George Brandis’ spectacular live meltdown over metadata retention has distracted attention from the abandonment of the government’s plans to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, prohibiting the kind of racial abuse dished out by the likes of Andrew Bolt and Fredrick Toben. Abbott’s rationale is that a purist attitude to freedom of (racially divisive) speech is something we can’t afford, given the need to unite against terrorism.
Obviously, neither Bolt nor Toben is a member of Team Australia[1]. Each makes it their primary business to stir up hatred, in Toben’s case against Jews and in Bolt’s case against (among many others) the “muslims, jihadists, people from the Middle East” he sees as responsible for Abbot’s backdown. The striking conflation of religion, geographical origin and terrorism is typical of Bolt’s approach.
Horrible as he is, though, Toben is not a serious problem. His Holocaust denialism is universally reviled, and it is a sign of strength, not weakness, in our democracy that he is free to walk the streets. Repealing the constraints imposed on him by 18C would only emphasise this.
Bolt is another story. It is his case that led the government to seek the repeal of 18C, and that motivated George Brandis’ gaffe (that is, a politically inconvenient statement of an actual belief) that people have a right to be bigots. Far from being reviled, Bolt has been embraced and coddled by the government, to the point of having exclusive access to the Prime Minister. He enjoys a well-rewarded position in the Murdoch Press. Even casting the net wider among our so-called libertarians, I’ve can’t recall seeing a harsh word against Bolt. He’s a tribal ally and his bigotry is either endorsed or passed over in silence.
It’s impossible in these circumstances, for the government to be taken seriously when they mouth the (apocryphal) Voltaire line about defending to the death speech with which they disagree. The repeal of 18C was clearly intended as an endorsement of Bolt, and not a statement of bare toleration. That position is now untenable, and it’s too late to switch back to Voltaire.
In summary, those on the right lamenting the continued existence of 18C ought to reflect on the fact that it’s their own overt or tacit endorsement of bigotry that’s brought this about. If they cleaned house, and dissociated themselves from the likes of Bolt, their claims to be supporting free speech might acquire a little more credibility.
fn1. I was going to add Sheikh Hillaly to this list. But based on this report, he seems to have joined the Team.
John Quiggin 
What’s so frustrating about this whole episode is how obvious it is that people haven’t read the judgement against Bolt. It’s surprisingly easy to read and understand.
http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/publications/judgments/judgment-summaries#20111103
Racist comment deleted. Exercise your free speech somewhere else, please
This fiasco just confirms that Abbott is a liar and more a nationalist than a liberal. 18C still stinks like dead fish.
As a Bolt apologist yourself, Terje, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.
According to reports IPA are in a “cold fury” over 18C and have raised $30K towards an ad campaign. Online polls indicate overwhelming support for 18C which puts the IPA in a minority, so it would seem. Supporting Bolt has seen Abbott lose a lot of skin for no gain. This seems to be a pattern with Abbott, tiny if not miniscule victories achieved by huge losses.
As I’ll post in more detail soon, the IPA has been at the forefront of efforts to suppress free speech in Australia, with the tacit support of “Freedom Commissioner” and ex-IPA staffer Tim Wilson.
@rog
It’d be really interesting to know who are those with the deep pockets able to tip in $30K in 3 hours (according to Roskam).
It appears the master is not happy when the pupil disobeys.
The problem with the commentary on 18c is that it operates with 18d. This provision allows for debate and discussion. Until the ‘Bolt’ case came along there was little or no issue with speech in Australia.
This whole issue was based on a poorly written article rather than a denial of rights.
bjb – $10 was from me. I can’t account for the rest of it.
That’s pretty much how I think of you John. I suppose that makes us even.
So is this a broken promise or not? I get so confused by this government…
I wonder what can be behind the attack on Section 18C? It can’t be merely bigotry. It is bigotry of course but it has to be more than that as well. Well-heeled people don’t put up serious money just to be able to abuse the less fortunate. (They only put up pin money for that privilege.) It has to be a real investment of some kind. The attack on aboriginals and aboriginality has to be about land and mining rights in my opinion.
