cont'd ...

Dear Graham,

BTW: You implied that I only quoted part of an article
regarding Mr Bolt.

Perhaps what I quoted was relevent to the point I was
making and the rest of the article was not. Was what
I quoted factual. Therein lies the difference between
myself and Mr Bolt.

People have a right to their own ancestry, no matter what percentage of their total make-up it is. The legal definition of aboriginality for ABstudy claims etc is more than just blood ancestry. You have to show you identify yourself as being aboriginal as well as prove acknowledgement by the aboriginal community itself. While this in itself probably isn't too hard to fake, the incidence of people faking that they are aboriginal can't be too high that it should be of major concern. This may be a cost to society, but it pales in comparison to the cost to society of organisations using religion to avoid tax (e.g. Sanitarium) which doesn't seem to hit Bolt's radar.

Skin colour is actually completely irrelevent. My cousin is ¼ aboriginal but has blond hair, white skin and even had freckles growing up. Meanwhile his brother has quite dark skin. Should that mean his brother has more right to his aboriginality than him?

"It is particularly a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discusss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves," Bolt said.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/andrew-bolt-racial-vilification-court-case/story-fn7x8me2-1226148959221

And yet Bolt is still writing his column for the Herald-Sun and has his Sunday morning telly show.

..................................................................

"Afterall, what is the use of free speech if you can't offend someone? And OLO operates as a forum where people can discuss ideas, no matter what their background is, or how well or otherwise they express themselves." Graham Young

And yet OLO is still coming to a PC near you.

...................................................................

Maybe the ruling by Justice Bromberg was, as David Marr stated in Thursday's Age, more about sloppy journalism. In which case, OLO has nothing to fear as it is a forum, as Graham Young has stated, where people are free to offend and nothing to do with journalism at all.

Tiny tea-cup meets little zephyr.

Lexi, some of the things that Bolt was "pinged" for were exactly what you have done - selective quoting. Margaret Simons was not saying what you said she was, as shown in the paragraph I quoted. I had already read the Marr piece before starting this thread. Typical Marr who is to the left what Bolt is to the right.

In terms of who is an aborigine, the judgement lays out the criteria, which include not just some aboriginal DNA, but acceptance by the aboriginal community as a member. So Anti, you're not Danish under that definition, unless the Danish community accepts you as a Dane. Judgement has an interesting discussion of effect of colour too.

There seems to be a huge misapprehension here about who can breach this act. It is not limited to journalists or people with large audiences. Merely by posting here you get access to a largish audience, even though it doesn't come to read you per se, but all of us. And if you don't show good faith in what you post, and it causes offence to someone in a racial group, then it could be an issue for the forum, and hence for me as the publisher.

It is not even a matter of whether it might get to court and whether I might succeed. I do not have the resources to run that risk in most cases, so it will have a chilling effect on discussion.

I've had threats a number of times to take us to HREOC, and in one case it eventuated. We got a mutually satisfactory result, but it took a lot of my time, and I'm not keen to go there again unless I really have to.

Ammonite, it is more than a storm in a tea cup. It is actually a huge own goal by the left. The coalition will most likely come to government after the next election with a mandate to significantly amend the Racial Discrimination Act, and probably some other parts of Australia's Human Rights apparatus because of this case.

While it has nothing to do with this current government it will get the blame, further disaffecting the blue collar conservatives from them.

The best thing that could happen for Julia is that HWT appeals and wins, in which case the act will regain some of its repute. If they appeal and lose it just keeps it in the news and makes it more certain it will be an issue at the next election in the outer suburbs where government is won or lost these days.

I love all the implied references to "reverse racism" or how the laws only work one way because they don't.

Along with sterotyping, antagonism toward and indifference about the opinions of the "other" group, presenting yourself as the real victim is one of the classic signs of racism itself.

It won't change what can be said in OLO beyond the Editor but there are a multitude of other sites where anybody is free to say anything they like. Opinion is one thing but one hopes (in vain) to get fair balance in the paid media.

Murdoch doen't have a press presence in Canada because over there it's illegal to publically broadcast anything you know to be untrue or misleading.

If Bolt made a similar unsupported smear against say, Jews, there would probably be even more noise and less people trying to leap to his defence.