18C and the rest.... stifling free speech.

[Rorschach]

Why is a beheading threat okay but a cartoon comment not?
The Australian
October 19, 2016
Janet Albrechtsen

At a protest in Sydney’s Hyde Park in 2012, a 14-year-old boy carried a sign that said “Behead all those who insult the Prophet”.

That same boy is alleged by police to have been on the verge of a ghastly act of terrorism last Wednesday. Together with a 16-year-old boy, he was arrested last week outside an Islamic prayer centre in Bankstown, in Sydney’s southwest.

Last week, too, we learned that a cartoon by The Australian’s Bill Leak is being investigated by the Human Rights Commission for breaching section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. These two seemingly unrelated events tell a story of how free speech has gone awry in Australia.

Under section 20D of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act, it is a crime to incite violence against others on the basis of race. Enacted in 1989, there has not been a single prosecution. Not when the spiritual leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia, Ismail al-Wahwah, called for “jihad against the Jews” and called Jews a “cancerous ­tumour” that had to be “uprooted” and destroyed. Or when his violent words were uploaded to YouTube, accessible to young boys such as those arrested last week.

It has been obvious for years that section 20D needs to be reformed to ensure prosecutions of those who use words to incite violence. The arrest of the two boys last week was the 11th imminent attack that has been prevented in Australia. Four of them have been in NSW. While the Turnbull government is intent on passing the fifth tranche of federal anti-terrorism laws, the NSW Baird government has done nothing to address an entirely ineffective law that is meant to prohibit words that spur young boys to buy bayonets, pledge allegiance to Islamic State and kill infidels on the streets of Sydney.

There should be no right to free expression of murder; giving a young boy a sign to behead infidels ought to be a crime.

Reforming section 20D won’t stop the radicalisation of young boys but it is a start in getting the right balance on free speech and it goes to the most central role of government to keep its citizens safe. It is incomprehensible then that promises to reform section 20D by NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton stand empty.

The freedom scales will remain out of kilter so long as a NSW anti-discrimination law stands impotent against those who use words to incite violence, yet a federal anti-discrimination law swings into fast and furious action when someone decides to be insulted by a cartoon.

After Leak published a cartoon that satirised family dysfunction in indigenous communities, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane touted for business, requestedcomplaints and prejudiced his ability to consider complaints impartially.

Meanwhile the boss of the Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs, who could dismiss silly complaints, runs amok with a law premised on someone, somewhere, deciding that their feelings have been hurt by a picture or some words.

There is something dreadfully wrong with the application of free speech laws in this nation when young students at Queensland University of Technology are dragged into a three-year legal quagmire arising from a few words on Facebook.

After the students were evicted from an indigenous computer lab by indigenous woman Cindy Prior for not having the right skin colour, one wrote this on Facebook: “Just got kicked out of unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation.”

Prior chose to be offended by words aimed not at her but directed at QUT, claims the trauma has rendered her unable to work for three years, and the legal system condones this anti-free speech farce.

While words that incite violence go unchallenged, an edifice of opposition has built up in Western culture around words that merely offend. For thousands of years, Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses has been studied as an epic tale of the creation of the world, drawing on tales from Greek mythology, exploring lust and love, violence and power. The poem inspired Chaucer, Shakespeare and more.

Now, in the 21st century, university students demand trigger warnings when Ovid is taught to protect them from “offensive material that marginalises student identities in the classroom”. No-platforming campaigns at another university stop Germaine Greer speaking.

Safe spaces are set aside for women who are offended when feminist Christina Hoff Sommers speaks on campus.

Christians are stopped from meeting in a Sydney hotel by a group of same-sex marriage ­activists who have no understanding of free speech. And let’s not even get started on the lunacy of cultural appropriation claims.

In Pakistan, a Christian woman and farm labourer from rural Punjab, Asia Bibi, has been on death row since 2010 awaiting an appeal against charges of blasphemy for insulting the Prophet Mohammed. Blasphemy laws and section 18C differ in two respects: the penalty is harsher and the subject of the insult is dead. But the aim, to censor speech that dares to insult or offend, is the same.

The cowering silence of our political and community leaders as the freedom scales move more and more out of kilter is an affront to our most basic freedoms.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott told The Australian this week that, compared with two years ago, it is now more obvious that section 18C is a weapon to stifle free speech.

In fact, the freedom-killing character of section 18C was clear enough two years ago to those concerned about free speech. That’s why Abbott promised to reform it, only to renege at the first whiff of political grapeshot from Muslim and Jewish community leaders. Abbott’s broken promise about free speech was not befitting of a Liberal leader and neither is Malcolm Turnbull’s determination to hide behind his predecessor’s broken promise.

