Free speech that doesn't include a right to offend is just not free! And amply exampled in places like Turkey, Russia, Malaysia, and last but not least, Thailand,(have I missed anyone) where you're free to publish the verifiable facts, if you have official permission or don't critique so called VIP's!

Moreover, what's socially accepted complimentary comment in our culture, could be a hanging offense in some others!
Rhrosty.

Don,

Are you saying that if a statement of fact offends someone it may still be a punishable offence to make that statement?

e.g:-Mohammed married a girl of six years and consummated the marriage when she was nine.
Mohammed beheaded all males members of a Jewish tribe he conquered and so all its women and children into slavery.

All these actions are criminal by the standards of civilised society.
Am I in breach of 18c in making these statements ?

If I am, then I would be also in breach of 18c to say that Hitler was guilty of mass murder of guiltless people.

Those statements would offend someone. Muslims in one case and some Germans of national socialist leanings in another.

Yet those statements are simple statements of fact.

In the case of Mohammed the statements verified by a straight translation of Arabic texts in hadiths.

Truth, in some jurisdictions, must be accompanied by public benefit to be a defence to an action for defamation but we are dealing, in 18c with a criminal offence with drastic potential penalty and regardless of whether actual damage is done.

Should it EVER be an offence to tell a clear undeniable widely known truth , even if known only in better informed sections of the public?

Is everything relative ? Are there no absolutes ever?

Yep if the truth was told what happened in Australia before the British arrived many would be highly offended. Ask Andrew Bolt.

According to the IQ2 Oz website (consulted a couple of years ago) the laws of most Australian states and territories continue to prohibit blasphemy. “For example, in NSW a person may still be prosecuted for the common law offence of blasphemy if their purpose is to engage in ‘scoffing or reviling’. Put simply, citizens may not mock or insult God or the Prophets.”
Blasphemy laws are an absurd anachronism and should be abolished immediately.

Don, I’m not a Rawlsian, but I drew on his work in my 1999 NCP paper “The Economics of Compensation and its Relevance to Taxi Deregulation.” (As this paper had been by only a handful of people and was still relevant at the time of the Harper competition review, I submitted it to the review.) Quote: “The compensation issue can be approached from the viewpoint of justice or fairness without regard to the net efficiency benefits to society, as exemplified by Rawls’ work. Rawls considered that under certain conditions social arrangements which damaged the rights of any individual were unjustified even if they created significant benefits for the community as a whole. He defined justice as the special virtue of social arrangements within which such inequalities become unacceptable.”

In my view there are no inherent, natural or predetermined rights; any rights arise from society and will depend on the values of that society; and such values and rights will vary as, for example, the wealth and education levels of a society change.

Section 18c makes it illegal to “say something that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone because of their race or ethnicity.” This is very subjective: one person’s view of what is “likely” to offend etc might be very different from another’s; and one can take the view that the problem is not the words, but the reaction to them. An equanimous person will not take offence at intended abuse, they will know that the abuser first hurts himself, by acting with an agitated mind. It seems to me that the effect of 18c is to limit necessary discussion, cf Andrew Bolt, and even moderate comments such as those in the QUT computer room case. My understanding is that if 18C were abolished, there are other laws under which action could be taken when justified, which do not have the blanket negative impact of 18c.

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