sun and host of television show The Bolt Report each weeknight. In Australia, Bolt is a controversial public figure, who has frequently been criticised for his alleged abrasive demeanour and accused of inappropriate remarks on various political and social issues.