I've always held that free speech ought to include the right to offend, always providing there is no deliberate malice, and it only ever presented as opinion; or, verifiable facts?
For example, I could conceivably offend flat earthers, by subjecting their belief system, to unbridled ribald satire?
However, I wouldn't have commented in a very public place, that a dark skinned very hairy individual, was a monkey.
Inferring in that patently racist remark, that only some of us, are in fact, Primates?
That said, I was astounded to learn, we, none of us have a legally enforceable right to privacy!
This argument about color has been going on for centuries, with some tribes, reportingly committing genocide, by picking up entirely innocent babies, and bashing heads up against rocks or tree trunks or some such, on the grounds, the skin was the wrong color!?
I also believe, our aboriginality, ought to pass some sort of common sense test.
Some of my ancestors were tasmanian aboriginals, yet my skin is white.
I agree the Professor, crossed a line, in the way she used that forum, as just a platform, for her usual, reverse racist views.
Racism, is not exclusively, limited to the white races!
Personally, and on reflection, I think Andrew Bolt could be right, and some of us are just too white to be able to claim aboriginality, or disown our white forbears, many of whom, would have been the worst offenders, with rape and or, abandonment, included in the family history.
That said, at the end of the day, we need our so called liberties to be enshrined in law, as an irrefutable bill of rights!
One of which ought to be free speech, another, a legally enforceable right to privacy!
Common law, the Magna Carta and the later emancipation act, simply doesn't cut it!
Rhrosty.

Those who srceam racism at every turn are the real racists.

Congratulations David van Gend for such a cogent article. As for Q&A, I no longer watch it because of its bias and unfairness so I did not see the egregious behaviour to which you refer. As for Tony Jones, I am sick of writing to the ABC to complain about his unreasonable bias. However, all the ABC does is condone this ratbag journalist. It is more evidence that the ABC really needs cleaning up from the top down. I hope that "St George" of the Brandis can fully deliver on this one and that he gets the whole hearted support of the Government. In my view, the attack on free speech and opinion by the raving looney left is so dangerous that if a double dissolution is needed to get it thru the Parliament it would be well justified.

As an after thought may I add that in my view Section 18C is a serious impediment to the nation adopting any further changes to the Constitution, as are presently planned. There must be a lot of voting Australians who perceive that not only are they being told what they can say, but also what they should think. Perhaps we will reach the point where enough is enough.

Pliny of Perth: the first 10mins or so of that Q&A are well worth watching - and the theme comes back later in the show. And to think that these are professional journalists next to Brandis, failing to see the necessity of vigorous public argument - even argument that gets rude at times - for a self-determining political culture. Failing to see that either we are free to thrash out the great questions amongst ourselves (Aristotle defined democracy: "Free citizens deliberating the question: how shall we order our lives together?") or we become servile subjects...
Link at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3946770.htm

Great read David
I look forward to the day when the left wing humanitarian realises how they're particular psychology is exactly the same as the far right. They will both sacrifice everything for their vision of the truth.

This hate speech legislation is inspired by a horrible misreading of history. The NAZI success was not won by hate speech, it was won by suppressing opposition by thugs initially and the law finally.

Every common decency we take for granted was won by people exercising their freedom of speech.

I dream of a society that locks up clowns who wish to fetter our freedom of speech into asylums for the insane.