Australia's Fifth Column

[Rorschach]

Do the names; Gillian Triggs, Tim Soutphommasane, Sarah Hanson-Young (or any Green), Robert Manne, David Manne, Henry Reynolds, David Marr, etc, etc, etc... Perhaps we could lump in media groups like Fairfax and the ABC.

[Rorschach]

As much as the ABC protests and as much as some in the media defend them, it must be obvious to the ordinary Australian that it does lean heavily to the left. Since Whitlam and It's Time when all and sundry were listed on the Labor Website... many of who worked for the ABC.

Survey reveals left-wing slant of ABC journalists

by Peter Westmore

News Weekly, June 8, 2013

A survey of over 600 Australian journalists, conducted by a senior academic from the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, has cast a revealing light on the political beliefs of Australian journalists.

It shows that over 40 per cent of ABC journalists support the Greens, over 30 per cent support Labor, and just 15 per cent support the Coalition.

While political beliefs do not automatically result in biased reporting, the left-wing dominance suggests that the culture of the ABC is overwhelmingly to the left, so that many journalists are unaware that their views are far to the left of the mainstream, or believe that they are a vanguard who must “educate” the public towards their perceptions of reality.

It also highlights the success of the left’s long march through the institutions, a process formulated by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, and acknowledged in Australia by journalists such as Marian Sawer, author of the book, Sisters in Suits: Women and Public Policy in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), which documented how feminists had captured key sections in the federal bureaucracy in the 1970s and 1980s.

Folker Hanusch, senior lecturer in journalism at University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, recently headed a study which surveyed 605 journalists around Australia between May 2012 and March 2013. It found that more than half (51.0 per cent) describe themselves as holding left-of-centre political views, compared with only 12.9 per cent who consider themselves right-of-centre.

Says Dr Hanusch: “It is the first study of its kind in more than 20 years to involve such a large number of journalists, and follows on from the work of John Henningham in the early 1990s.” (The Conversation, May 20, 2013).

Professor John Henningham is an Australian journalist, educator and director of the journalism college, Jschool, in Brisbane. More than 20 years ago he conducted the first national survey of Australian journalists. His findings are summarised online in the Electronic Journal of Communications (EJC). He found that, in the early 1990s, journalists had a pronounced left-wing bias.

“While 41 percent of journalists describe their ‘general political leaning’ as middle of the road, most of the remainder are more likely to lean to the left than to the right. Of the total, 3.8 percent said they were ‘pretty far to the left’, 35 percent a ‘little to the left’, 1.8 percent ‘pretty far to the right’ and 14.2 percent a ‘little to the right’. Journalists specialising in politics are much more likely to lean to the left than the right: 48 percent to 11 percent.” (EJC, Vol. 3, Nos 3 & 4, 1993).

The most recent survey confirms the trend, but suggests that it has gone even further.

Dr Hanusch says: “When asked about their voting intentions, less than two-thirds of the journalists we surveyed revealed their voting intention. Of those 372 people, 43.0% said they would give their first preference vote to Labor; 30.2% would vote for the Coalition; and 19.4% said they would choose the Greens — about twice the Australian average.”

Senior journalists, however, who have a stronger influence on final content, had views which were close to those of other Australians, as measured by recent Newspolls.

Most revealing was the political orientation of journalists working for the ABC.

Dr Hanusch has found that “41.2% of the 34 ABC journalists who declared a voting intention said they would vote for the Greens, followed by 32.4% for Labor and 14.7% for the Coalition”.

Not surprisingly, when the ABC was asked to comment on the survey, its spokesman dismissed it, saying that the number of journalists participating in the survey was too small to draw any conclusions.

ABC radio presenter Mark Colvin told the Australian that the result was “absolutely meaningless”. He said, “Only a tiny proportion of ABC journalists were prepared to reveal their voting intentions.... You don’t know anything about the much larger percentage of ABC journalists who were not prepared to reveal their intentions.… It’s absolutely ridiculous to draw conclusions from this survey on that subject.” (The Australian, May 21, 2013).

