Australia Drops Opportunity to Scale Back Hate Speech Laws

Australia this week provides
another reminder that America’s First Amendment is in a league of
its own, even among Western first world countries. In July, Jerry
Tuccille took note of an order by the courts in Australia imposing
a five-year ban
prohibiting media outlets from reporting on a corruption case
involving them and three other countries (Malaysia, Vietnam and
Indonesia). Wikileaks published the order.

This censorship is not the only area where Australia limits free
speech. The government had been considering changes to a part of
the country’s Racial Discrimination Act that criminalizes hate
speech. But on Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
announced he was abandoning the changes in order to preserve
“national unity.”

The hate speech component of the law falls under
18C, making it a crime to publicly say things that “offend,
insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of
people” on the basis of their race, color, nationality, or ethnic
origin.

According to The Australian, leaders had proposed
changing the law to remove “offend,” “insult,” and “humiliate” from
the list, add a measure about “vilification” instead, and broaden
exemptions to the law. The reason the change has been abandoned,
Abbott said, is because it’s a distraction from counterterrorism
efforts. By which, I think he means he’s afraid that not punishing
bigoted speech will cause minorities to turn into terrorists in
response, which is a pretty horrible way of looking at your
citizenry.
Via The Australian:

Mr Abbott, explaining his decision to dump the election
commitment to amend the act, said: “When it comes to
counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of Team Australia. The
government’s perfectly-reasonable-under-different-circumstances
attempt to amend section 18C has become a complication that we just
don’t need and we’re not going to proceed with.”

The government’s libertarian approach to racial discrimination
laws angered ethnic minorities including Jewish, Arabic, Islamic,
Greek, Chinese and Armenian community representatives.

Bill Shorten accused the government of using national security
as “a cover” to abandon his “reckless” reforms to racial
discrimination laws.

“Giving Australians the right to be bigots was always
destructive action; there is no right to be a bigot in this
country,” the Opposition Leader said.

Censoring what people say doesn’t cause people to be more or
less bigoted, obviously, but it’s a good reminder of the many, many
people who think rights are actually privileges that are handed out
by the government and not things that restrict the power of
government over the individual.

Note the reference to potential changes in the law being
described as “libertarian.” Libertarian Australian Senator David
Leyonhjelm wrote an
opinion piece in The Australian (paywalled)
criticizing the failure to follow through with the changes:

Laws limiting racist speech are not really about speech at all,
but are intended to prevent unacceptable thoughts. To believe our
thoughts can be regulated by restricting our speech is delusional.
No law will stop people from thinking things we disagree with, and
banning their expression will only deny civilised public debate and
encourage the use of non-traditional media.

The best way to combat opinions you don’t like is to have them
debated, not stowed in some shady corner of the internet or taken
into the courtroom.

I am very disappointed that the government has dropped its plan
to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act under the
guise of national unity. If we want to live in a free society, we
should take the advice of Chopper
Read and harden up. There are many pressing issues for our
governments and courts, but the question of who has had their
feelings hurt is not one of them.

Leyonhjelm also had comments about Australia’s own efforts to
collect metadata about citizens’ online activities and censorship
of journalists in the guise of protecting national security. How
familiar! Watch this blog for an interview with Leyonhjelm, likely
sometime next week.