IT IS disappointing when politicians stir up racial and religious tensions for their own political purposes. And it’s not politicians on the Right I’m talking about. It’s Bill Shorten, who spent the better part of last week trying to mobilise ethnic and religious communities against increasingly likely changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, with warnings of “a new foothold for divisive and hateful abuse”.
As part of his crusade, Shorten has pointed to the bogeyman of a “green light” to anti-Semitism; tactics that are as predictable as they are patronising. What Shorten doesn’t understand is that many Jewish Australians, myself included, share the same concerns about 18C as an increasing number of people in the wider community. Specifically, that banning forms of expression merely because they are “insulting” or “offensive” is inherently incompatible with the right to free speech.
Public opinion has no doubt been shifted by recent incidents like the 3½-year case against three university students because of harmless Facebook banter and the spectacle of a satirical cartoon coming under investigation by a government commission.
Incidents like this have nothing to do with “hate speech” — as nebulous a concept as that is — but about the Orwellian idea that the state can determine — and prevent — things as subjective as insult and offence.
Read the full article by Gideon Rozner at the Herald Sun.