Other journalists had a different view. Nick Cater, author of the recently published book, The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class (HarperCollins Australia), wrote in The Australian on the same day that there were “no surprises … in the fact that 41 per cent of ABC journalists who declared their intention said they would be voting Green”. Conservative columnist Andrew Bolt, in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, expressed the same view.

Media outlets run by both Fairfax and News Limited also showed that most journalists identified with the left, but fewer than those at the national broadcaster.

Dr Hanusch reports that “46.5% of 86 News Limited journalists who answered this question said they would vote for Labor, 26.7% for the Coalition, and only 19.8% for the Greens. As well as The Australian, the News Ltd stable includes some of the country’s best-selling tabloids such as the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier-Mail, Northern Territory News and the Adelaide Advertiser, and some suburban newspapers”.

He added: “Among the 86 Fairfax Media journalists who responded, Labor was by far the most popular party at 54.7% support, followed by the Coalition and the Greens, both on 19.8%. The Fairfax journalists came from outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times, a range of regional and suburban newspapers, and metropolitan radio stations.”

Dr Hanusch has also found significant differences between journalists who worked for the metropolitan and provincial media. Journalists at metropolitan news media are significantly more left-wing in their political views.

Setting aside the substantial Green vote, particularly in the cities, Labor would receive 52.6 per cent of the metropolitan journalist vote, while in regional areas, 44.4 per cent would vote for the Coalition.

He has also found that journalists were overwhelmingly from white, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, with fewer than 5 per cent from Asia or the Middle-East, about half the percentage of the general population.

Peter Westmore is national president of the National Civic Council.

[Rorschach]

Just a few groups...
Short of that, the Australian Conservative has come up with a list of possibilities. We don’t know if there’s anything going at these organisations but, hey, it’s worth sending in a resume and having a shot. We’re simply glad to help.

1. ABC.
2. SBS.
3. The Big Issue.
3. The Monthly.
4. Green Left Weekly.
5. ALP/Greens staff.
6. Journalism department, UTS.
7. Al-Jazeera.
8. Australian Conservation Foundation.
9. Climate Institute.
10. Greenpeace.
11. ACTU (or any of its affiliates).
12. Palestine Solidarity Movement.
13. GetUp.
14. Researcher for Julian Burnside.
15. Researcher for Malcolm Fraser.
16. Researcher for John Pilger.
17. Rural Australians for Refugees
17. Liberty Victoria (formerly Victorian Council for Civil Liberties)
18. Join the Chaser team.
19. NSW Council for Civil Liberties.
20. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
21. Reconciliation Australia.
22. National Indigenous Times.
23. Womens Electoral Lobby.
24. The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby.
25. Keep Left Theatre (the rent-a-crowd crew).
26. Resistance.
27. Venezuelan Embassy.
28. Cuban Embassy.
29. US Democrats Abroad, Australia.
30. The Guardian.
31. The Independent.
32. BBC.
33. Washington Post.
34. Crikey
35. And, of course, The Project.

[Outlaw Yogi]

You missed the most important and sinister one (group) of them all - The Fabian Society.
What some term "Wolves in sheep's clothing".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Fabian_Society

WARNING: Clicking this link froze my laptop.
http://www.fabians.org.au/

[Rorschach]

Gleeson was appointed by Labor, and there is no surprise his political leanings and affiliation has ended up with this result. The tail cannot wag the dog.

Justin Gleeson sucked into the deep end

The Australian
October 25, 2016
Dennis Shanahan
Political Editor
Canberra

As solicitor-general Justin Gleeson’s fate was sealed the moment it became public he had talked to ­opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus during an election campaign and had not informed the Attorney-General.

His position was untenable and his resignation inevitable.

Gleeson was also drawn into a political fight he could not control and which Dreyfus was determined to drive to extreme lengths to get the scalp of George Brandis as Attorney-General. Dreyfus has failed to prosecute the case against Brandis on form and substance and in doing so has left his star witness with no choice but to move from the witness box to the dock.

No matter what the legal position, no matter how toxic the personal relationship with Brandis and no matter what impact other public revelations and differences the simple political fact was that Gleeson’s initial toe in the water sucked him in over his head.

