Who defines what is a bigoted statement and what is a perfectly correct statement ? One person's 'reasonable statement' can be, to another person, 'bigoted'.

Who defines 'offense' ? I recall arguing with an Aboriginal student who, since I disagreed with him, called me a racist. As it happens, I found that assertion offensive. And bigoted. But it didn't occur to me to take him to court.

How would the law stop someone making bigoted statements, even if God or David Marr or some other supreme being proclaimed what was, and what wasn't, bigoted ? Let alone stopping people THINKING bigoted thoughts ?

Joe

I would much prefer Senator Brandis form of 'bigotry' than the nasty dogmatic opposers to free speach that often masquerade as self righteous warriors on the ABC. They are more narrow minded than the 'bigots' they pretend to protect us from.

This thing only made the public headlines that it did, because we have no actual bill of actual rights, which need to include the right to offend or be offended.
[One man's meat is another mans poison, and racism could be just as offensive or worse, in reverse!
Perhaps we need look no further than the nearest mirror, to find the worst example?]
At the end of the day, surely the Good senator, from the red necked North, was protected by parliamentary privilege?
Shakespeare, would have probably said something along the lines, much ado about naught?
Rhrosty.

A free on-line dictionary defines a bigot as "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."
Bigot is an ugly word, and it implies intolerance, but it has no legal legs. It might grow some legs if woven into a political slogan, but that could easily backfire.
It looks to me like there's little more than political point-scoring going on here, a semantic bunfight, a tempest in a tea cup.

halduell do the ABC, or the left ever do anything else?

One of their big mistakes is that they often alienate the very people that wish to impress & win, with all their self congratulation for their snide character assignation attempts.

Hi Hal,

Of course people shouldn't be bigots. But how do you define one, and somehow make it illegal to be one ? So, by default, they exist, and quite legally.

To that definition, "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ", one could add: "one who continues to assert a point of view with little or no evidence for it." Prejudiced, if you like, or someone who not only 'pre-judges' but ignores what may count as evidence.

For example, suppose I came to the conclusion that there was no such phenomenon as a "Stolen Generation", on the basis of reading thousands of pages of material from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Protector's letters, missionary's journal, mission letters, school records, genealogies, etc. If someone declared that there was indeed a "Stolen Generation", but could provide no conclusive evidence, then who is bigoted ?

As it happens .....

Joe

the most amusing aspect of the Left's finger pointing at the concept that "people have a right to be bigots" is that it never occurs to them that they could be considered bigots too. To lefties, "bigot" means a right winger who's views they find objectionable. It never enters their tiny minds that left wing people could be bigots themselves. To Lefties, 'progressives" are the opposite of "bigots". "Progressives" are the keepers of the gate for all that is good and holy. "Progressives" are the educated deep thinkers who know better than anybody else how everything should be done.

Which is a bigoted attitude.

Good to see the govt cut funding to the Refugee Council--hurray about bloody time!

Now, let's go further and cut all funding to those other advocacy hotbeds the ABC and SBS. In a number of ways SBS is even more scurrilous than the ABC.

As I posted in another discussion, section 18c has been employed by aggrieved minorities and the multicultural movement to gag their opponents as part of their implicit ethnic warfare campaign against the Anglo-Celtic Australian majority. It is clearly a threat to free speech in this country.

To quote academic Frank Salter:

"To its supporters section 18C has emotional significance because it is the mechanism by which future enemies can be given the Bolt treatment. The section is a valued weapon in the armoury used by the multicultural “discourse police”, to use Betts’s phrase. That is why Greens spokeswoman Penny Wright saw Government draft legislation to change 18C as “the Andrew Bolt protection bill”. Multiculturalism has always been hostile towards Australia core Anglo identity. In practise the movement has been predicated on intolerance and intimidation directed at silencing critics, so it is understandable that minority activists are wedded to section 18C."

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/03/section-18c-multiculturalism-power/