The summer silly season is usually a time of leisure for most Australians but it is also a time for politicians to announce unpopular or distasteful news. Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve is the favourite time when the newspapers either don't publish or they - and the other media - are on holidays filled with happy snaps and fluff lifted off the wire services or satellite. Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced Internet censorship on New Years Eve 2008, Treasurer Wayne Swan announced that the government would be breaking its promise to deliver a surplus three days before Christmas. One thing which has flown right under the radar is the proposed new federal anti-discrimination act which was announced two days after Ray Hadley and the other so-called shock jocks went on holiday last year.
Over the summer break, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been trying to get the issue into the news, and with journalists returning to work after the summer break a discussion has finally started.
At first glance the intention of the new act is simple. To combine the current five discrimination acts into one. So far, so good. But the bureaucrats in the Attorney-General's Department couldn't resist overstepping the mark and putting in a whole lot of new nasties which pose a very real threat to freedom of speech.
For example, the new act contains proscriptions on speech which is "insulting" or "offensive". I'm not making this up. If you say something which someone else takes offence to in any way, you could be dragged before the courts, be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and have your livelihood destroyed. The obvious example is water cooler conversation at work. If a work colleague mentions that he has bought a new Ford and you say that Holdens are better and you criticise their car, they can take you to court for being insulting or offensive. The possibilities are endless. If you come into work and someone says "good morning" and you reply "What's so good about it?" that could be deemed offensive or insulting. It would be a lawyer's picnic and clog up the courts for years.
The big problem with this sort of thing is that it would descend into "he said, she said", and people taking offence always embellish things and try and make it sound as bad as possible. I was a victim of this when I worked in the public service. A male colleague was taking leave to get married and I said "Your wife, what does he think about all this?" It was originally a quip by Bert Newton on Celebrity Squares in 1976. I was hauled before the director and told that a formal complaint had been lodged, and I was quoted as saying "What's the name of the bloke you are marrying?" Efforts to correct the record were futile, I couldn't defend myself and the complaint was upheld. That was only one of many complaints made against me, all containing supposed direct quotes and all of which were upheld. While this sort of thing might be the norm amongst work-shy bureaucrats with nothing else to do except stab each other in the back, to now have this type of pettiness and nonsense imposed onto the entire population is absolutely disgraceful.
I won't call this proposed law an anti-discrimination bill, I prefer to call it a tax on free speech. It is typical Labor pork barrelling to try and get minorities onside, but it has failed miserably.
Attorney General Nicola Roxon sent copious press releases to the gay media trumpeting that for the first time discrimination based on sexual preference would be outlawed federally. But her efforts to shore up the pink vote were shot down in flames by her boss Julia Gillard who announced that she had been having meetings with Australian Christian Lobby boss Jim Wallace and had agreed to exempt church organisations from the homosexuality clauses. So there you have it - an anti-discrimination law which discriminates. The gay media which initially welcomed the new laws are now up in arms. Not even the gays want it.
The intention of the law is far-reaching and the red flags have gone up that this free speech tax is nothing more than an attempt to stifle any criticism of the government. Alan Jones calling Gillard "Ju-liar", Ray Hadley's satirical songs about government scandals, editorials in The Australian. We haven't seen this sort of thing since Soviet Russia. When I was a kid I said to my mother that the number one song on the Moscow hit parade was called Gromyko Is An Idiot. It was a classic "as if" gag because the Soviets were so oppressive that anybody saying something like that would be either jailed or executed. So now we have the same thing in 21st Century Australia! It is something we thought we'd never see. Rather than beefing up the anti-discrimination/vilification/hate speech laws, there is a strong case for abolishing them altogether. They are a 1970s response to a 1950s problem and have long outlived their usefulness.
Public submissions are currently being sought on the proposed new laws. It is hoped that freedom-loving Aussies will bombard Roxon with negative comment and the free speech tax will be dumped completely and join Internet censorship in the legislative trashcan.