Breaches of confidentiality at the Senate committee and unresolved contradictions in evidence meant Gleeson had lost the confidence of the government.

Ministers were becoming concerned about the confidentiality of advice after Gleeson revealed at the Senate inquiry without permission some of the advice the government had sought from the government’s lawyer — him.

As he said yesterday the necessary complete trust between the nation’s two top legal officers was gone, the relationship was ­“irretrievably broken” and it was up to him to resolve the impasse by resignation.

While Gleeson’s involvement in politics during an election campaign was based on his view he had been misrepresented by Brandis and may even have had a “gotcha” moment for his superior, elected boss, the pursuit of that belief was fatally flawed.

He could even have a got away with talking to Labor if he then informed Brandis and agreed to discuss his grievance after the election. But in not informing the ­Attorney-General of his contact, then failing to fix the grievance, Gleeson was drawn into Dreyfus’s political campaign of overreach and hyperbole, and out of his depth.

[Rorschach]

This should be end of the road for Gillian Triggs
Ramesh Thakur
The Australian
October 25, 2016

The idea of human rights is so powerful that those who would ­violate it in the privacy of their torture chambers are compelled to swear fealty to it in public discourse.

Yet established protections have come under growing stress with a gap between commitments and practice. In theory, human rights commissions are instruments to arrest the slide. But when the guardians begin to damage the institutions they lead and the cause they are meant to champion and defend, they should relinquish or be relieved of office. We seem to be at that stage with the Australian Human Rights Commission.

In “correcting” her October 18 testimony to a Senate estimates committee denying statements ­attributed to her, AHRC president Gillian Triggs said that on “further reflection”, she now accepted the accuracy of her April interview in The Saturday Paper. But was it further reflection or the revelation that the interview tape contradicted her denials that prompted her to correct the record?

She also said: “I had no intention of questioning The Saturday Paper’s journalistic integrity.” Pardon? Accusing the paper of inaccurate reporting, taking words out of context and even fabricating quotes was not intentionally impugning the professional integrity of Ramona Koval and the editors in order to cover her own loose words? Triggs has done much good and some of the past attacks on her have been scurrilous. But the effort to mislead parliament and the attempt to damage the professional reputation of a writer to save face make her position untenable.

The priority for a race discrimination commissioner should be reconciliation. Tim Soutphommasane has succeeded in ­inflaming divisions further instead of promoting social cohesion. In criticising elected politicians as an appointed official, he betrays arrogance. In inviting complaints about Bill Leak’s cartoon — satire at its biting best — which he then must adjudicate, he compromised the commission’s institutional integrity. In repeated statements, he fails to grasp that anti-discrimination efforts must sit within the framework of human rights.

Behind the individual failings of the two stands a law that should never have been passed, abuse and excesses under which are pretty much guaranteed, and which therefore would have been rescinded by any government which values core freedoms that underpin liberal democracy. The reason the law survives is a flawed philosophical structure propping it up, namely the progressive subordination of human rights to anti-discrimination machinery.

The promotion and protection of human rights is a bedrock requirement for a liberal society. But different groups of rights demonstrate an ambivalent relationship with governments. Individual human rights can be abused most pervasively and systematically by governments. Yet their protection requires the appropriate legal framework and enforcement machinery of the state. For social and economic rights, the state is the primary provider and guarantor. The same is true of the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of gender, race, religion and so on.

However, anti-discrimination rights, designed to protect against harmful action, have increasingly morphed into the right not to be offended. The citadels of liberal freedoms have been stormed by ­illiberal zealots to mock the very values of tolerance and diversity that sustained their gains. Out-of- control anti-discrimination tribunals have become the tool to enforce political correctness by state power. They attack not so much the particulars of any concrete case as the general principle of dissenters’ right to express a contrary opinion. The debate is no longer about any given issue or case but about the freedom to debate.

Social stigma and public shaming have become the favoured tools of identity activists, with the help of useful idiots in politics, to place increasing areas of policy off limits to public debate. In the name of pursuing tolerance for ­minorities, zealots are increasingly intolerant of those with differing views. This explains the perversion that institutions meant to defend human rights instead lead the assault on human rights. The result is minority fundamentalism with all the trappings of religious fundamentalism: certainty about truth and falsehood, intolerance of dissent and fanatical imposition of ideological purity.

