No "compromise". It has to go. It is totalitarian, enacted by totalitarians. There is no place in a democracy for such oppression of free speech. However, is Australia any longer a demacracy? Can white Australians expect fair treatment any longer? The self-loathing elites have the power - the "Anti Australian Axis", as they are described by David Flint in 'Give Us Back Our Country'.

I called a mate an old bastard a few weeks ago, when I ran into him at our local CBD, whereupon he produced a card proving him to be a fully paid up card carrying member of the old bastards club!

!8C needs to be seen in the contexts or normal social convention/mores and the any reasonable person test, then kept!

I'm planning to have a few cards printed for an old black bastards club, and lifetime membership is offered at just fifty dollars a card, and a bargain, given what it allows you to call other card carrying members &%#(*)+@! and get away with?

And plan to follow that with a stupid pom's club? Or effing nuggets? Brain dead old bar steward etc? And am open to suggestions with a fifty dollar tellers cheque, money order? A box number in a distant town, soon to be available.

We can be a little too precious here and start seeing offense and insult in normal strine!

Like someone confecting intended abuse at the sight of Coon labeled cheese, not understanding that the label originated with the founder Dr. Coon, of said cheese factory fame, way back in the distant past, well before some local yokels adopted it as a regionally specific derogatory term!

That said, no harm would ensue, if we saw 18C in the light of being allowed to unintentionally offend?

As may well be par for the course, in a multi ethnic community?

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater for heaven's sake!
Alan B.

fixing 18C won't do much unless you start to defund the victimhood industry. Isn't Triggs being paid over 300000 per year to conjure up false images and demonise white men. The leftist thugs protesting against Trump by beating pregnant women and others have this permanent victimhood status mentality. Gillard after making 'naive' choices throughout her life and then running a total incompetent Government still believes she was/is a victim.

" That said, no harm would ensue, if we saw 18C in the light of being allowed to unintentionally offend?"

The author of the article left out s18C(1)(b):
" (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group."

That implies intentional offence.

(And no one ever quote s18D.)

It's odd that the libel law, which so many thin-skinned politicians use for personal enrichment, is ignored when the issue of freedom of speech is raised. A campaign for the right to hurl insults at others doesn't seem likely to gain widespread, passionate support.

Hear, hear and well said Mayan!
Alan B.

Turnbull should introduce Legislation to delete 18c immediately.

Then we shall see who opposes it and thus are supporters of hounding Students and Cartoonists..

'Then we shall see who opposes it and thus are supporters of hounding Students and Cartoonists..'

did not the French cartonnist learn that

Mayan apparently believes it's only the 'right' that 'hurls insults'. He is either very naive, or he is just another Lefty.

well Turnbull is no longer trying to appease the abc at every turn. His new found conservatism gives hope that 18c will end up in the bin.How beautiful to see the squirming. Malcolm Abbott is finally starting to excel. Maybe after 18c goes he might even do some cuts to our national broacaster propaganda machine along with the socialist controlling the Human Rights commission. Pauline must try and hide her delight.

Hi Mayan,

As you say,

"It's odd that the libel law, which so many thin-skinned politicians use for personal enrichment, is ignored when the issue of freedom of speech is raised. A campaign for the right to hurl insults at others doesn't seem likely to gain widespread, passionate support."

Yes, if 18 (c) were revised, or even removed, there would still be laws against libel, slander, defamation and incitement (i.e. 'Behead all those who insult the prophet', that sort of vile hate speech). Those laws have been on the books, via English common and equity law, for hundreds of years.

So people have been hurling what other people may have considered to be 'insults' for a hell of a long time. I hope that they continue to do so, in a robust, open society.

And thanks for giving me the opportunity to use the boo-words 'hate speech', which themselves seem to be designed to shut down free speech. Maybe the phrase should be made illegal, since it incites people to oppose the proper, full development of free speech for fear of being on the wrong side :)

After all, 'hate' is not the issue: my mum loved me, but she didn't hold back from giving me a good clip around the ear if I deserved it. It didn't mean that she hated me, although it often felt like it. We criticise the idiot behaviour of our friends, in order to bring them back to better behaviour - it doesn't mean we 'hate' them. We may not criticise the stupid behaviour of people whom we don't like much, let them to it, we think, stupid bastards. So criticise your friends, and let your enemies sink into their own mess.

Criticism good, silence bad, Mayan.

Cheers,

Joe

18C is fine as far as it goes - people have the right not to be insulted aggressively in public because of who they are and have been from conception and birth and not because of any decisions they have made. The author's rewording also seems fair enough.

What is very important is to make sure nobody gets to try to use it as a way of protecting a religion or racist claims of inborn ethnic supremacy.

Appeasers (e.g. in the ABC)of a certain vile international cult originating from a murderous desert bandit seek to protect the march of that cult under the banner of political correctness and to label overt hostility to its spread as "racism". It is not racism.

Nor is opposition to the racist pretensions of those who seek to protect an aggressive brand of racial supremacism by labelling its opponents as a antisemites.

To make sure the British law against racial abuse does not protect any religion the UK has added a Section 29J which states:

29J: "Nothing in this [Part] shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system."

It be valuable for Australia to adopt such a provision.