Jewish community leaders need to rethink and revise their position, too. On August 10, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies joined with more than 20 other community groups, including the Australian National Imams Council, to demand reform of the feeble incitement to violence laws in NSW. But the NSW Board of Deputies also has joined the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council in opposing any change to an oppressive law that protects hurt feelings. If they want to be taken seriously about the former, they need to find a more sensible position on the latter.

Muslim leaders should reconsider their equally irrational position. Muslim migrants, like every other group of migrants, surely settle in Australia to live safe and secure lives and to enjoy Western freedoms.

That ought to mean supporting change to an inadequate law that fails to keep us safe from violent incitement and equally supporting reform of a law that wrongly protects someone from being insulted.

How many more 12-year-old boys will be radicalised by adults using words aimed to incite violence before NSW Premier Mike Baird shows some leadership and reforms 20D?

And when will the Prime Minister prevent more young students and cartoonists being hauled over the legal coals under section 18C because someone, somewhere, has claimed their feelings have been hurt?

[Rorschach]

Well blow me down.... Turnbull is considering a change to 18C finally...

[Outlaw Yogi]

I'd love for someone to make a complaint against me to the AHRC, so I could tell the HRC "You have no authority, so go fuck yourself" ... and then when they took it to the high court I'd say "I have no money, so can't pay, and wouldn't pay anyway if I did have the money, so go fuck yourself"

[freediver]

There is a guy from Adelaide in jail for doing that Yogi, but you have to be fairly committed and wind up the wrong people. It took about ten years.

[Rorschach]

Queensland University of Technology case thrown out as 18C inquiry looms

James Massola Michaela Whitbourn Fergus Hunter

A Brisbane judge has thrown out a controversial case of alleged racial vilification at the Queensland University of Technology, as an inquiry into Australia's race hate laws looks set to be announced next week.

The QUT ruling, which has emboldened Coalition MPs pushing for changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, comes as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave his clearest signal yet on Friday that an inquiry will be held into the provision and freedom of speech.

This crap has dragged on and on and on, the accuser wanted a payout of $250,000.... give me a break, how would the 3 accused students find that sort of money... and to see what they were accused for is simply a pathetic waste of time and money for everyone involved. Good decision by the judge.

Now if only someone had the guts to change 18c

[Outlaw Yogi]

Apparently the original complainant of Bill Leak's cartoon on Aboriginal parental neglect feels safer in a nation over run with Muslim criminals and rapists than a country where victim status is worth money.

18C complainant ‘terrified to come back’ to Australia
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/na ... 155420aa07

The young woman whose complaint about a Bill Leak cartoon in The Australian triggered an investigation under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act says she is “terrified” to return to Australia because of racism.

Melissa Dinnison, who until recently lived in Perth, made an online complaint to the Human Rights Commission in August claiming she had “experienced ­racial hatred” and been “discrim­inated against because of my race” as a result of the cartoon.

Attempts to contact Ms Dinnison have been unsuccessful. She is believed to be holidaying in Germany with boyfriend, Karl Schatke, a casual IT worker at Perth’s Curtin University who volunteered for the Greens during this year’s federal election campaign.

Her family and friends would not talk to The Weekend ­Australian, which has tried repeatedly over several weeks to contact Ms Dinnison.

In Facebook posts, she identified as “a light-skinned indigenous person”. Writing under the pseudonym Melissa Rose on August 30, she described the Leak cartoon as “disgusting”.

The cartoon depicted an indigenous police officer presenting a youth to his father in an outback setting and saying: “You’ll have to sit down and talk to your son about personal responsibility.” The father replies: “Yeah righto, what’s his name then?”

The cartoon’s critics have described Leak’s work as a racist and hateful smear of indigenous parents, but The Australian has defended the cartoon, arguing it is indisputable that serious child welfare issues in remote indigenous communities are often the result of absent or neglectful parents

Ms Dinnison said on Facebook she was also upset with media coverage of the racial tensions in the WA town of Kalgoorlie sparked by the death of 14-year-old Aboriginal boy Elijah Doughty in August. “A little boy has been (killed) and the media representation is focused on ‘racial tension’ not the murder itself,” she wrote.

“Look at what we have become. I am terrified to come back. Just keep telling yourself that there’s racism in our communities and everyone should get over it. Our babies are dying for your right to pretend this isn’t happening.”

Her friends have confirmed Ms Dinnison uses the name “Melissa Rose” on Facebook.