This includes restrictions on US university campuses, which should be the bastions of debate that raises critical, contrarian, challenging and uncomfortable questions. Instead, concepts such as trigger alert, micro-aggression, safe spaces and the right not to be offended or hurt by a lengthening list of proscribed words have trampled on free speech rights. Meanwhile, an increasingly intolerant India has been transformed into the republic of hurt sentiments as litigious “offendees” haul writers and artists, those who have escaped vigilante lynch mobs, to courts that can take decades to decide cases.

The road-to-tyranny threat posed by this trend of narrowing speech rights is shown by two cases the AHRC has badly mishandled, confirming that political judgment may be more important than legal qualifications to be president.

Because Leak’s cartoon of parental neglect of indigenous children in remote outback com­munities was essentially true (satire doesn’t work without the kernel of truth), it hurt, and some people take offence at truth that hurts. Those who recognise Leak is speaking truth to the power of political correctness and act to rectify the pathology will advance the cause of reciprocal racial respect. By contrast, a Queensland University of Technology staffer has done more harm than good to the cause of reconciliation by her too precious claims of racial hurt that requires $250,000 to be assuaged.

The Australian has the resources to mount a robust challenge to the AHRC apparatchiks. Most people don’t. Therein lies the rub. The process is weighted heavily against the defendant. Once a complaint is lodged, the AHRC can use state power and resources to pursue action against them.

Allegations of racist insults can ruin reputations and destroy lives, even if the ultimate judgment finds for the defendant. The complainant suffers no penalty but can gain substantial financial advantage: heads I win, tails you lose.

Many simply settle out of court to get on with their lives rather than risk being caught in a legal nightmare with an uncertain outcome. No citizen should have to spend time and money to defend a basic human right in the modern-day version of a star chamber. Some QUT students chose to pay $5000 effectively as extortion money to escape the trap. This is an incentive structure inviting abuse of law and process.

Free speech is meaningless if in practice it does not include the freedom to offend. I find it easy to tolerate all who agree with me. Any law that attempts to silence free debate deserves contempt and should be challenged and rejected by the people if the politicians are too pusillanimous to rescind it.

Ramesh Thakur is a professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy.

[Rorschach]

Gillian Triggs misled senators on uni case, says QC
The Australian
October 27, 2016
Hedley Thomas
National Chief Correspondent

Senators were misled by Gillian Triggs in her responses to ­questions about the Australian Human Rights Commission’s handling of a racial hatred case against Queensland University of Technology students, according to a senior barrister.

Professor Triggs, the president of the AHRC, has faced resig­nation calls for misleading a ­Senate committee with her insistence last week that journalists at The Saturday Paper had misreported her and fabricated a key quote.

She retracted her claims when a recording of the interview proved she was quoted accurately in her attack on politicians. The Melbourne-based paper had not acted unethically or dishonestly.

In a separate line of questioning at the Senate committee last week, Professor Triggs was asked to comment on why Facebook posts by the students from QUT in 2013 had led to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act being invoked in 2014, and an ongoing case in the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane. Professor Triggs told committee chairman Ian Macdonald that she could not comment ­directly on the case but she and her staff were ­legally bound to take ­action and “must proceed to investigate the matter and to seek a conciliation. We do that in all matters where we can proceed to conciliation”.

But in the QUT case documents released under Freedom of Information legislation show there was no “investigation” by the human rights body of the 18C ­complaint against the students, who were not told they had been ­accused of racial ­hatred until a few days before a conciliation conference — 14 months after the commission ­accepted the case.

The lawyer for two of the ­students, Tony Morris QC, has written to Senator Macdonald and described the testimony of ­Professor Triggs as “at the very least, misleading and might well be regarded as a calculated deception”.

Three students still embroiled in the 18C case are being sued for $250,000 by Cindy Prior, who says she was hurt by Facebook posts after she told white students to leave QUT’s indigenous-only computer lab.

