Labor’s tactic with respect to the revised 18c legislation is to ask the bogus, straw man question of “what kind of racial abuse do you seek to legalise?”
The response to which should be “what kind of racial abuse existed prior to 1994 when 18c was introduced at the behest of academic elites and the ethnic lobby?”
The answer to this is, very little, although as in all societies and cultures there will be racists irrespective of laws like 18c.
Out in the burbs and the boonies, the average Australian wouldn’t have a clue about 18c or that it even existed. Ask the average person at random when next down at the shopping centre. Be prepared for a blank stare and a “what the hell are you talking about”
There’s been a lot of talk about the pub test. Here’s a chance to do your own and to find out what people know.
So being ignorant of its existence one would imagine that they wouldn’t be bothered being guarded in what they said and behave “normally” and you would expect, then, as Labor obviously does, that Australians would be cutting loose with tirades of racial abuse or vilification. But they’re not. Australians are, as I said, fundamentally decent people.
As it stands, 18c is an insult to the common decency of the average Australian who, as demonstrated over the decades is more than tolerant and more about the notion of the fair go to which our post war immigration program stands testament.
What 18c does demonstrate however is how the Labor/Green left believes in a straight jacket on speech and thought and doesn’t trust, know or understand the very nature of the average Australian they purport to represent.
Apart from being an example of a sledge hammer to crack a walnut, the grotesque and insidious flaw in section 18c is its objective scope, whereby ones man’s insult, offence or humiliation will trigger and invoke a mere shrug in another. It’s legislation designed to mollycoddle. It’s legislation designed to prevent hurt feelings.
So as to the slippery, mischievous, beat up question being advanced by Labor, “the kind of racial abuse one seeks to legalise” is in the realm of Alice in Wonderland and Humpty Dumpty and “could be anything I choose it to be.” 18c must be the only law on the statute books the relies on the thickness of skin.