Unfortunately, for the white mining lobby, some aboriginals (under the definitions attendant on and in 18C) who have white or white-ish skin are also probably well-educated in at least some cases (having been given opportunities they might well have been denied by white society if they had been “conveniently” blacker). These people might in some cases be good political organisers and speakers. The white mining lobby cannot abide these erudite and effective opponents so the white mining lobby seeks to split them off, destroy their credibility and implement a divide and conquer strategy.
When race and class become battle grounds, organised attacks on the oppressed are orchestrated with more than just gratuitous cruelty in mind. The goal is to steal stuff by force or biased law; land, produce, minerals, products, labour or all of these.
Brandis (2012) v Brandis (2014)
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-brandis-video-shows-he-questioned-storage-of-web-browsing-data-in-2012-20140807-101mg3.html
Apparently old Brandis refuted new Brandis … Which is embarrassing.
This seems to be a pattern at ‘Team Australia’.
Turnbull 2007 refutes Turnbull post 2009 on Climate Change policy. Hunt debunks his academic work on pricing carbon, Abbott deep sixes his preference for a carbon tax, Bolt forgets he wanted pokies banned after Singleton started paying him, Hockey said kids would be put into detention over his dead body and shed tears over it, Tim Wilson couldn’t understand why there was a Human Rights Commission at all, and why its leader was paid so much and now he’s in charge of it, his pain salved by a pay rise and now data retention is good, according to Brandis who said it was bad when he understood a bit about it but has changed his mind now that he has forgotten what he learned. More recently, Brandis didn’t know dropping 18c was about the need to establish Team Australia but about the crowded legislative agenda, but presumably he has now remembered that, for now anyway.
It’s a funny old world.
Ikonoclast must be thinking of the indigenous ALP member Carol Martin who resigned from the WA Parliament after a left wing hate campaign against her and various other indigenous persons who were slurred as “toxic coconuts- brown on the outside and full of the milk of white man’s money” for supporting a Woodside gas development.
The Age and SMH widely reported that story. Not.
@White Rabbit
Nothing in the article suggests that the left had anything to do with the observations described in the Murdoch Press. Martin didn’t allege it and the authors were not named.
The article did note that the family was split over the matter of the gas hub, and assuming such a document exists, one may presume its source was an embittered relative.
Again, like Watkin Tench who was just invited to take two days off you are making allegations that are unsupported in an effort to smear leftists. How very coincidental.
@Fran Barlow
LOL, that is very clever and accurate Fran. The humour of it, of course, is that it all sounds too preposterous and egregious to be true but it actually is all true! You should be a writer for The Chaser or Shaun Micallif.
Note: I worked in two of Alexander Downer’s favourite words, namely “preposterous” and “egregious”; the irony being that they apply to the LNP best of all.
@Fran Barlow The issue was over support for the proposed Woodside development which was opposed by a wide range of the community. Woodside has since dumped the idea.
Quiggin seems to have let political considerations and Abbott bashing blind him from admitting that repealing 18C is the right thing to do to protect free speech. He hasn’t defended 18C, in fact he has indirectly written positively of it’s repeal (all of the 3rd paragraph), but refuses to outright admit it.
Yes, Abbott is a terribly bad PM. He’s engaged in a class war against the poor. He is a liar and hypocrite, with a record of broken promises that makes Gillard look like a saint. He destroyed an effective and efficient carbon tax. But in the rare cases when he does (or should have done) something right (repealing 18C), then bashing Abbott, Brandis and Bolt, and making up political excuses for not supporting its repeal and to preserve tribal affiliations, is not helpful.
If this happened in the US, this outrageous, free speech killing law would have been absolutely savaged and annihilated by both the right and the far left (maybe not the centrists or the moderate left) and would be ruled unconstitutional by any US court.
Ikonoclast:
In short it was a “non-core” election promise to News Ltd./IPA, but now that both those outfits are an anchor on Abbott he (via his handlers) is risking he can bruise them in the hope of raising his stocks with the broader electorate (ie. in ‘the polls’), he feels he can spurn them – for now.
Not as weird as it first sounds. Remember Gillard’s secret private dinner with Murdoch’s troops. She bowed and scraped and they shafted her, as they did Rudd I & II.