“There was in fact no inquiry or investigation regarding the Prior complaint by Professor Triggs or any delegate,’’ Mr Morris’s letter to Senator Macdonald states.

The legislation requires that “the president must inquire into the complaint and attempt to conciliate the complaint”, however, a junior staffer no longer working for the commission, Ting Lim, ­exchanged several emails with the university and Ms Prior’s lawyer, and none with the students.

“Not a single question was asked, not a single document was called for or inspected, in relation to the actual complaint itself,” Mr Morris advised the Senate committee.

“Throughout the same ­period of 14 months, from late May of 2014 to late July of 2015, not one of the seven students who were named … in the Prior complaint were even told about the complaint against themselves.

“Eventually, on about 28 July 2015, some of the seven students were notified of the Prior complaint, and the so-called concilia­tion conference, which had been fixed for 3 August 2015 ... So after the commission had sat on the complaint for 14 months, some of the seven students were given a maximum of three business days to prepare for the conference.”

Professor Triggs is overseas and unavailable for comment, ­according to the commission.

The latest claims that she gave misleading responses are being circulated and considered by committee members.

The letter to Senator Macdonald and other senators ­describes how the conciliation conference, run by the commission, went ahead with two out of seven stud­ents attending.

The letter states that “it is the ­demonstrable fact that there was no investigation whatsoever. There was certainly no investig­ation of the complaint against the seven students, who were not even contacted by the commission prior to the so-called conciliation ­conference”.

Senator Macdonald said yesterday from a conference in Switzerland that the latest claims against Professor Triggs were “very disturbing” and should be subjected to further scrutiny when she is recalled to explain her earlier misleading statement. He said that Professor would “have a lot of explaining to do”.

[Rorschach]

Truth overboard at Gillian Triggs’ inquiry on children in detention
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
August 24, 2014 9:00pm

THE Human Rights Commission president must resign after turning her inquiry on children in detention into a political witch-hunt last week.

Gillian Triggs’ behaviour was unforgivable for someone with semi-judicial powers, able to force witnesses to appear under threat of jail.

We cannot have the head of an inquiry showing such bias, heckling witnesses and making false and emotive claims from the bench to make the Christmas Island detention centre seem a hellhole.

Nor can we have an inquiry head giving media interviews attacking witnesses and summing up the issues before hearing all the evidence.

We also cannot have an inquiry head refusing to correct explosive claims about suicide attempts in detention when they’ve been debunked.

It is now impossible to have confidence in Triggs’ impartiality.

In fact, it’s hard not to suspect her inquiry is designed to reach a prejudged conclusion — to damn the Abbott Government’s successful border laws.

The very fact that Triggs, a law academic, called this taxpayer-funded inquiry is highly suspect.

The last time her commission looked into this issue was 2004 — which, what a surprise, was when the Howard government was stopping the boats, too.

No further inquiry was held in the seven years of Labor’s Rudd and Gillard governments, during which the border laws were weakened, luring more than 1200 men, women and children to their deaths and filling detention centres to bursting.

No, Triggs, appointed by Labor in 2012, waited until another Liberal government was back in power, stopping the boats and emptying the detention centres.

Sev Ozdowski, the former human rights commissioner responsible for the 2004 inquiry, calls this timing “very odd”.

“When the boats were arriving in large numbers and Labor was at its peak of cruelty towards the boat arrivals, (the commission) almost did not see the problem.”

BLOG WITH ANDREW BOLT

But Triggs is now on the case, seemingly filled with a righteous anger at the Abbott Government, even though the boats have now stopped and the number of children in detention more than halved.

Last month, for instance, she claimed “we’ve had reports that have been confirmed during the day that 10 women have attempted suicide” on Christmas Island.

False. There has been only one case of self-harm by a woman that could with any credibility be described as “attempted suicide”. And, no, Madam President, sipping some shampoo does not qualify.

Triggs also claimed last month she’d visited the detained children on Christmas Island and “almost all of them, including the adults, were coughing, were sick, were depressed, unable to communicate (and) weak”, which made her want to ask: “What’s going on? Why is this child not being treated?”

False again. Sick children are indeed being treated and the Government hotly disputes Triggs’ claim that almost every detained child on Christmas Island is sick.

