A free and vigorous debate would be the best avenue for Bolt’s detractors THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 29, 2014 12:00AM “IN a free and energetic society, giving offence is necessary,” wrote David Marr in The Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s called being grown up. Its other name is freedom.” After a week of debate about the Racial Discrimination Act and proposed amendments to the so-called Andrew Bolt clause, these are refreshingly wise words from a leading left commentator. We need to remember that we live in a land where two of Bolt’s newspaper columns are banned from republication — they are the uncolumns. In an ideal world perhaps all journalists would show solidarity by having their newspapers or websites defiantly republish the columns — a national act of civil disobedience in favour of free speech. There is no such support. Indeed, the journalistic consensus seems antagonistic towards the Abbott government’s moves to claw back the provisions used against Bolt. Those words from Marr were written six years ago, not about the Bolt case but the offence caused by artworks such as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ . When it came to Bolt’s conviction under the RDA’s section 18C, Marr, like many journalists, exhibited only schadenfreude. “Freedom of speech is not at stake here,” wrote Marr. “Bolt was wrong. Spectacularly wrong.” And so we come to realise that the “permanent oppositional, moral-political community” is actually quite submissive. The progressives, or Green Left — so lovingly described in those terms by Robert Manne — have been less than oppositional when it comes to recent attacks on freedom of expression. They seem to ration their liberalism depending on the perceived partisan leanings of the proponent or defendant. The acquiescence of the permanent oppositional moral-political community exists even though they count as their own large elements of the Canberra press gallery and journalists elsewhere. They give free speech short shrift. When the Gillard government, in a fit of pique and paranoia, called an inquiry into the print media, then drafted legislation for de facto regulation of newspaper content, it won support, incredibly, from many journalists particularly at the ABC. Even the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, was mostly absent from the battlefield, supporting the inquiry and standing meekly by to see press freedom whittled away before speaking up when it was clear the package was doomed. To see the importance of what is transpiring we need only consider these events another way around. Think of the Abbott government introducing laws to regulate print media content. And let us pretend laws against religious persecution are used to convict Marr over columns about Tony Abbott and the Catholic Church, so that he is forced to apologise and the offending columns are banned. It is not hard to imagine the justifiable and thunderous outrage from the Left. After all, many are already screaming like banshees at the very mention of holding the ABC to its existing charter. Left or right, centrist or apathetic, we all have an interest in resisting insidious encroachments on free speech. It is true Labor’s media regulation has been seen off, for now, and that section 18C has been in place for decades. But where the Left and many journalists have been derelict is in not being innervated by the Bolt case. Instead of rushing to trumpet our own tolerance by condemning Bolt’s harshness, those of us interested in the free exchange of ideas should condemn Judge Mordy Bromberg’s decision and/or the laws under which it was given. You don’t have to agree with the confronting columnist to defend his right to share his views. As it happens, Bolt’s columns were appeals against race-based preferment and the temptation to parade one aspect of our ethnic make-up over any other. The columns highlighted an extremely significant issue about whether grants and positions for indigenous Australians are going to those suffering discrimination or disadvantage or whether, at least sometimes, they go to those simply able to demonstrate a connection. Kerryn Pholi, who worked in but then rejected positions reserved for Aborigines, has written at length on this from a personal perspective in Quadrant. “I felt hurt (by the Bolt columns) because the truth hurts,” she says, “and my comforting rationalisations about myself and my place in the world were already painfully dissolving.” Bolt stridently questioned the legitimacy of urbanised, mixed-race people identifying as predominantly Aboriginal and claiming awards and grants allocated for indigenous people. “The resulting court case and decision seemed to rest on how the injured parties felt,” observes Pholi, “whether they felt themselves to be Aboriginal and had always felt that way, and whether they felt upset and offended by Bolt’s writing, and whether other fair-skinned Aboriginal people and other such ‘vulnerable’ Aboriginal people would be likely to feel the same way.” This gets to the nub of the issue and the rationale behind the government’s proposed changes. Bromberg based his findings not only on what Bolt wrote but on what he didn’t write. He defended Bolt’s right to make his point but condemned the manner and tone in which he made it. And he ruled on the likely extent of insult, offence and humiliation among a specific group of people. This ill-defined and subjective power in the hands of the judiciary is far too broad and can only have a chilling effect on free speech. There are two ways a more free society could have dealt with Bolt’s challenging and provocative columns. First, to the extent they raised important issues and people disagreed, then his views should have been contested in a vigorous and free debate. And to the extent individuals believed their reputations were attacked and damaged, the longstanding protections of defamation law were available. The 18C amendments are necessary to ensure we see no more columns banned
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:09:32 +0000
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