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 accused of abrasive demeanour, racist views and inappropriate remarks on various political and social issues.
He spent his childhood in remote rural areas, including Tarcoola, South Australia, while his father worked as a school teacher and principal.
[citation needed] In May 2005, Bolt established a web-only forum in which readers could offer comments, feedback and questions in response to his columns.
[citation needed] Manne argued that Bolt and others were engaged in historical denialism despite "a mountain of documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony".
Robert Manne responded that Bolt did not address the documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations and that this is a clear case of historical denialism.
[16] Bolt then challenged Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justified the claim that children were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc.
Bolt also stated that he was subsequently able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and was unable to find a case where there was evidence to justify the term "stolen".
A 2008 review of legal cases claims it is difficult for Stolen Generation claimants to challenge what was written about their situation at the time of removal.
[20] 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".
The judge stated that the damages awarded were significantly influenced by Bolt's "disingenuous" comments he had made outside court and the Herald Sun's reporting of the jury's decision.
[24] The Court of Appeal later reversed the $25,000 punitive damages, though it upheld the defamation finding, describing Bolt's conduct as "at worst, dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless".
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.
Bolt described the decision as a "terrible day for free speech" in Australia and said it represented "a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves.
"[28] Jonathan Holmes of the ABC's Media Watch described Justice Bromberg's interpretation of the Racial Discrimination Act, and his application of it to Bolt's columns as "profoundly disturbing" because it reinforced concerns that 18C creates "one particular area of public life where speech is regulated by tests that simply don't apply anywhere else, and in which judges - never, for all their pontifications, friends of free speech - get to do the regulating.
"[30] Bolt later commented that he believed Justice Bromberg's failed attempt to run for the Labor Party ten years prior had a role in the final decision.
Melbourne Antifa, a self described "anti-fascism" activist 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".
[34] Bolt has also spoken approvingly of Jean Raspail's book The Camp of the Saints, a novel depicting Europe being swamped by Asian immigrants.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] During the interview, Bolt asked Pell if he felt ashamed of the way the Catholic church dealt with the ongoing sex abuse crisis.
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.
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.
[47] The abused school boy later stated that Bolt and Gerard Henderson's comments made him feel "sick" and accused the pair of "trivialising" the assaults.