The Human Rights Commission has accepted a racial discrimination complaint by senator David Leyonhjelm over an article that called him an “angry white male” for his opposition to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
The Liberal Democrat senator lodged the complaint last month in response to a comment piece on 8 August by Faifax Media’s chief political correspondent, Mark Kenny, which criticised Leyonhjelm and One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts for their opposition to the law.
Section 18C prohibits speech that offends or insults a person based on their race but Leyonhjelm and Roberts have argued it should be repealed because “offence is always taken, not given”.
Kenny wrote: “This gormless duo has declared, with all their angry-white-male certitude, that a verbal abuser cannot cause offence or humiliation. It is all in the mind of the recipient.”
Leyonhjelm’s complaint relies on the very law he wants overturned.
He said he was not offended by Kenny’s comments but nevertheless believed they were in breach of section 18C. His aim, he said, was to show government that such a law was absurd.
“I believe what Mr Kenny wrote about me was unlawful and what I am aiming to do is make it lawful,” Leyonhjelm told Guardian Australia.
“My objective is to have Mark Kenny agree that his statements were unlawful, that what he wrote about me was unlawful.
“I’m not arguing that he should not say them, I’m arguing that they were unlawful.”
Leyonhjelm said the commission would now write to Kenny and give him until the end of the month to respond to the complaint, which would then be put to conciliation. If conciliation failed the parties could refer the matter to the federal court.
In response to the complaint last month, Kenny said the suggestion he had breached racial discrimination laws was “patently absurd” and accused Leyonhjelm of “trivialising an important issue”.
The Human Rights Commission declined to comment on individual complaints but said the threshold for accepting complaints for conciliation was that the complaint be arguable.
The commission does not pass judgment on complaints and a spokesman said a decision to accept a complaint was not a judgment about the seriousness of the complaint.
Sections 18C and 18D were introduced into the Racial Discrimination Act in 1995 in response to recommendations made by the 1991 national inquiry into racist violence and the 1989-91 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, in what the commission said was “a recognition that racial abuse and harassment could escalate to racial violence”.
In a statement, Leyonhjelm said that if Kenny did not acknowledge the article was unlawful, he would “look at his options”.
In the meantime, he said, he intended to table a bill to repeal section 18C this week.
The Liberal senator Cory Bernadi has also been gathering support for a private member’s bill to repeal the law, a move that has in-principle support from almost all Coalition backbench senators, the Victorian senator Derryn Hinch, the Family First senator Bob Day, who co-sponsored the bill, and Leyonhjelm.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said the government “has no plans to make any changes to section 18C” because they have “much more pressing priorities to address”.