I wonder if Abbott will be the first PM in decades to try to semi-stand up to Murdoch. I doubt it, my feeling is that Shorten will be very busy right now making nice with Murdoch and all his minions.
PS: You have an error in the last paragraph. You accidently linked to a News Ltd site.
Why would you want to, though?
“Anyone who wants to can hop up on stage and talk” collapses under high load, making it impossible for anyone to communicate anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet
If you’re more comfortable with economics you get the same result if you model speech as a rivalrous good: it’s the classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem. When you actually sit down and work it out, free speech isn’t actually a very good idea at all.
Thanks to the progressives who want to silence us and the regressives who want to surveil us, we seem to be growing a little less free with each passing year.
I think it is time to at least consider a Bill of Rights. Geoffrey Robertson puts the case quite eloquently in his book Statute of Liberty and on the linked ABC audio.
Just read Shorten’s opinion piece in Saturday’s Fairfax.
He spends the first half talking about ‘terrrrrrr’ and then makes absolutely no sense whatsoever trying to segue into Brandis and 18c.
As far as I can tell, his argument is “vote ALP”.
Sorry pie-face, that is not an election winning argument.
Sec 18C has always been indefensible in its absurdly wide prohibition on insulting and offending. So Brandis has stuffed it up. But the case against Bolt was misconceived and thoroughly objectionable for reasons American courts would articulate eloquently. After all there is no doubt that there are bound to be people trying to cash in undeservedly on the Aboriginal gravy train just as there tens of thousands cashing or trying to in on hundreds of other gravy trains large and small created by politicians with other people’s money. Cutting it back is a good cause. And if you can find some truly ripe cases – the Eddie Obeids of the Aboriginal industry (one of the plaintiffs in Bolt’s case was indeed a low rent version) – then it might be justified to name names even when it is the huge weight of the MSM and and someone with Bolt’s readership who does it to an individual of no comparable power. But people like Bolt and Jones (and wannabes like academics with blogs) depend on stirring so that accuracy and fairness become less important than making a striking impression so inevitably you are going to be fed stories or just invective with lots of names, celebrities best, but common emotive storylines will do.
That said, if we won’t punish him for being nasty to little people in aid, in part anyway, of his own promotion and prosperity, we should at least punish him for material inaccuracy. That’s why the case against Bolt properly conceived should have been a defamation action by the plaintiffs who could say that he was wrong in fact about them.
@Yuri&Eigenscape It would be better to replace 18C with an improved version of individual defamation, including enhanced damages for racial abuse. But, as Yuri points out, that wouldn’t have helped Bolt.
So, the fact that the government proceeded as it did made clear that the purpose of the changes was to help Bolt, not to protect free speech.
> It would be better to replace 18C with an improved version of individual defamation, including enhanced damages for racial abuse.
No, not really, because “A group cannot be defamed, only individuals”. Under defamation, “Moshe Goldsmith uses the blood of unbaptised children to make pizza” would be actionable, but “the jews” etc wouldn’t be.
We could extend defamation protection to groups, but in that case you’d have something more-or-less the same as 18C anyway.
[I’ve also got some pretty big problems with handling racial vilification as a tort: I feel that the harms that spring from racial vilification aren’t the individualised harms that torts were meant to rectify, but far far closer to public-order crimes like affray or riot.]
@John Quiggin
I don’t share your obsession with Bolt (a rival opinionator with a big megaphone?) because I hardly ever read him but I can offer an opinion on your contention that the government’s objective must have been to help Bolt, not to protect free speech.
On the face of it there was no way it could help Bolt because the tort of defamation would catch him anyway even assuming that the government wants the chastened Bolt (and he did feel chastened I am reliably informed) to be able to run a similar line again (which 18C would have allowed if he had not made mistakes of fact).
In fact the impetus for the legislation where it mattered was probably George Brandis’s genuine enthusiasm for old fashioned free speech which had to be fought for for over two hubdred years. I can’t add any detail such as how he deals with some of the fuzzy edges to the doctrine and the discussion. But it standards to reason that a Catholic barrister who respects the traditions of the Bar in favour of liberty of the subject and of free speech (even if a bit wobbly in sme areas) is going to see things differently from our Catholic PM who is not a lawyer and was a Santamaria acolyte). I vote for GB being genuune and principled as the proximate cause for the good ship Fiasco setting sail in the first instance.
