Canada is calling you home.

We need a test case. Surely some bleeding-heart leftie can be found to testify that he or she is offended by the very existence of Tony Abbott, and that under section 18c our PM should therefore be eradicated by the force of law?

No Jon that would not do. It is a racist law and the offender has to
have a different race to the offended, or at least claim to have a
different race.

My understanding is that it only applies to matters of race.
I can offend you by calling you a ding-a-ling but that is not racist
so you cannot use 18c because other legislation as far as I know do not
have similar clauses.

That was where Bolt got into trouble, he was discussing the complainant's
antecedents and got one of them wrong and was discussing percentages,
and the ability to claim aboriginal privileges.

Now that because of the court precedence you cannot safely discuss such things.

when u have let so many in the country who hate freedom and have numerous Government paid jobs to confirm victimhood then free speach is bound to be 'restricted' . How true the ex Muslims in Victoria were to speak the truth about Islam only to be charged by denialist and Christophobes. How shameful we now have so little guts from those who can see how this pc rubbish is destroying us. Strange dynamics as the feminist shut their mouth when mono culturalism is at stake, catholic haters are silent with epidemic child abuse in Indigeneous communities, conservatives blab the idiotic mantra about the 'religion of peace', 'progressives'ignore the fact that muslims on the whole (not small minority) believe homosexuals should be stoned, young girls should be circumcised etc etc

Yes the Coalition backdown is shameful and cowardly.

Ahh, yes runner, but in the case you quoted the judge was wrong because
Islam is a religion and not a race, so he should have thrown the case out.
Actually either way he was wrong because it is not really a religion but a fascist political philosophy.

Self censorship by individuals and the media through fear of section 18c makes a Rottenham (Rotherham) even more likely in Australia. That is, if it isn't already happening.

Rotherham - 1400 children abused in Rotherham, where authorities were afraid to be called racists.

Well OTB, it has already happened here.
The Bilal gang did the grooming technique on at least one girl that was
known to one of them when she got into their car.

Whether it is/has happened on such a scale I wouldn't know.
However the police/ DOCs should be active enquiring, but I would bet
quids it would be politically incorrect to make such enquiry.

Virginia Trioli wrote an interesting article
on this very subject in the magazine, "The
Weekly Review, August 13, 2014, page 3.
I'm going to quote the entire article for you
because I don't want to be accused of "cherry-
picking." :

"Turns out we don't have the right to be bigots
after all. The Federal Government has abandoned its
crusade to repel Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination
Act. Columnists who want to offend someone about their
race will now have to make sure they get their facts
straight, and there's no legislation to make sure
they do that."

"Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it
unlawful for someone to do an act that is reasonably
likely to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate"
someone because of their race or ethnicity."

"The question that those arguing for its repeal never
managed to answer was what did they want to be able to
say that they couldn't say now?"

"In other words - what problem would the repeal fix?"

"The worries of those who saw a greater problem with
unstitching the legislation were clear: if everyone had
the right to be a bigot, just imagine what would be said
and written when bigots declared open season. But the
advantage created by removing the sanctions was never
made clear."

"The rhetoric was always powerful - dangerous restrictions
on free speech, trampled liberties, et cetera - but the
solid examples were scarce."

cont'd ...

The offending was stating that someone could, because of partial
ethnicity decide which one gave them the best advantage.
That offended the complainant.

cont'd ...

"The morning after the decision to abandon the repeal
was announced, the man at the centre of the legislative
row, columnist Andrew Bolt, could still only come up
with two examples of "banned" speech for his comment
piece that day, and they were the columns that got him
into trouble in the first place - columns described by
Justice Bromberg in his 2011 finding against Bolt for
breaching the Racial Discrimination Act as containing
"errors of fact, distortions of the truth, and inflammatory
and provocative language."

"While Section 18C makes it an offense to offend, insult etc,
the bit straight after it, Section 18D, gives us all a
way out: this is the guarantee protecting freedom of speech."

