Australia’s censorship law 18C: Too weak, too strong, and maybe soon to be found unconstitutional. By Paul Kelly in The Australian.
Too weak:
Prro-Palestinian demonstrations demanding the elimination of Israel “From the river to the sea” along with calls to “Globalise the intifada” — encouraging the murders of Jews — are permitted and apparently beyond the reach of our laws. A good and decent society is broken under such inconsistency and hypocrisy. …
Section 18C is a bad law that has many defenders. … Sadly, it is an article of faith for the Labor Party. …
Too strong:
Hanson’s comment that Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi should pack her bags and “piss off back to Pakistan”, while impolite, is deemed to be illegal in Australia. …
The law proscribes race-based speech likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate”, with its critics saying the bar is set far too low. Former Liberal attorney-general George Brandis branded the provision a “grotesque limitation” on free speech and invoked George Orwell to say it was a device to channel how people thought. …
Former NSW Supreme Court chief justice Jim Spigelman said: “The freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended. I am not aware of any international human rights instrument, or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy, that extends to conduct that is merely offensive.” He said “offend” and “insult” impinged on free speech in a way “humiliate” and “intimidate” did not.
Former human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski said a threshold at “offend” was too low and contributed to distrust. …
But 18C may be be about to be found to be unconstitutional:
After Queen Elizabeth died, Faruqi, in a classic insight into the Greens, said: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples.”
An angry Hanson responded: “Your attitude appalls and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.”
Having lost two cases in the Federal Court, Hanson said she was going to the High Court to protect free speech. Abbott was supportive. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke was true to form: he played the race card: “If the Liberal Party thinks there should be more racist things they’re allowed to say, tell us what they are.”
But constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey criticised the Federal Court and has raised doubts about the constitutional validity of section 18C, saying the treaty on which it relies, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, does not seem to include the low-level conduct that 18C outlaws. The treaty deals with far more serious offences. Constitutional lawyer Louise Clegg said in The Spectator last month she believed the High Court would invalidate section 18C.
A victory for Hanson would be a remarkable event, securing the victory the Coalition had long unsuccessfully sought. Hanson would become a political heroine. It would be a devastating blow for Labor — being exposed for running repeated campaigns attacking the critics for promoting racism only to finish up humiliated by relying for decades on a provision found to be unconstitutional. …
Not working out the way they hoped, because we have more than one culture now:
Federal Court judge Ian Jackman said the nation’s current crisis over social cohesion and antisemitism should provoke an “intellectual stocktaking” … “It would not have occurred to Australians in the 1990s that other Australians would abuse their freedom of political communication to publicly intimidate and vilify Jews … The idea that that might have taken place on the campus of the University of Sydney for weeks on end was simply unthinkable. Back then, we associated that behaviour with Nazi thugs in the Germany of the 1930s.”
Isn’t 18C just a tool the ruling class selectively enforces to suppress its critics?