> which had to be fought for for over two hubdred years.
Bit fighting the last war, though, innit. Yes, your precious free speech was something that was worth fighting over two hundred years ago… but times change, and problems change, and knowledge and understanding improve likewise.
And what we have to fight for will change too, you’d expect.
@Fran Barlow
We have always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is an ally.
@yuri
“In fact the impetus for the legislation where it mattered was probably George Brandis’s genuine enthusiasm for old fashioned free speech which had to be fought for for over two hubdred years.”
So what you are saying is that this legislation that negatively affects vulnerable people and will create expensive social problems, was just made up on the basis of a quirky enthusiasm for an old fashioned idea? Even more egregiously is that the proponent of the old-fashioned idea does not appear to even understand it properly.
That sucks, don’t you think?
On the face of is you say this move could not have helped Bolt. Perhaps you are too narrowly understanding the way this move would have ‘helped’ this man. What do you imagine motivates Bolt?
And, have you heard of term ‘narrow-minded’ and not understood it? Here is a chance to make a link between these two concepts as they apply to your own behaviour.
And, since you are dispensing you wisdom so freely, how did it happen that GB with all his “fuzzy” edges, managed to be in a position where he thought he could force his “wobbly” ideas about free speech on a society that doesn’t want it?
I belong to Team F***Off Abbott.
@John Quiggin
Yes, the impression I got from the 18C judgement is that 18C is not well written but the judge did a very good job of interpreting it and applying the proper spirit of the law. It gives one a new respect for (at least some) judges.
It seems to me that taken together, s18c & d are a fairly good approximation of the optimal balance between the scope everyone should have to comment as they think apt and the need not to be a facilitator of historic abuse of the culturally marginalised.
Doubtless, in a world measurably closer to equity and inclusive governance than the world we suffer now, we’d scarcely need such provision, because the handful of those crossing the line in that direction would be seen universally as cranks, unconnected with the lived experience of those whom they sought to assail, and would surely lack the means to broadcast their vitriol.
But as things stand, this is probably as good as it gets.
Can someone advise on why Bolt never appealed the decision to the High Court?
I have read the decision and agree that it is solid, however if this concept is so important why not take it further.
I suspect that the whole ‘victim mentality’ plays a part and sells copy as well as galvanise support.
@Fran Barlow You can add Abetz to your list Fran. He has just denied that he said that there was a link between abortion and breast cancer and is busy making it a free speech issue.
It’s sort of funny, in a tragic way.
@themanwithnofingers I guess that an appeal would have to be on a matter of law.
@Fran Barlow If Team AUS were genuine they would review all libel/slander/defamation laws. However, changing an existing law to suit a particular interest (Bolt) smacks of cronyism.
Great speech by Mark Dreyfus yesterday at Tim Wilson’s free speech conference where he jumped down the wicket and hit Brandis – and by implication Wilson – over the clock tower.
With the forensic precision he picked apart not just George Brandis’s “undergraduate” view of what is free speech but also the campaign – by the same people who were so outraged by 18C as applied to Bolt – to restrict free speech via extending the secondary boycott provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act to environmental activists.
@ rog – the High Court can be petitioned to decide an important legal concept should they wish. The fact Bolt didn’t even try speaks volumes towards the mindset of these people.
One could argue that this is one of the biggest dummy spits in history
Yuri – in short you’re saying all the conspiracy theories are utter crap. I’m so shocked. Of course you are right. The notion that there was some “secret agenda” is just stupid.
John’s sarcastic use of ‘Team Australia’ got me wondering on a slightly left field matter.
Can someone enlighten me as to where this [one word concept or cliché…fill in the blank] + [geographic/social location …… again fill in the blank] form of the English language comes from? e.g.’Team Australia”
Like : Team America, Environment NSW, Customs NZ
Also do we have a really pretentious insulting term/label for them so we can gently remind their users that they are being moronic parrots? Something like ‘oxymoron’, ‘spoonerism’. I confess I haven’t heard it yet. We rapidly got ‘Selfie’ which is now an honourable word/insult and here to stay even if its not in the dictionary yet.
