Tuesday saw the opening of the 45th Parliament and Senators and MPs put back to work by the Governor General.
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However before the official start one particular senator was already hard at work on one of his personal motions.
South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi announced his intention to re-write Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, thanks to the secured signatures of 20 other Senators.
The signatures of every Coalition Senate backbencher (except for Jane Hume) as well as the signatures of crossbenchers Bob Day, Derryn Hinch, David Leyonhjelm and Pauline Hanson, means Senator Bernardi feels he has the power to move a motion to remove the words “Insult” and “Offend” from 18C of the Act.
Currently section 18C of the Act makes it unlawful for a person in public to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people because of their race, colour and national or ethnic origin.
Bernadi wants to makes changes in the name of free speech, so that those who senator George Brandis says have the “right to be bigots” can say what they want publicly without humiliating or intimidating those they are talking about.
I might agree with them if it wasn’t for section 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Section 18D of the Act allows for comments that are made in artistic works, academic, scientific purpose or purpose in the public interest; or for fair and accurate reporting and if a comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment.
A talk titled “The impact of section 18C and other civil anti-vilification laws in Australia” at a 2015 conference held in Sydney said that complaints were “relatively modest. In the decade up to 2010, the total number of complaints nationally fluctuated from a high of 342 to a low of 165 per year”.
Surely out of a population of 23 million 342 complaints dosen’t come close to a “grievance industry” as Senator Bernadi claims.
Those who think 18C’s change will grant them greater freedom of speech, don’t understand that free speech is not the ability to say what you want when you want, but that it is the ability to say what you think without being detained, harassed or executed and fail to see that sections 18C and 18D protect the fundamental nature of free speech.
Matthew Chown
