IF freedom of speech is taken away, George Washington said in 1783, then “dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter .’’ However well meaning the views of opponents to the Abbott government’s changes to race discrimination laws, many have a poor understanding of the inviolable place of free speech in our democracy.
Retired indigenous magistrate Sue Gordon was right this week when she said the attempted suppression of racism tends to make it worse, driving it underground where it cannot be rebutted effectively. In the isolated pockets of our culturally diverse nation where racism is a problem, stifling discussion has been demonstrated to create a sense of grievance, similar to what propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in the mid 1990s.
Far from being a hotbed of racism as some Green Left commentators believe, Australia, a nation of immigrants, has been enhanced by the generally harmonious blending of successive waves of newcomers to these shores. Where serious issues of racial abuse arise, redress is available through defamation laws. The Abbott government’s new, broad provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act will also prohibit the incitement of racial hatred and threats of physical harm.
Wesley Aird, a former member of John Howard’s indigenous advisory council, is correct in arguing that no amount of legislation can stop some people saying stupid things. Writing today, Aird shines a light on some of the robust conflicts within Aboriginal Australia, pointing out it is simplistic and disingenuous to suggest it is only Aborigines who need protection from the rest of non-Aboriginal Australia.
The opposition of Jewish groups to the changes is understandable. People such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement have driven anti-Semitism in the West. We respect the opinions of holocaust survivors who have voiced their opposition to Attorney General George Brandis’s proposed changes. It is undeniable, however, that the murderous excesses of Nazism and Communism were aided and abetted by a chilling public silence brought about by totalitarian censorship.
Post-war Europe has a long tradition of banning hate speech. But as Israeli political adviser Gabriel Sassoon writes today, such laws have not prevented racism, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and anti-Muslim abuse reaching fever pitch on today’s discontented Continent.
Nor, in Australia, has the controversial Section 18C of the RDA prevented a 21 per cent increase in the number of reports of racist violence directed at individuals or Jewish facilities in the past year. That disturbing trend is a good reason for open debate and the airing of grievances, to allow them to be dealt with by rational, sensible argument.
Rather than being viewed as a one-off, Australia’s debate over racial vilification needs to be understood within the context of international trends. In a drive to clamp down on statements perceived as offensive, freedom of speech is being trampled across much of the world. Australians would not want to emulate the Danish, where “mocking or scorning’’ a lawfully existing religious community can result in four months jail. Nor would we tolerate a recent ruling by a British Court of Appeal judge that using the word “golliwog’’ in front of a black person, whatever the context — even when mentioning a jam label — was racial harassment. In Europe and the US, environmentalists want climate change denial to be declared a crime against humanity, to give themselves the upper hand in debate.
In addition to stifling the argy bargy that is central to democratic life, heavy handed discrimination laws undermine democracy by entrusting inordinate discretion to unelected judges. Justice Mordecal Bromberg, for example, who ruled against News Corp Australia columnist Andrew Bolt under the Section 18C of the RDA in 2011 has been upfront about the fact he sees the judiciary as a way of delivering what he describes as “social justice’’.
At heavy public expense, such legislation creates lawyers picnics, mostly of little benefit to taxpayers. Canadian lawyers, for example, do well squabbling over what constitutes “hateful or contemptuous” expression about ethnic minorities and faith groups under their Human Rights Act.
Australia has no reason to be complacent about freedom of speech. Hundreds of prohibitions govern the things we are not allowed to know. And we rank 28th out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index. The further erosion of freedom of speech is too high a price to pay for legislation erroneously intended to stifle the rougher edges of our robust debate. Trying to legislate for good manners or to prevent hurt invariably backfires. The government is right to abolish Section 18C of the RDA.
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