If
you are looking up from your life at this time utterly perplexed why
the Turnbull government just can’t seem to shut up about section 18C of
the Racial Discrimination Act, let me attempt to explain what may be
otherwise inexplicable.
The Coalition is unable to drop this particular hot potato, despite senior players like Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison saying very clearly that the issue really isn’t a priority down the back paddock, or in the cafe where you picked up your coffee this morning, because a significant bloc in the right faction of the Liberal party intended to keep on pushing until the Freedom™ lady sang.
This is an internal crusade, a little passion play for the conservative base, pure and simple, and never mind the casualties – even if the casualties are your hard-working government colleagues, attempting to defend marginal seats with large ethnic populations.
But let’s be clear the internal crusade to water down the RDA protections has also been encouraged by external cheerleaders.
The Coalition is here, on Harmony Day of all days, talking about weakening the current RDA protections, because of an unremitting conservative media crusade.
For months, the Australian has run a full-tilt campaign on 18C that
looks, quite frankly, borderline unhinged to anyone outside Holt Street.
Somewhat idiosyncratically for a news outlet, the Australian’s campaign elevates and champions one form of freedom while ignoring other curbs on free speech that are actually meaningful if you want to expose wrongdoing by powerful people, which is supposed to be the bread and butter of journalism.
The Fox Lite crew on the Sky News night shift have also been rumbling away, in their little harshly lit cupboards, making gutting 18C a test of Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative bonafides.
Andrew Bolt, wondering out loud whether or not he can find a reason to like Malcolm Turnbull, oh Malcolm, oh Malcolm – like a moody teenager contemplating the risks of a new courtship.
This otherworldly sense of grievance and entitlement – the boutique preoccupation of an Australian elite whose shtick is feigning hostility about elites – is why the rest of us have been sucked into a circular conversation we really aren’t that fascinated by but can’t quite escape from.
We are all hostages in this strange bubble of right-wingers talking to right-wingers, which has culminated in a government making a commitment to water down hate speech protections, while trying to pretend the changes represent a strengthening of the current system, which, on any measure, they do not.
We have been conscripted, unwittingly, to an operatic outbreak of gesture politics.
Because a gesture and a genuflection is all this can be until such time as the government assembles the requisite numbers in the Senate to translate the 18C gesture into legislative change.
Perhaps that will happen. On current indications, it looks unlikely.
I’m irritated about all of this not because I secretly hate freedom.
I’ve written before that, as a journalist, I have a professional interest in allowing speech to be as uninhibited as possible. I don’t need to live in a world where the only opinions I can tolerate are the ones I agree with.
I’d happily countenance changes to all restrictions on free speech, including the insult and offend restrictions in 18C – if we were even halfway serious about this being a conversation about freedom.
If we were talking about freedom, I’d happily countenance a wide-ranging conversation about defamation law reform, or the impact of suppression orders, or whether free speech in Australia could benefit from something a little bit more robust in the way of protection than an implied freedom of political communication.
To cut a long story short, a freedom debate, if that’s what we are having, should be about all restrictions on speech, not just the ones that a certain section of society find inconvenient.
Let me put this a bit more bluntly, just so it’s very clear where I stand.
I have a certain amount of moral discomfort as a privileged white woman standing up and endorsing taking away restrictions that work to protect the vulnerable – while conveniently ignoring a whole bunch of other restrictions that work to protect the powerful.
I’ve never been offended or insulted on the basis of my race and feel it might be best to listen to and respect the lived experiences of people who have.
Call that a gesture of puncturing the bubble.
The Coalition is unable to drop this particular hot potato, despite senior players like Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison saying very clearly that the issue really isn’t a priority down the back paddock, or in the cafe where you picked up your coffee this morning, because a significant bloc in the right faction of the Liberal party intended to keep on pushing until the Freedom™ lady sang.
This is an internal crusade, a little passion play for the conservative base, pure and simple, and never mind the casualties – even if the casualties are your hard-working government colleagues, attempting to defend marginal seats with large ethnic populations.
But let’s be clear the internal crusade to water down the RDA protections has also been encouraged by external cheerleaders.
The Coalition is here, on Harmony Day of all days, talking about weakening the current RDA protections, because of an unremitting conservative media crusade.
Somewhat idiosyncratically for a news outlet, the Australian’s campaign elevates and champions one form of freedom while ignoring other curbs on free speech that are actually meaningful if you want to expose wrongdoing by powerful people, which is supposed to be the bread and butter of journalism.
The Fox Lite crew on the Sky News night shift have also been rumbling away, in their little harshly lit cupboards, making gutting 18C a test of Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative bonafides.
Andrew Bolt, wondering out loud whether or not he can find a reason to like Malcolm Turnbull, oh Malcolm, oh Malcolm – like a moody teenager contemplating the risks of a new courtship.
This otherworldly sense of grievance and entitlement – the boutique preoccupation of an Australian elite whose shtick is feigning hostility about elites – is why the rest of us have been sucked into a circular conversation we really aren’t that fascinated by but can’t quite escape from.
We are all hostages in this strange bubble of right-wingers talking to right-wingers, which has culminated in a government making a commitment to water down hate speech protections, while trying to pretend the changes represent a strengthening of the current system, which, on any measure, they do not.
We have been conscripted, unwittingly, to an operatic outbreak of gesture politics.
Because a gesture and a genuflection is all this can be until such time as the government assembles the requisite numbers in the Senate to translate the 18C gesture into legislative change.
Perhaps that will happen. On current indications, it looks unlikely.
I’m irritated about all of this not because I secretly hate freedom.
I’ve written before that, as a journalist, I have a professional interest in allowing speech to be as uninhibited as possible. I don’t need to live in a world where the only opinions I can tolerate are the ones I agree with.
I’d happily countenance changes to all restrictions on free speech, including the insult and offend restrictions in 18C – if we were even halfway serious about this being a conversation about freedom.
If we were talking about freedom, I’d happily countenance a wide-ranging conversation about defamation law reform, or the impact of suppression orders, or whether free speech in Australia could benefit from something a little bit more robust in the way of protection than an implied freedom of political communication.
To cut a long story short, a freedom debate, if that’s what we are having, should be about all restrictions on speech, not just the ones that a certain section of society find inconvenient.
Let me put this a bit more bluntly, just so it’s very clear where I stand.
I have a certain amount of moral discomfort as a privileged white woman standing up and endorsing taking away restrictions that work to protect the vulnerable – while conveniently ignoring a whole bunch of other restrictions that work to protect the powerful.
I’ve never been offended or insulted on the basis of my race and feel it might be best to listen to and respect the lived experiences of people who have.
Call that a gesture of puncturing the bubble.
No comments:
Post a Comment