The Australian HRC Welshes on My Rights, by Tony Thomas.

As someone who identifies as a leak-garlanded son of Wales, the Australian newspaper’s Leak-garlanded editorial page caused me so much distress that only an apology (and a lavish financial settlement) will assuage my hurt feelings. Alas, I’m out of luck.

As a dark-skinned whitish person identifying as Welsh, I  lodged a race-hatred complaint to the Human Rights Commission on September 6 about your cartoon showing an obviously Welsh mother and father neglecting their child, thus offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating me as a member of the Welsh race.

The Bill Leak cartoon dismissed by the HRC

The Bill Leak cartoon causing outrage at the HRC

I have in mind a payment from Leak and The Australian similar to Cindy Prior’s sought-after $250,000 from those QUT students she kicked out of the Indigenes-only Oodgeroo computer room. I feel an urge to go on stress leave, but I retired 15 years ago.

Today I got a letter  back from the HRC saying they had not “formed a concluded view”. But’ as in Mordy Bromberg’s ruling in the Andrew Bolt case,  I could tell by  the letter’s tone, and reading between the lines, that  the HRC felt my complaint was dim gwerth rhech dafad (not worth a sheep’s fart) and as far as they were concerned, I could twll dy din (bugger off) unless I can make my complaint more persuasively.

The HRC letter runs to six single-spaced pages, and must have taken the HRC many hours of consultation and investigation, as befits a make-work organisation on a $24-million budget.