Racial vilification laws: checkmate for Andrew Bolt – and George Brandis's ego
George Brandis’s proposals were always compromised because they were motivated as a personal favour for just one man: Andrew Bolt
gay alcorn
That Tony Abbott personally called Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt to tell him the government was abandoning its promise to wind back racial vilification laws is all you really need to know. Bolt blogged about it before the rest of us were told of Abbott’s “leadership call” to scuttle laws he once considered anathema to the “sacred principle of free speech”.
Even if you believe – as I do – that to “insult and offend” on racial or any other grounds should not be unlawful in a raucous democracy, the proposed gutting of the racial discrimination act has rightly failed, and failed in a way that tells us something.
The proposals were always compromised because they were motivated as a personal favour for just one man: Andrew Bolt. As the understated president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, put it, they were “contrivance deliberately to ensure that a Bolt-like case would not emerge again.”
The Coalition did oppose on free speech grounds the 1995 racial hatred provisions that made it unlawful to “”offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” on the basis of race or ethnicity. But there was never any great fuss about them after that – they were used sparingly and only in serious cases of racial abuse. The vast majority of cases were resolved at mediation.
....When Bolt was found to have breached the racial discrimination act, he said it was a “terrible day for free speech in this country”. Bolt and his wife Sally Morrell dined with Abbott after the verdict, which makes it fitting that Abbott would ring to tell him on Tuesday that all the promises to the conservative warrior had come to nothing. Bolt himself seemed to grasp at least in part that to have him at the centre of a battle for “freedom” was always fatal.
“To associate it with me meant so many people of the left thought that any law that could be used against me must be pretty good, and I think that’s poisoned the debate,” he told radio station 2GB.
Yes Andrew, it did poison the debate. But the “left” didn’t make it all about you. You did, and so did the government.
As far as the judge, yep, judicial activism is alive and well, he really had to stretch the bounds of 18C/D with some convoluted and tenuous reasoning for that one. Wayne L
The judge made it clear that 18D protects any opinion, however obnoxious or offensive ”” provided it is genuinely held, for academic, artistic or scientific purpose, or in the public interest, or in publishing a fair and accurate media report.
He repeatedly reinforced this: "Those opinions will at times be ill-considered. They may be obstinate, exaggerated or simply wrong. But that, of itself, provides no valid basis for the law to curtail the expression of opinion."
The issue central to the case was not whether Bolt's article was an expression of opinion, but whether the factual allegations on which that opinion was based were accurate. This question occupied most of the court's time and is the subject of the greater part of the judgment.
So the case was clearly not about freedom of opinion. It was about freedom to spread untruths.
In Bolt's articles Bromberg found inferences which leave "an erroneous impression", "gratuitous references" based on "a selective misrepresentation", and omissions which "meant that the facts were not truly stated".
He found assertions "shown to be factually erroneous", comment that was "unsupported by any factual basis and erroneous", asserted facts that were "untrue" and several contentions that were "incorrect" or "grossly incorrect".
His key finding was that "in relation to most of the individuals concerned, the facts asserted in the Newspaper Articles that the people dealt with chose to identify as Aboriginal have been substantially proven to be untrue". (378)
For example, Bolt wrote that
Anita Heiss had won "plum jobs reserved for Aborigines" at Koori Radio, at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and at Macquarie University. (381)
The Koori Radio job was a voluntary unpaid position. Neither the arts board position nor the university job was reserved for indigenous applicants.
Three untruths there. In one sentence.
More damagingly, Bolt asserted that Heiss had made a conscious "decision to identify as Aboriginal" and was "lucky, given how it's helped her career". Bromberg found, however that Ms Heiss "has Aboriginal ancestry and communal recognition as an Aboriginal person." And further, "She did not consciously choose to be Aboriginal. She has not improperly used her Aboriginal identity to advance her career."
Bromberg's conclusion was emphatic: "Untruths are at the heart of racial prejudice and intolerance."
I take it you don't agree with the defamation laws either ?
I do agree with them. There is a chasm of difference between offending someone and making a false statement about that person.
So Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times went down. Outside the court, Bolt declared this "a terrible day for free speech''. Not according to the judge: "The intrusion into freedom of expression is of no greater magnitude than that which would have been imposed by the law of defamation if the conduct in question and its impact upon the reputations of many of the identified individuals had been tested against its compliance with that law." Perhaps the Herald Sun and its star journalist should be thankful they're not facing nine separate defamation trials. An appeal is expected - so is some spectacular rhetoric from the now martyred Andrew Bolt.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...h-the-facts-20110928-1kxba.html#ixzz39gTH2Zf7
Andrew Bolt did make false statements about people. A judge said so.