Told this, Triggs — with her inquiry still to hear from Immigration Minister Scott Morrison — gave another media interview rebuking Morrison as needing “to be better advised”, and insisting “all children should be removed from the detention centres and placed in the community”.

Er, isn’t that the very thing the inquiry is meant to determine at the end of the hearings, and not near the start? Should an inquiry head really be attacking witnesses even before they’ve given their evidence?

But if all that was bad, last week was a disgrace.

Morrison appeared before her inquiry and Triggs flew for his throat: “How can you justify detaining children in these conditions for more than a year when there is no evidence that this is the policy that is stopping the boats but rather Operation Sovereign Borders, however you define it, with three-star generals or civilian authorities, whatever name you put to it, the reality is that physical force and power have stopped these boats?”

Not biased? Triggs?

On it went.

Triggs insisted “the people on Christmas Island are being detained in a prison effectively” because on her three visits she had noticed “you cannot get into any of the sections without going through armed guards”.

That infuriated the Immigration Department secretary Martin Bowles, who protested at Triggs’ “emotive statements”.

“It is not fair to characterise the detention system as a jail,” he said, and Triggs should correct a falsehood.

“We do not have armed guards, President. I would like you to acknowledge that.”

Triggs would not, despite being repeatedly challenged on her “facts”.

But if the head of an inquiry can see armed guards where there are none, and a prison where there are only pool fences, what else is she imagining about what she’s supposed to impartially judge?

No, Triggs must resign. She is meant to confront injustice, not commit it.

[Rorschach]

Open borders inevitably stoke xenophobia
The Australian
October 31, 2016
Jennifer Oriel

The Western world is edging towards a precipice. The postwar consensus that cast internationalism as a global ideal is unravelling. The Muslim migrant crisis has revealed that the political ideals of the West’s ruling elite and the people they govern are not simply different but apparently opposed.

Historically, such a clash of ideals between the governing and the governed tends to produce the mass suppression of dissidents by the elite, or a grassroots revolution from below. Each tendency has become amplified in the battle ­between sovereign citizens and supranational elites over border policy.

In previous centuries, mass revolt usually has been caused by a combination of economic inequality and political disenfranchisement. The modern trust deficit between the rulers and the ruled is civilisational. It arises from a widespread belief that Western elites are ruled by and ruling for foreign interests against the sovereign wealth of their states and the sovereign interests of their people.

Historian John Fonte offers a scholarly account of the development of supranational elitism in his book Sovereignty or Submission. He analyses the emergence of a transnational system of unelected officials populating the UN, the EU and NGOs, who believe in imposing rule from above on sovereign states and citizens.

Recent evidence supports Fonte’s analysis of emergent supranational rule. Documents published by WikiLeaks and DCLeaks have exposed the influence of unelected elites, NGO networks and so-called human rights activists on Western politics. In particular, the leaked files illustrate a pattern of supranationalists funding Western political parties and civil society organisations that back open-border policy, complemented by the organised mobbing of freethinkers who dissent from the Left party line.

The old term used to punish Western dissenters from the UN’s porous border policy and PC politics was Islamophobia. The new thought crime is xenophobia.

At the September UN meeting attended by Malcolm Turnbull, the General Assembly adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. The UN aims to develop a global compact for migration in coming years. The declaration’s introductory paragraphs outline the contours of the new thought crime: “in many parts of the world we are witnessing with great concern increasingly xenophobia and racist responses to refugees and migrants. We strongly condemn acts and manifestations of … xenophobia and related intolerance against refugees and migrants … we deplore all manifestations of xenophobia.” To solve the UN’s problem, its members endorsed a new global campaign to “counter xenophobia”.

There should be no need to state the obvious truth that immigrants make great economic, social, intellectual and cultural contributions to their nations. There are innumerable examples in Australia including last week’s heroic act by taxi driver Aguek Nyok, who saved passengers from a burning bus. Nyok is an immigrant from Sudan. However, it would benefit social cohesion to celebrate the contributions of immigrants not as immigrants, but as citizens who have an equal share in advancing our great country and the civilisational values that sustain the free world.

