There is no such thing as a right not to be offended, but if there is, then the author needs to be thrown in prison because I find his argument offensive.

I am one of those Australians who actually does live a multicultural life. I am European, the widow of a man who was Aboriginal/Japanese/Samoan/European. We have 28 descendants so far. I spent years living in a remote Aboriginal community, at one stage I was the only white person there.
My last 44 years I have been surrounded by not just Aboriginal but Asian and mixed blood people. I am currently living in a town with about 40% non European people.
From my experience, no law has ever stopped anyone making a racist comment. From any race.
But what is now happening, and becoming worse, is the reluctance of the general community to discuss urgent issues such as family violence, sexual abuse, suicide and crime rates amongst the indigenous community. It is not any law, as such, that stops the debate, but fear of offending. We desperately need to have a dialogue about these problems in order to address them, and anything that reduces the barrier to conversation can only be good.
There will always be racists. You can't legislate against ignorance, in any race, so the targets just have to learn to ignore comments they don't like.
As my late husband used to say " anyone who doesn't like me for the colour of my skin is the one who has the problem, not me."

To a person imbued with the spirit of the enlightenment the sections 18c and 18d of the RDA are unacceptable. This is not to condone racial abuse and hooligan behaviour. I expect there are laws which make it a crime to shout “filthy yid” say from a car window as worshippers leave their synagogue. Given always that the miscreants can be located and charged. The problem is the misuse of 18c and 18d to block legitimate discussion and opinion. The subjective nature of the judgment in Bolt case illustrates the dangers and problems with current legislation.

Further 18c and 18d is useless in dealing with the university thugs who prevent liberal party speakers from speaking on campus. History provides many examples of the success of thuggery from both the political right and political left in inhibiting free speech and the expression of opinion. A notorious example would be Hitler’s Brown Shirts in the 1920s, this in spite of the Weimar’s Republic anti-discrimination laws.

“The Weimar Constitution granted citizens civil liberties like freedom of speech and press. It also provided economic and social rights such as unemployment benefits and a ban against job discrimination because of sex, religion, or politics. In addition, the people had the right to put laws directly before the voters in a referendum.”
http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-21-3-b-the-german-weimar-republic-why-did-democracy-fail

Whatever the nature of the anti-discrimination laws in the Weimar’s Republic, they were useless. Just as our laws area useless protection against thuggery.

Sadly, the politically correct attitude evidenced here shows this Author fails to appreciate that when bigots and haters highlight their attitudes by their outspokenness they surely unknowingly lose the respect of their peers.
Let them speak !
Gagging comment is a catalyst for encouraging mistaken attitudes which may never be challenged
V.

the bigotry, nastiness and hatred shown by the 'regressives' towards Abbott and his family far supercedes most so called vilification. The moral outrage (mainly by regressives) against getting rid of this legislation I suspect is a mask for their own hatred.

Hear,hear Anti Green & Big Nana.
The only thing which will fall apart if 18c is repealed is the house of cards atop which the anti Racists roost.
There are already adequate laws in place to deal with hooligans and troublemakers and the Police are the only people who should be dealing with such complaints.
Let's quit pussyfooting around, the central issue is and always has been protection of the post 1945 Holocaust narrative.
What the anti Racists willfully neglect to mention is that the coalition's proposal would make racial vilification an indictable offence and that "Holocaust Denial" would be illegal, this actually puts "Racists" in a far more delicate position than the current arrangement.What we'd basically end up with is a system closer to that found in many European countries where there is no defence permissable to a charge of minimising or aggrandising the crimes of the National Socialists, the accused has only two options, stand mute or throw himself upon the mercy of the court.
Methinks the objection to the repeal of 18c is calculated to avoid the above scenario because in a country which places it's resistance to totalitarianism as one of it's core national myths it would create such a backlash that the Holocaust proponents would very quickly see their position become untenable and it really would be "all over" in that sense.
Under the present system any deviation from the orthodox Holocaust dogma can be suppressed by HRC action,mediation, trial by media and if all else fails civil action. If 18c were repealed it would become a criminal matter and, as in the Zundel trials in Canada the anti Racists would suffer the indignity of cross examination and be forced to back their claims, which always goes badly for them.