She posted on August 30: “Every time someone stops listening to how the indigenous community feels about something and starts giving their bias (sic) opinion on race relations in Australia, little bits of dignity and pride get lost. Soon you realise that years of blackface, and ‘boong’ and ‘abo’ and ‘centrelink cheat’ slurs have made you angry and empty and devoid of personhood.”

Ms Dinnison’s family home is in a semi-rural outer suburb of Perth. Set back from the road with a paddock in front, the modest house is undergoing repairs for storm damage on the roof. Small crosses along the drive mark the graves of family pets, and several dogs mill around. A sign on an inner perimeter gate is a reminder that vehicles will be checked for weapons and alcohol.

When The Weekend Australian visited the home seeking comment from Ms Dinnison, a man believed to be her father approached. Informed of the reason for the visit, he told the reporter to leave and said: “No comment, that’s all we’ve been told to say.”

Asked if Ms Dinnison would make a statement about her complaint, he said: “She’ll talk when she’s ready.” The Weekend Australian also asked a woman believed to be Ms Dinnison’s mother, Shiralee, if her daughter would discuss her complaint. She replied: “It’s a private thing.”

The couple declined to identify themselves. A neighbour confirmed the house’s occupants were Ms Dinnison’s parents.

Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs’s delegate Jodie Ball has written to The Australian’s lawyers to advise that Ms Dinnison’s allegations of racial hatred under the Racial Discrimination Act would be investigated.

The complaint states: “The Australian newspaper has published and endorsed a cartoon depicting racial discrimination, racial profiling, and racially ­offensive material.

“A series of cartoons illustrate hateful and derogatory material specifically relating to indigenous Australians, their relationships with their children, alcoholism and domestic violence.”

Ms Dinnison cites section 18C, which makes an act unlawful that “is reasonably likely, in all circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person ... ”

The Human Rights Commission has advised The Australian that “sections 18C, 18D and 18E of the Racial Discrimination Act ­appear relevant to the complaint”.

This is an image of the complainant ...


... who is whiter than me (on left) ...

SUNP0040@20%.jpg

... yet I do not fear being called derogatory names.

Well Melissa Dinnison, you should stay in Germany. And Tim Soutphommasane, you should migrate to North Korea.

[Outlaw Yogi]

There is a guy from Adelaide in jail for doing that Yogi, but you have to be fairly committed and wind up the wrong people. It took about ten years.

Interesting.
I'm under the impression the AHRC can have someone gaoled/jailed for refusing to appear at their secret trials, but they have no authority to enforce the compensation claims made against the supposed perpetrator. They (the commissioners) can make recommendations, but no-one is obliged to fulfil them.
In the (most unlikely) event I was called to appear at their inquisition I would make my transport to and from their premises and any accommodation required to do so their financial responsibility.
The only thing they would (potentially) save expenses on is my legal representation, because I would speak for myself. And quite likely in a contemptuous manner.
And if (hypothetically) I was gaoled/jailed for my anti-authoritarian antics, I would use it via the media to launch a political career on freedom of expression grounds.

Ultimately 18C and the AHRC are making the case for an Australian 'Bill of Rights' seem needed/required/necessary.

[freediver]

It took about ten years. I think they issued fines and he ended up being jailed by a regular court for refusing to pay them.

[Outlaw Yogi]

... who is whiter than me (on left) ...

SUNP0040@20%.jpg

Aw damit, CORRECTION: ... "who is whiter than me (on right)"

So the jungle bunny head hunter in the wrinkled shorts.
Not the pot bellied Elmer Fudd in need of a hair cut.

[Outlaw Yogi]

It took about ten years. I think they issued fines and he ended up being jailed by a regular court for refusing to pay them.

Well I'm under the impression the commissioners have no real authority other than be able to compel an accused individual to appear at their secret inquisition. Thus have no authority to invoke penalties/fines, and their decisions concerning compensation for supposed aggrieved victims are recommendations only, which no-one is obliged to fulfil ... eg The Fed Govt who refused to compensate a Papuan for being held in detention, who killed his spouse by bashing with a bicycle.

Anyway, we may soon find out. Because several letters to the Australian editor are asking that Bill Leak tell the AHRC to go jump in a lake. An American or Canadian (?) [Mark Stein] recently wrote an op ed in the Australian mentioning how he'd been subjected to the same sort of PC authoritarianism in Canada, and rather than debate whether what he'd written was right or wrong, he debated their authority to restrict freedom of speech/expression in the first place. And ultimately Canada had to repeal their version of 18C.