Young writers invoking the Indigenous and Asian experience of Australia clashed with older, white, conservative voices over the merits of the Racial Discrimination Act in a fractious debate on Q&A.
The role of race itself in the perception of what constitutes racism and how far legal protections should go for those on the receiving end loomed over a sharply divided panel in the 2016 finale of the ABC talk show.
Aboriginal playwright Nakkiah Lui upbraided columnist for the Australian, Greg Sheridan, for declaring a widely-criticised cartoon by his colleague, Bill Leak, was not racist.
Sheridan did so as a white man, whereas “as an Aboriginal person, I think it’s very, very racist – very, very, very, racist”, Lui said.
Protesting & activism is valid engagement, says @mrbenjaminlaw Sheridan says attend party meetings #QandA https://t.co/38v2YDkpDc
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) November 21, 2016
“So as an Aboriginal person, please do not make that general statement that it wasn’t. As a white man, you think it wasn’t. So good for you,” she said.
Sheridan in turn rounded on Labor MP Terri Butler for accepting the allegation a Queensland University of Technology posted the “N-word” as a racial slur online in another case cited in the conservative drive to strike out offence or insult as a grounds for complaint under the act. The student has always strongly denied the allegation.
“I am ashamed of you for defaming that QUT student. You said he used the N-word and then when [Coalition senator] Eric [Abetz] said he said he’d never used the N-word, you said, well, he would say that wouldn’t he.
“Here you go on national television, attributing guilt to a completely innocent QUT student whose life has been buggered up by this ridiculous legislation.”
Asian Australian author and TV screenwriter Benjamin Law said the debate about changing section 18C of the act had never been “about ordinary Australians’ access to freedom of speech”.
“It’s about powerful individuals and powerful organisations having an angry circle jerk about how horrible it is to be called out to be racist in a public forum,” he said.
Law claimed the latitude given by section 18D of the act to use racial insult in debate, for “genuine purpose in the public interest” or as “fair comment based on a genuine belief” meant it was “the biggest caveat to 18C possible”.
He asked: “What liberties to freedom of speech are we not having access to in all of this?”
Law drew an identical show of hands from the audience when asking who identified as “a racial minority in this country” then who had “experienced racial abuse in this country”.
“That’s the issue,” he said.
How best can diversity on TV be achieved? @mrbenjaminlaw used to play spot the asian on TV before his show #QandA https://t.co/r5VyzqOO7a
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) November 21, 2016
Abetz said if Law were right about 18D, why would race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane “seek somebody to complain about the Bill Leak cartoon if he should’ve known, on your interpretation of the law, that that was completely excusable?”
“That is where the process is the punishment and with all the cases that are conciliated, what happens in this, the people that don’t have the money to afford lawyers to go to the federal court … pay what’s called the ‘go away’ money, the $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 like three of the QUT students did so they wouldn’t have to go to court,” he said.
That the Leak cartoon and the “innocuous” Facebook posts from some of the QUT students – such as describing an Indigenous-only computer lab as “stopping segregation with segregation” – were able to be complained about through 18C showed there was a problem.
The president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, had indicated as much by raising the possibility of replacing the words “insult” or “offend” in 18C with the stronger term “vilify”, Abetz said.
Butler said the “real problem in the QUT case” was the seven months it took for the federal court to act on a strike out application by the students, which reflected a problem with resourcing the courts.
She said it would be “crazy” by comparison to remove causes of legal action in contract or tort law just because there were cases that were “misconceived or trivial”.
“What I really hope we stop seeing out of this is the martyrdom of Bill Leak, whose cartoon was racist,” Butler said, adding that one QUT student had “used the N- word”.
When Abetz said the student had denied posting the comment – claiming his account had been hacked – Butler replied that “it was never determined” by the court and “he would say that, wouldn’t he”.
Sheridan said Butler was “presuming his guilt on national TV when there’s no evidence against it. That is a racist smear in itself.”
In response to an audience question about “Indigenous sensitivities” and “political correctness” as barriers to addressing domestic violence against Aboriginal women, Lui reflected on her own experience as a survivor of domestic abuse to warn of the individual harm caused by framing the issue through race.
She said there was an “epidemic” of family violence across Australia and that its perpetrators went far beyond Indigenous communities.
“When we’re saying that domestic violence and perpetrating that is inherent to Aboriginal men, we’re saying being victims is inherent to Aboriginal women,” Lui said.
“And I didn’t realise the stigma until I was a victim of domestic violence myself.”
Lui said she remembered “very, very vividly, standing in front of the police with my busted lip at the house I was at with my partner at the time, and just thinking to myself, you stupid Aboriginal girl, you’re so disappointing, and you’re disappointing to your community”.
“And at this moment I thought that me being a victim of domestic violence was inherent to who I was as a person,” she said.
