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Warren Mundine urges Tony Abbott: don't change discrimination act Warren Mundine urges Tony Abbott: don't change discrimination act
(about 2 hours later)
The head of Tony Abbott's indigenous advisory council, Warren Mundine, has urged the prime minister to drop controversial plans to amend the Racial Discrimination Act. The head of the prime minister's Indigenous advisory council, Warren Mundine, has suggested the government’s proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act will “let people off the chain in regard to bigotry”.
But Mundine says he won't walk away from the advisory council in protest. Defending the changes, Tony Abbott has mounted a freedom of speech argument but Mundine said many freedoms are already curtailed for the protection of others.
The government argues that section 18C of the act should be repealed because it unreasonably restricts freedom of speech. “You're not allowed to walk down the street and swear because it's offensive,” said Mundine. “We have a number of laws already. We have libel laws. We have a whole wide range of laws.
The repeal would effectively remove the law's prohibition on public discussion and commentary that offends, insults or humiliates, but the government would add new protections against racial vilification. “I just find it … funny, that we are quite accepting that no one should swear in public, but it's OK for people to be bigots and I find that a bizarre situation. I can assure people, more people died from bigotry than people died from being swore at.”
Mundine, an indigenous leader and former national Labor party president, said he copped racial abuse almost daily. Mundine was responding to the attorney general, George Brandis’ proposal to repeal sections 18 B, C, D and E of the racial discrimination act, narrowing offences around racial discrimination and broadening exemptions for public debate.
"When you let people off the chain in regard to bigotry then you start having problems," he told ABC radio on Wednesday. Brandis and Abbott promised the changes prior to the election as a result of the case against conservative columnist Andrew Bolt. A federal court judge in 2011 found that Bolt breached 18C of the racial discrimination act by publishing newspaper articles that questioned the motivations of fair-skinned people who identified as Aboriginal.
Mundine said society made it quite clear that racism and bigotry were unacceptable. The changes have also sparked a fierce debate among ethnic groups. Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish affairs council, has said Brandis went too far and and failed to adequately safeguard important rights and values.
He said he had not considered standing down in protest as there was a big job to do in closing the gap between indigenous Australians and the rest of society, and getting people into jobs and education. The government is taking public submissions on the act for the next month. The RDA draft would not pass the current Senate as it would be blocked by Labor and the Greens. After 1 July, when the Palmer United party senators and a three other independent/minor party senators take their place, it is unclear whether the changes would survive.
"I am not going to throw that out in an argument on this issue," he said. The South Australian senator Nick Xenophon said he had problems with the current draft and would be consulting with the ethnic community groups about the proposal. Clive Palmer would not comment on the draft.
"We have had conversations about it and our advice to the prime minister was that they should not be going down this track." The WA Senate election on 5 April could also change the Senate makeup and determine the fate of the RDA changes.
Labor MP Ed Husic, the first Muslim to be appointed to the frontbench in the Australian parliament, said the racial discrimination laws had held the nation in good stead for 20 years. Liberal backbencher Zed Sesilja has backed the removal of “offend” and “insult” but has raised concerns about the broad nature of the exemptions that would replace the existing section 18D.
The changes were more than just symbolic, he said. The proposed change states that the offences of “vilify” and “inimidate” do not apply to “words, sounds, images or writing spoken, broadcast, published or otherwise communicated in the course of participating in the public discussion of any political, social, cultural, religious, artistic, academic or scientific matter”.
"It actually tries to encourage people to test the outer limits of how they can offend and cause division." “We need to look at the exemptions are too broad and certainly I will be consulting with the ethnic community,” Seselja said.
Labor party deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said no one in Australia agreed with the government on this issue. Seselja said exemptions were appropriate under the current section which includes to “offend” and “insult” but by taking those terms out, such a broad exemption was a concern.
"It is a sad thing that one of the first priorities of this new government is to make it easier to racially abuse people," she said. Mundine said growing up under the Aboriginal Welfare Act had curtailed his freedom, which “was brought about by bigotry”.
But attorney general George Brandis said it was a free speech issue, and limitations needed to be crafted as narrowly as possible. “Everyone thinks that we're just working in a vacuum here, in some pure, pure vacuum,” Mundine told the ABC on Wednesday.
He said racial abuse would not fall within the exemption, and racial vilification would always capture the concept of Holocaust denial, as featured the case of Fredrick Toben. “In actual fact we have thousands of years of history of bigotry, of racism and how people have been treated – and I mean treated badly. And we all know that from history when you let people off the chain in regard to bigotry, then you start having problems.”
"We want to protect racial minorities from the core concept of racism. The core concept of racism is the incitement of racial hatred or the causing of fear because of a person's race," Senator Brandis said. Mundine agreed with Brandis that “people had a right to be bigots” but said it should only be the case in private because as soon as bigotry is displayed in public, it impinges on the rights of others.
A draft bill is open for public comment. “They're happy to have [bigotry] in their own lounge room and they're happy to have it in their own conversations and that, same as like they do with swearing,” Mundine said.
“You can swear in your own house, you can swear in your own lounge room, but as soon as you step out in the public arena then you start, you know, you start impinging on freedoms of people.”