The problem with the UN’s demand that only positive stories about migrants and refugees should be promoted as a part of its anti-xenophobia campaign is that it requires the censorship of truth, thereby deepening the trust deficit between supranational organisations and sovereign citizens. By permitting only positive reports about the effects of porous border policy, the UN has become a propagandist of PC ideology.

The politically incorrect truth is that people entering the West as asylum-seekers also commit serious violence against our citizens and undermine our civilisational values.

Soeren Kern, senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, has reported on several rapes of German women and girls by migrants, including teenage boys. In October, a 19-year-old Moroccan migrant was arrested on suspicion of raping a 90-year-old woman as she walked home from Sunday mass.

Speaking to Britain’s Sunday Express newspaper, German police union chief Rainer Wendt notes that criminal migrants from North Africa “despise our country and laugh at our justice”.

Journalist Ingrid Carlqvist has documented a shockingly high number of arrests and convictions of asylum-seekers in Sweden during May. Their crimes include extraordinarily brutal rapes of women and children.

Norwegian police inspector Thomas Utne Pettersen reports that mass immigration has led to an increase in the rape of women and children. Speaking to Breitbart media, he cites the high incarceration rate of some migrant groups and cases of rape committed by asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and Syria, concluding: “People’s xenophobia in relation to this group is highly rational and justified”.

Despite the reports of horrific violence against Western citizens arising from open-border policies, the UN and activist groups continue their campaign to demonise sovereign governments that support a rational immigration policy.

The Australian’s associate editor Chris Kenny analysed open-border activists’ response to Australia’s offshore immigration processing on Nauru. In short, green-Left politicians backed by the activist press lie by portraying offshore processing as “torture” while demonising Nauru’s decent citizens. Like their supranational comrades at the UN, Australia’s open-border activists are shameless propagandists for PC ideology.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has a history of agitating against the Coalition government’s immigration policy. However, the commission’s supposedly landmark report on children in immigration detention was methodologically unsound and biased. Documents revealed the inquiry’s main conclusion that Australia’s immigration system is non-compliant with UN conventions was stated in a 2013 work plan before the main investigations had commenced. Yet the Left media continues to laud AHRC opinion on border security and immigration policy.

Popular support for Brexit and figures like Donald Trump is driven by the lies and propaganda of supranational elites. Their hostility toward the creed, culture and citizens of the free world is evident in their campaign to enforce open-border policy on Western states and demonise dissenters.

Politicians who believe in democracy, human rights and the rule of law should resist the corrupted ideology of a once great UN. Instead, they should fulfil their primary duty of care to citizens by defending their peoples’ sovereign right to safety and security against the elitism of unelected ideologues.

[Rorschach]

I’m offended by Human Rights Commission, not Bill Leak
Kerryn Pholi
The Australian
November 2, 2016

Bill Leak draws satirical cartoons for The Australian, and one of his cartoons has landed him in trouble with the law. The offending cartoon was produced after shocking footage (shocking for most people, anyway) from inside the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre was aired on the ABC’s Four Corners program.

Leak’s cartoon was informed by the Four Corners program and by related commentary, which included an opinion piece I had written for The Australian on August 2.

My article was just as critical as Leak’s cartoon of so-called “Aboriginal parenting styles”, which, I had said, “would be regarded as extreme and dangerous neglect in a non-indigenous family” and which leave many Aboriginal children with “very little experience of the basic safety, security, routine, hygiene, guidance and consistent discipline that every child is entitled to”.

It is entirely possible my remarks could have caused an Aboriginal person to feel “racially offended or insulted”. So why is Leak in trouble while I am not?

In response to Leak’s cartoon, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane publicly advised that any Aboriginal person who felt offended or insulted could lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission under the Racial Discrimination Act — an offer that one Melissa Dinnison has taken him up on. In response to a suggestion that public servants shouldn’t go about drumming up business in this fashion, Soutphommasane replied that it falls within his role to promote awareness of the law.

Leak’s cartoon reached a wide audience and the controversy spread it further, which provided a ready opportunity for Soutphommasane to spruik his business. I would argue, though, that if Soutphommasane’s job is to promote awareness of the law by pointing out potentially offensive material, he is a bit of an underperformer.