Andrew Bolt did make false statements about people. A judge said so.
I don't believe I said that he didn't, or that I was even talking about Andrew Bolt. All I said was that, imo, someone has the right to offend as much as someone has the right to be offended.
Emotive garbage basilio.
Political discourse is full of untruths, factual omissions, misrepresentation and downright lies.
Every time I listen to Short'un, I run out of fingers and toes keeping track of them... and that's in about the first three minute.
Bolt's factual indiscretions are no worse than what is in every paper every single day, but because it included the word 'aboriginal' the legislation was invoked, which goes to my point about interpretation and stitching up.
Perhaps Bolt deserved a slap around the ear with a wet fish (as does every partisan political commentator, such as that illiberal gobshyte Marr), but not a court case.
Your post is typical of the hystrionics, the faux outrage, the glaring monumental hypocrisy and double standards of the apology industry of the left.
Then we have Horace trotting out yet another appalling non-sequitur.
This is why I say debate in this country has been poisoned, the left has consciously eradicated the possibility of reasonable, rational debate by appealing to mob mentality and social proof.
Well, I just think that sometimes we have to trade some freedoms in to be a more civilised society.
Just because people think they have a right to do something doesn't mean that such behaviour is socially acceptable.
Should we all have the right to walk around the streets naked ? Or to pee in Archibald Fountain ? After all these actions don't even hurt anyone do they ? Why should people be offended by them ?
Do you want to end up like Britain?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ol...ted-and-bailed-after-Daley-twitter-abuse.html
Well, I just think that sometimes we have to trade some freedoms in to be a more civilised society.
Just because people think they have a right to do something doesn't mean that such behaviour is socially acceptable.
Should we all have the right to walk around the streets naked ? Or to pee in Archibald Fountain ? After all these actions don't even hurt anyone do they ? Why should people be offended by them ?
You neatly avoided my questions on my previous post, but the case you linked to did not appear to be motivated by racism so I don't know if it would be actionable under our laws. That case is going too far imo.
Becoming offended is a personal choice, every person has the liberty to not be offended. Today in Australia. becoming offended is an industry and a sport which only serves to divide society. There are better ways to change thinking, legislation just doesn't do it.
Excellent post, Wayne.
Everyone has the right to free speech.
That is the bottom line.
The Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for its controversial protest, its inflammatory website, and its homophobic rhetoric, has recently decided to expand its repertoire of inappropriateness to include picketing the funerals of the 19 firefighters who died in the line of duty on Sunday in Yarnell, Arizona. Thankfully, between public disapproval, WBC's own lack of follow through, and an Arizona law, this protest is unlikely to succeed.
It did not take long for the Westboro Baptist Church to begin praising God for "consuming fires" and the deaths of firefighters. According to WBC, God killed 19 firefighters because of same-sex marriage.
They have also announced its intention to picket the funerals of the 19 deceased firefighters, including with a press release tweeted to several news agencies. In addition to several Bible verses and the names of the deceased, the press release stated in large letters "GOD H8S FAG MARRIAGE!"
In the name of decency, the public can take solace in the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church has been known to threaten protests that did not occur. For instance, it threatened to protest at the funeral of Boston Marathon bombing victim Krystle Campbell, stating that the bombing occurred because Massachusetts was the first state to allow same-sex marriage, but the group never showed up. As the Arizona protest has not yet been added to the group's protest schedule, it is possible that the group will fail to appear.
it's a bit harder to avoid an old dude sunning his junk in the town square.
What you can't seem to grasp basilio, is that what Bolt did is du rigeur in the Australian media, most particularly the ABC. They all do it!
Bolt's mistake is using the word 'aboriginal', which enabled the leftist activists to drag out 18C on a very farking long bow and torture 18D into submission, essentially via leaps of faith and heresay.
Bolt was commenting on the politics of the Aboriginal industry, perhaps having a shot at what identifies 'Aboriginal', rather than denigrating them as a race. Hardly racism or anything in 18C.
Of course the left can turn anything it wants into racism. I could perhaps accuse the the committee of the Italian club of being self interested sheisters (as a hypothetical example) and be prosecuted on the same basis, if some grubby group leftists wanted to stitch me up.
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