Questions for those promoting repeal of s18C Racial Discrimination Act

1.  Apart from the Andrew Bolt case, do you have any examples of complaints made relating to the section which have resulted in some form of unjust, or free speech inhibiting, result?    As Tim Soutphommasane notes, there are quite a few complaints made each year which are conciliated, and a few which go trial:

Central to the current racial vilification provisions, then, is the conciliation process that exists for complaints made about racial discrimination. The emphasis of the legislative provision against racial vilification is to bring parties to a complaint together to discuss the matter and arrive at an agreed resolution of the complaint. This educative and civil quality of Part IIA is frequently overlooked. For example, it is commonly assumed that breaching Section 18C results in a prosecution or criminal penalty. No one, of course, can be prosecuted for a crime under the Racial Discrimination Act, or convicted for racial vilification under Commonwealth law. In most cases, litigation does not even occur: last financial year, of the 192 complaints concerning racial hatred, only five (or 3 per cent) ended up in court. This is because any complaint involving racial vilification must be made to the Commission in the first instance, where the Commission will attempt to resolve the matter between the parties (which we do at no cost, and do successfully in the majority of cases). Only if the complaint is not resolved through conciliation, may the complainant can apply for the allegations to be heard and determined by the Federal Court of Australia or Federal Circuit Court of Australia.

2.  Given that at the crux of the Andrew Bolt case, there were claims he made about individuals that were factually in error, do you not think that Mr Bolt could have simply apologised for the mistakes and hurt caused, and that this would have prevented it going to hearing?

For me:  Tim Soutphommasane full speech the other night (at the link above) gave a good defence of the current law, and was very detailed philosophically and about its background.

Andrew Bolt has been playing the martyr about a column which contained mistakes, and which anyone can still read in its original form.   I expect that he was encouraged to run the case with costs covered by his paper. Otherwise, anyone would expect that a sensible person would have simply dealt with it as I indicated above.

The Human Rights Commission will not accept Commissioner Tim Wilson's position that the section is a dire thing for free speech, because he's both an intellectual light weight, and apart from bleating about the Andrew Bolt case, he hasn't actually shown any other case that people will think was a particularly unfair outcome.  

The Bolt was not a case which actually did have an effect on free speech.  Bolt's continual claim that his lawyers now tell him he can't write columns on the issue is obvious self serving disingenuousness.