Frank wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2024 at 6:39pm:


Even the courts said it breached the Racial Discrimination Act.

Stop defending racism.

SadKangaroo wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2024 at 8:41am:

It is a stupid legislation and a stupid court decision.

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2024 at 9:49am:



Abbott promised to repeal section 18c but chickened out.



All of which brings me to the recently released Faruqi v. Hanson, s.18C hate speech decision in the Federal Court. I’m tempted to steal Shakespeare’s line and say that the case ‘beggars all description’. But I’ll resist that temptation and give you the gist of this woeful decision. To start, recall that this provision was weaponised against Andrew Bolt in 2011 and that Tony Abbott campaigned with a promise to repeal s.18C – which basically makes it unlawful to do a public act that is ‘reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group… because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person’. Then s.18D exempts acts done reasonably and in good faith on various grounds including in the course of any ‘genuine purpose in the public interest’.

When former PM Abbott ran into strong opposition from the ABC and in his own party room he folded, broke his promise, and never even put the change to the Senate to get it rejected there. (And, boy, did that put offside some of Abbott’s biggest supporters.) A bit later the Turnbull government put some enervated amendments to the Senate. These failed. And as many of us predicted at the time, this free speech-inhibiting law has come back to stifle open and needed debate on controversial issues.

This is just a terrible decision, even admitting that the judge was stuck with a terrible law to apply. But we now have unelected judges policing political debate. Recall that the lawyerly caste last year were massively pro-Yes. As were those judges and ex-judges who voiced public views. I would not want to trust my fate to the judicial caste in this country on any issue that required the judge to take positions on political matters or appropriate worldviews.

Oh, and did I mention that the judge in the Hanson case was appointed by the Coalition? You probably guessed that already.

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland.

Unsurprisingly, no Muslim was arrested at the Opera House a year ago for vilification and inciting violence.
No Muslim has been prosecuted for vandalizing numerous political offices, public and private property since then. No Muslim has been prosecuted for occupying universities and menacing Jewish staff and students, continuously threatening bloody violence from the river to the sea.

But if you say to an ingrate from Pakistan to piss off, the law will discover all sorts of things like wacism and, yes, Islamophobia.