Along with things I have said, my friend and colleague Anthony Dillon has said a lot of things, Warren Mundine has said plenty of things (and I could go on, but you get the picture) that could very well prompt a number of Aboriginal people to take the huff — and yet the AHRC has been silent. I wonder why.

To be fair, I don’t blame Soutphommasane for any reluctance to take Aboriginal commentators such as us to task, since that would, to use the parlance of identity politics, “complicate the narrative” beyond the AHRC’s capacity to cope. I must acknowledge also that the AHRC is an equal-opportunity ignorer, since a number of other commentators with critical things to say about the state of Aboriginal affairs — such as Gary Johns and Jeremy Sammut — have not yet been the subject of a Soutphommasane community service tweet, as far as I know.

Why Leak, then? Perhaps the Racial Discrimination Act is not merely concerned with what is actually said (or drawn), but with how many people might see it. A cartoon’s message hits home immediately, whereas text requires more effort from its audience. If that is the case, it doesn’t seem quite fair that the medium Leak happens to work in should expose him to greater risk than we scribblers might bear.

Or perhaps it’s not just about what gets said (or drawn), but about who says it. Leak, like Andrew Bolt, is a high-profile trophy scalp for the AHRC, whereas a few dissident Aborigines and policy boffins are a comparatively paltry prize.

Because Leak makes his living from being provocative, there are some who regard this as a case of a serial offender finally getting his comeuppance — which demonstrates an alarmingly hazy grasp of how the law in this country actually works.

Soutphommasane would do well to issue some community education tweets to clear up all this confusion over who is and is not a potential offender under s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, because right now it all seems terribly imprecise and arbitrary.

Imprecise, arbitrary and with seemingly limitless power to intervene. Leak is a satirical cartoonist by trade. His job is to produce provocative material. In the course of doing his job, he must risk causing offence; it is the nature of the business in which he earns a living. Yet it is not the Press Council, the Australian Communications and Media Authority or any other industry body that brought this action to discipline one of their own, but the AHRC — which, it seems, has supremacy over a given industry’s own regulatory mechanisms, and can intervene in a man’s livelihood, and in the manner in which The Australian conducts its business, on what are essentially questions of “tone” and “good taste”.

Aside from the matters of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the law that lends the AHRC power such as this is surely an industrial relations issue as well.

Dinnison’s feelings are so important to the state that there is a special law to protect them, and a commissioner responsible for ensuring the law is exerted (although, as noted above, the commissioner could perhaps exert himself a little more consistently in the interests of fairness). Like Dinnison, I, too, have some unhappy Aboriginal feelings that the AHRC may have a duty to address under s18C of the RDA.

Firstly, I feel offended by the suggestion that a “race” I belong to is so much more emotionally fragile than the broader populace that we require special protection from any hurt feelings that may arise from discussion of matters relating to us. As an autonomous adult, I object to being infantilised simply on the basis of my race.

I am also offended by the suggestion that an Aboriginal person would never wish to be exposed to offensive or insulting commentary, and that we would see nothing but good in a law that effectively suppresses robust and honest public discussion on Aboriginal issues. Aboriginal Australia has some serious, entrenched problems; to get these problems resolved, some hurt feelings on our part may be necessary. Some of us believe the wellbeing of the most vulnerable Aboriginal people, particularly children, is more important than the delicate sensibilities of people such as Dinnison.

Furthermore, I feel insulted by the insinuation that I would need or want a bunch of public servants to deal with an offensive remark or rude picture on my behalf. The thought of Soutphommasane riding in on his white horse and smiting Leak, ostensibly in defence of our injured Aboriginal dignity, is almost too embarrassing for words. As a matter of fact, it’s more than embarrassing: To be in any way associated, on the basis of my race, with this unjust, spiteful, wasteful and foolish law and the agents of its administration is humiliating.

It appears s18C, along with the Human Rights Commission, has caused me to feel insulted, offended and humiliated as an Aboriginal person. Where should I take my complaint?

Kerryn Pholi has worked as a social worker and correctional officer.