Australia: 18C changes a far right obsession, Labor’s Jim Chalmers says, by Rachael Baxendale.

Labor frontbencher Jim Chalmers has defended Bill Shorten’s efforts to rally ethnic communities against changes to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, dismissing calls for change as an “obsession of the far right of the Liberal Party”.

The Opposition Leader has written an article for several newspapers covering Arabic, Jewish, Chinese Indian and other communities and instigated a petition against the change.

Australian Conservatives respond:

Seemingly unable to allow genuine debate over reforming Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Labor is resorting to name-calling and accusations – as they did during the plebiscite debate.

Their latest petition calls for 20,000 signatures to reject “Hate speech, racism and bigotry, and changing Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act”.

This is, quite simply, intolerance masquerading as tolerance. The ALP is unashamedly turning freedom of speech into a political football. …

The 18C case against Andrew Bolt was a Labor stitch-up:

On Tuesday, Labor’s newest senator, Kimberley Kitching, effectively broke ranks with her party, implying that the 2011 racial discrimination case against conservative columnist Andrew Bolt was a Labor stitch-up.

She told The Bolt Report that the judge in the case, Justice Mordecai Bromberg, was an ALP factional player who actively sought preselection for the former federal seat of Burke in 2001.

“Obviously he would have had some views about you, and perhaps he was not the best person to hear your case,” she told Bolt.

Enough is enough of the Left’s duplicitous tactics and intolerance.