Michael Keene could have saved himself, and us unfortunate enough to have read that piece of garbage, a lot of time and trouble by acquainting himself with Section 18d of the Racial Discrimination Act.

ttbn = total troll being nasty. Yep that pretty much sums it up.

.
 
Dear leoj,
 
.
 
You ask :

« How can a brown, sun-burned land be white? »
.

We do have some odd expressions, don’t we, leoj? The “lucky country”, for example, is an expression attributed to Donald Horne. But, again, one may ask “how can a brown, sun-burned land be lucky”?

In his follow-up book “Death of the Lucky Country”, Horne explained:

« When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style, we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits »

Commenting on Horne’s first book, “The Lucky Country”, the author of a Wikipedia article notes :

« In the decades following his book's publication, Horne became critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia. He commented, "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase" »

Of course, there was no “lucky country”, nor “White Australia Policy”. The latter expression was coined to describe a series of restrictive immigration laws that were in force for 72 years from federation in 1901 to 1973. It was aimed, originally, at keeping-out the Chinese and the Pacific Islanders. Prime Minister Curtain reinforced it during WW2, saying "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here … to establish … an outpost of the British race".

As we European-Australians could hardly claim to have been “fair” to our Aboriginal compatriots and other non-whites, it seemed logical to me that the “fair” in “Advance Australia fair” meant “fair-skinned”. That seemed consistent with our “White Australia Policy” and the colonial mentality in 1878 when our national anthem was composed.

.
 

Thank you to Armchair Critic and minotaur (who raised the issue slightly more bluntly :) ) for raising 18D.

No, if Stan Grant was held to anywhere near the standard of, for example, Andrew Bolt then 18D would not prevent the sanction of Mr Grant under 18C.

There is, and has been, an interesting legal debate about how liberally to interpret 18D. And that is definitely something to discuss when discussing the issue of 18C.

Mike Keane, have you even bothered to read the judgement from the Bolt case? It seems not so I'll help you out. Bolt's articles were found in breach of the law because, and I quote from the judgement summary, 'they contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language.'

In simple terms, Bolt was found to have lied, deliberately misled and sought to inflame racial prejudice.

Minotaur I thought the judge felt that what Bolt said was not what he really meant? How ironic using others feelings to back up personal prejudice. Still Judges are gods and just have to be obeyed. Unless of course they say something about a husband being rougher than usual to their wife then it is on for young and old.
If you want to be outraged by lies take on that idiotic and arrogant Triggs creature and her continuing lies.