"Let me just say that again, because the ideological
warriors in this fight have conveniently ignored this
crucial section."

"This section protects freedom of speech. Under our laws we
all have a defence for our sinsulting: if you are engaged
in artistic works, scientific debate and fair comment on
matter of public interest, you can vent to your heart's
content providing what you do is said or done reasonably
and in good faith."

"That's why Bolt couldn't rely on this protection for
his columns. The judge found that through his errors
and inflammatory language he had not acted in good faith.
It bears noting - for this truly is the straw-man at
the centre of this high-fallutin' row - that Bolt
probably could have got away with almost everything he wrote
in those strangely skin colour-obsessed columns if he had
just done the one thing a journalist is required to do -
get his facts straight."

cont'd ...

cont'd ...

"But let's return to the problem that this repeal was
supposed to solve: what can't you say right now because
of 18C? The argument, such as it is, seemed to be made
even weaker when Bolt had another go the next day at
arguing his corner. His lament was that once upon a
time he could have denouced someone and "in perfect
safety drawn links between his faith and his bigotry.
I could have wondered whether we were safe, importing
so many people from such a culture."

"Once he could have done this? Seems to me this columnist
just managed to say now what he said he couldn't."

"Situation normal: everyone go back to your homes."

'Rottenham' (Rotherham).

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013)

"In just over a third of cases, children affected by sexual exploitation were previously known to services because of child protection and neglect. It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.
This abuse is not confined to the past but continues to this day.
..
Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential care and from youth workers who knew the young people well.
Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained. This had led to suggestions of cover- up. The other two reports set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them."

http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham

tbc.

contd.,

"Crime tsar quits the Labour Party – but won't give up his job... after claiming he never saw damning reports into abuse
..
Former Rotherham MP Dennis Macshane said he did not look further into the town's child abuse sex scandal because he is a 'true Guardian reader and liberal leftie' and 'did not want to rock the multi-cultural boat'..

Political correctness stopped left-wing politicians and council officials from doing more to expose the abuse scandal, Rotherham’s former MP said yesterday.

Denis MacShane accepted he should have done more but said his own ‘liberal leftie’ background made him reluctant to speak out over abuse allegations against Muslim men.

The shamed former Labour politician, who was jailed over the expenses scandal and is no longer a member of the party, said: ‘I should have burrowed into this. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and a liberal leftie I suppose, I didn’t want to raise that too hard.’

Mr MacShane blamed a ‘culture of not wanting to rock the multi-cultural unity boat’ for the failure by numerous agencies and individuals to expose the child exploitation.

He has previously admitted that he, like other politicians, had feared losing Muslim votes if he aired ‘the dirty secrets about bad practices in the Kashmiri Muslim community’."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2736204/A-raft-abuse-files-crime-tsar-says-didnt-Shaun-Wright-urged-quit-Labour-continues-shift-blame-scandal.html

The following link may also add something to
the discussion. Nothing is ever either black
or white in complex issues - one needs to not
only look at both sides of the causes of the
problems - but around the edges as well. There
are many professionals - police, social workers,
and others who failed the victims - and the reasons
for letting criminals get away with this sort of
behaviour need to be explained. It's simply all too
easy to brush things aside on "isms."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28953549

Foxy,

If you believe that there are no freedom of speech concerns with 18C, you might look at the Catch the Fire Ministries case in Victoria, where there is a state religious vilification law with much the same language as 18C.

http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2006/12/14/catch-the-fire-ministries-v-islamic-council-of-victoria-inc-free-speech-wins-just/

http://www.law.uq.edu.au/documents/qlsr/recent-issues/vol3/issue1/Klose_2010_vol3_i1.pdf

18D gives some defences to 18C, but it is so vaguely worded that a judge can interpret it as he/she likes. There is no unequivocal statement that truth is a defence, for example.