http://www.theage.com.au/comment/a-war-of-words-over-words-that-wound-20140314-34s09.html
A war of words over words that wound
March 15, 2014
Michael Gordon
Political editor, The Age
The most revealing exchanges about Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plan to remove legislation that makes it an offence to ''offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate'' people on the grounds of race or ethnicity came after the panel that vigorously debated the issue on the Q&A program left the ABC's studio on Monday night.
Suddenly, the Twitterverse was abuzz. Aboriginal leader Marcia Langton was either lauded for leading the charge against the move, or targeted in a series of deeply offensive and racist tweets, including one that began: ''YOU ARE A DISGUSTING UGLY VILE APE …''
She wasn't the only one to feel aggrieved. Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, who was not a member of the panel, wrote that he was so bruised by the program that he didn't go to work the next day. ''When Attorney-General George Brandis hotly insisted I was not racist, the ABC audience laughed in derision,'' he wrote. ''Not one other panellist protested against this lynching.''
Bolt, of course, is the commentator whose prosecution in September 2011 under section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act, after casting aspersions on light-skinned Aborigines, became the catalyst for Abbott's election promise to repeal the offending section ''in its current form''.
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Almost a year after the Bolt prosecution, Abbott delivered a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs titled Freedom Wars and reflected the view of a number of media commentators and organisations when he defended Bolt's right to insult, impugn and offend on the grounds of free speech.
Freedom of speech, as Abbott saw it, included the freedom to write badly and rudely, and to be obnoxious and objectionable. ''Expression or advocacy should never be unlawful merely because it is offensive,'' he declared.
But, as the reactions to Monday's Q&A demonstrate, the issue is not that simple, and Abbott is under pressure from powerful opposing forces, whose arguments are summed up eloquently by the two Tims who sit as commissioners on the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Arguing for complete repeal is the newly appointed Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, formerly policy director at the right-leaning IPA, who argues that the provision sets the bar for causing offence way too low, and selectively gives a higher priority to group rights than individual rights. ''I believe in individual rights, not in group rights,'' Wilson says.
Arguing for complete retention is the Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, who maintains that the section has worked as it was intended to work, and that its dilution on the grounds of free speech will send a signal that racial vilification is OK.
This view is shared by a host of ethnic, religious and indigenous groups and leaders, and is summed up neatly by Langton, who says: ''If you get rid of 18C, what's happened to me in the last 24 hours will happen to everybody else in the country. It will unleash this vile hateful racism on everybody.''
There are also several Coalition MPs who are deeply concerned by the plan to repeal 18c, including Craig Laundy, who won the western Sydney seat of Reid from Labor in September. He says he has had about 1000 representations from groups and individuals in his electorate opposing any change - and not one supporting the repeal of the section.
Another important voice in the debate is the Coalition's first indigenous member of the House of Representatives, Ken Wyatt, who has witnessed the results of vilification on the disempowered, especially during the decade he served on Western Australia's equal opportunity tribunal. ''I support the whole concept of free speech, but I think there are boundaries that you have to draw - and this is one of them,'' he told me.
Abbott's mantra is that ''this is going to be the year of keeping commitments''.
But the promise to repeal the contentious section ''in its current form'' sits uncomfortably with another Coalition promise: to finalise by September a draft for amending the constitution to recognise Aboriginal people as the first Australians, as a precursor to a successful referendum.
As Soutphommasane points out, indigenous Australians are the group most vulnerable to racial vilification and there is a real tension between reducing protections against vilification, on the one hand, while promoting constitutional recognition of the first Australians, on the other.
One potential compromise is to remove the words ''offend'' and ''insult'' from the section of the Racial Discrimination Act and to strengthen provisions on racial vilification in the criminal code.
Abbott's instinct is to go further in the direction of free speech by also striking out ''humiliate'', and leaving only ''intimidate'' in a rewritten section 18c.
The irony of any move to strengthen criminal race-hate laws while watering down the civil code is that it is the exact opposite to the approach adopted by the Coalition when the section was drafted in the mid-1990s.
The weakness of the possible compromise approach is that it makes mediation extremely unlikely as a means of resolving incidents before there is a need for adjudication in the courts. This has been one of the strengths of the system as it operates now.
Brandis has the task of consulting interested parties before preparing the legislation, and his message on Friday was that the government will come down on the side of those who want to see maximum freedom of speech. ''And, by freedom of speech, I mean people's freedom to hold opinions and express those opinions without some bureaucrat or official or human rights body or judge telling them what they are allowed and what they are not allowed to say.''
A real danger is that the disagreement over 18c intrudes on the push for constitution recognition and undermines Abbott's fervent desire that recognition be ''a unifying moment in Australia's history''. This is why Abbott, with a sincere commitment to freedom of speech and to closing the gap on indigenous disadvantage and achieving constitutional change, faces a test of leadership requiring sensitivity, nuance and strength in equal measure.
A starting point for all concerned might be to put themselves in the shoes of Langton, receiving those ghastly tweets after Q&A, or Bolt, as he watched the program ''in horror'', and to think twice before saying or writing words calculated to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate.