Yet do we have a name for these other two noun abominations.
Why this altering the older longer format of adjective and noun so you end up with two nouns is new I think is that it endeavours to impart pseudo-authority, or authority beyond that deserved, while demanding to know are we with this entity or against it in the manner of a football team.
We have long used two word concepts like ‘Latin America’ but this use didn’t have this demand that we be for or against such and such a group.
This new label style which I cant recall beyond 10-15 years ago seems more in the form of Orwellian Newspeak which leads me to wonder if recent bright young things have been reading 1984 as a manual rather than as satire.
All speculation welcome….for possible publication on Weaselwords.
I’m curious in particular if it is another example of think tanks and PR people trying to adjust our minds by adjusting our vocabulary.
To illustrate some time back I remember a similar travesty ‘Incentivate’ which I understood subsequently was made up by a US think tank combining incentive and motivate. I still hear the word but the only thing Wiktionary that I can find though there is this for Italian declensions (?) incentivate: 1.second-person plural present indicative of incentivare, 2.second-person plural imperative of incentivare, 3.feminine plural of incentivato. But this is a different work and the pronunciation is different with the last ‘e’ sounding like ‘aii’.
I raise this because I remember John Hewson tried to spin this horrible word during the 1993 election and it just made people cringe. But these days it actually seems to be entering the vocabulary more and more.
Mike Carlton made some comments on this word in 2007 http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/big-words-from-the-big-man-of-pork-barrels/2007/08/24/1187462523411.html
but seems to be unaware of Hewson’s use 14 years earlier.
The word for these latter abominations is neologism – This second article was informative on both this and a possible even earlier origin of ‘incentivize’ – to ‘incent’???!! ://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/06/neologisms.
To incent?? Do you incent?
Suggestion for some fun. Next time you are presenting in a seminar use the word incent and see how people react.
Meanwhile the government gags the speech of its critics via funding cuts or tying funding to non-advocacy: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/community-groups-fear-retaliatory-funding-cuts-for-comments-critical-of-coalition-policy-warns-acoss-20140807-3daix.html
I wonder which independent told Abbott his legislation would fail if 18c was amended? Not Palmer… Family First? Or is this a distraction from the shelving of PPL? If we had the metadata from brandis’s phone calls perhaps we could guess…
Those who think that 18C may need revision but don’t support Bolt or “the right to be a bigot” may find Gillian Triggs’ speech on the topic (including suggested revisions) helpful. Much more so than anything Freedom Boy has written.
@themanwithnofingers
Bolt never appealed precisely because he knows the judge got the law right. Indeed that’s his point – he says “well so much the worse for the law”. It was more logical, not to mention more likely to succeed, to have the law changed.
Of course that getting a personally inconvenient law changed was a feasible option for him does indicate something rotten in the state of politics.
One wonders why he doesn’t stick to the actual truth, since that does suit his prejudices: Delaying or not having children does increase the risk of breast cancer.
Howard in 1987 actually.
oops … left out your “Hewson in 1993 …”
For the benefit of our federal politicians I have made a lists of useful excuses for them to reference when faced with embarrassing situations:
“It was for national unity” – to be used when withdrawing controversial legislation with 80% voter disapproval without admitting any mistakes. (back up version: it has become an unneccessary distraction)
“I was cut off” – to be used when making ignorant and boneheaded remarks on women’s health issues based on 50 years old research without admitting any mistakes.
“The bad law drives people to the edge” – to be used when your crazy consitituent shot dead public servant on duty.
“It was operational matter” – to be used when trying to avoid answering to scrutiny over asylum seeker issues
“It was based on merit” – to be used when your daughter got a five-figure scholarship that no other student was eligible to apply for.
” It was the publisher’s decision” – to be used when a self-promoting biography toting leadership amibitions was out only 10 months into a newly elected government.
“It was a publicity stunt” – to be used when your opponent tried to point out your mistakes.
“It was an election promise” – to be used when defending clearly wrong policy decisions.
“It was the budget blackhole” – to be used when the above mentioned sacred promise was broken.
“It was the Shambolic Labor” – to be used when all else failed.