We honestly thought we’d seen the end of this.
Back in August last year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott scrapped reform to the Racial Discrimination Act, which would have seen the entirety of Section 18C (read it in full here) repealed and replaced with: “It is unlawful for a person to do an act that is reasonably likely to vilify another person or a group of persons, or to intimidate another person of a group of persons.”
Despite the scrapping coming under a growing list of ‘broken election promised’, it’s one of the few decisions by Tony Abbott in the last year that has been met with widespread praise. When it was first introduced, it faced mass public criticism, as well as backlash from religious leaders and even many Liberal MPs.
Reformation of Section 18C first came about after conservative columnist Andrew Bolt was found in violation of the act in 2011, for articles in 2009 that accused ‘fair-skinned’ Aborigines of using and abusing their racial identity to get benefits. His articles were deemed to have caused offence (surprise, surprise) and were consequently redacted.
It only comes full circle, then, that Malcolm Turnbull answered questions (that in all likelihood were pre-approved) on whether he would support reform in the Racial Discrimination Act to allow for “more debate on the race politics that is now confronting us” last night on Bolt’s own show, The Bolt Report.
Turnbull, who thinks “the debate [last year] honestly ran off the rails”, said that he would support a softer reform that simply removed the words ‘insult’ and ‘offend’:
“[Last year] there was a very general consensus […] that the words ‘insult’ and ‘offend’ could be removed, leaving the words humiliate and intimidate. It was broadly supported, I was very comfortable about that. I didn’t think that would have any negative impact.”
No. Negative. Impact.
????
“If you look back on it and be honest and self critical, I think the government went further than it should have,” he continued.
“The reality is with change like this you’ve got to do it very delicately and you’ve got to bring people along with you, so that they understand that what you’re not seeking to do is to license hate speech. Quite the contrary, you’re trying to get just the right balance between freedom of speech and social harmony.”
Not that he agrees that Bolt’s 2009 articles came under that banner of freedom of speech / social harmony, however. Malcolm Turnbull fired shots at said articles last night, when he had this to say of the law as it currently stands: “There’s an exemption if [discussion is] in a public debate and the debate is conducted reasonably.”
Conducted. Reasonably.
In other words: nah Bolt, your articles were not reasonable debate, they were just racist.
Abbott is under pressure from his own party to backtrack on his election promise to repeal Section 18C. Per a report in the SMH, a handful of Liberal Senators have threatened to ‘cross the floor’ (a.k.a. join the other side) if he doesn’t.
And now that Malcolm’s thrown his support behind the reforms, Government backbenchers are pushing to reopen the debate.
The whole thing smacks of manipulation of the media to pass an unpopular and widely criticised repeal. Cool. And just when we thought we were done with this.