A war of words over words that wound
March 15, 2014
Michael Gordon
Political editor, The Age
The most revealing exchanges about Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plan to remove legislation that makes it an offence to ''offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate'' people on the grounds of race or ethnicity came after the panel that vigorously debated the issue on the Q&A program left the ABC's studio on Monday night.
Suddenly, the Twitterverse was abuzz. Aboriginal leader Marcia Langton was either lauded for leading the charge against the move, or targeted in a series of deeply offensive and racist tweets, including one that began: ''YOU ARE A DISGUSTING UGLY VILE APE …''
She wasn't the only one to feel aggrieved. Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt, who was not a member of the panel, wrote that he was so bruised by the program that he didn't go to work the next day. ''When Attorney-General George Brandis hotly insisted I was not racist, the ABC audience laughed in derision,'' he wrote. ''Not one other panellist protested against this lynching.''
Bolt, of course, is the commentator whose prosecution in September 2011 under section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act, after casting aspersions on light-skinned Aborigines, became the catalyst for Abbott's election promise to repeal the offending section ''in its current form''.
Advertisement
Almost a year after the Bolt prosecution, Abbott delivered a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs titled Freedom Wars and reflected the view of a number of media commentators and organisations when he defended Bolt's right to insult, impugn and offend on the grounds of free speech.
Freedom of speech, as Abbott saw it, included the freedom to write badly and rudely, and to be obnoxious and objectionable. ''Expression or advocacy should never be unlawful merely because it is offensive,'' he declared.
But, as the reactions to Monday's Q&A demonstrate, the issue is not that simple, and Abbott is under pressure from powerful opposing forces, whose arguments are summed up eloquently by the two Tims who sit as commissioners on the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Arguing for complete repeal is the newly appointed Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, formerly policy director at the right-leaning IPA, who argues that the provision sets the bar for causing offence way too low, and selectively gives a higher priority to group rights than individual rights. ''I believe in individual rights, not in group rights,'' Wilson says.
Arguing for complete retention is the Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, who maintains that the section has worked as it was intended to work, and that its dilution on the grounds of free speech will send a signal that racial vilification is OK.
This view is shared by a host of ethnic, religious and indigenous groups and leaders, and is summed up neatly by Langton, who says: ''If you get rid of 18C, what's happened to me in the last 24 hours will happen to everybody else in the country. It will unleash this vile hateful racism on everybody.''
There are also several Coalition MPs who are deeply concerned by the plan to repeal 18c, including Craig Laundy, who won the western Sydney seat of Reid from Labor in September. He says he has had about 1000 representations from groups and individuals in his electorate opposing any change - and not one supporting the repeal of the section.
Another important voice in the debate is the Coalition's first indigenous member of the House of Representatives, Ken Wyatt, who has witnessed the results of vilification on the disempowered, especially during the decade he served on Western Australia's equal opportunity tribunal. ''I support the whole concept of free speech, but I think there are boundaries that you have to draw - and this is one of them,'' he told me.
Abbott's mantra is that ''this is going to be the year of keeping commitments''.
But the promise to repeal the contentious section ''in its current form'' sits uncomfortably with another Coalition promise: to finalise by September a draft for amending the constitution to recognise Aboriginal people as the first Australians, as a precursor to a successful referendum.
As Soutphommasane points out, indigenous Australians are the group most vulnerable to racial vilification and there is a real tension between reducing protections against vilification, on the one hand, while promoting constitutional recognition of the first Australians, on the other.
One potential compromise is to remove the words ''offend'' and ''insult'' from the section of the Racial Discrimination Act and to strengthen provisions on racial vilification in the criminal code.
Abbott's instinct is to go further in the direction of free speech by also striking out ''humiliate'', and leaving only ''intimidate'' in a rewritten section 18c.
The irony of any move to strengthen criminal race-hate laws while watering down the civil code is that it is the exact opposite to the approach adopted by the Coalition when the section was drafted in the mid-1990s.
The weakness of the possible compromise approach is that it makes mediation extremely unlikely as a means of resolving incidents before there is a need for adjudication in the courts. This has been one of the strengths of the system as it operates now.
Brandis has the task of consulting interested parties before preparing the legislation, and his message on Friday was that the government will come down on the side of those who want to see maximum freedom of speech. ''And, by freedom of speech, I mean people's freedom to hold opinions and express those opinions without some bureaucrat or official or human rights body or judge telling them what they are allowed and what they are not allowed to say.''
A real danger is that the disagreement over 18c intrudes on the push for constitution recognition and undermines Abbott's fervent desire that recognition be ''a unifying moment in Australia's history''. This is why Abbott, with a sincere commitment to freedom of speech and to closing the gap on indigenous disadvantage and achieving constitutional change, faces a test of leadership requiring sensitivity, nuance and strength in equal measure.
A starting point for all concerned might be to put themselves in the shoes of Langton, receiving those ghastly tweets after Q&A, or Bolt, as he watched the program ''in horror'', and to think twice before saying or writing words calculated to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate.
