Malcolm Turnbull has given comfort to rightwing supporters of overhauling 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, saying the government should not be afraid of debate, because the parliament is a “house of freedom”.
Turnbull told the ABC on Thursday the government’s response to a new report from parliament’s human rights committee was a matter for cabinet and the Coalition party room, but he said free speech was a principle that should not be taken for granted.
“Freedom, democracy and the rule of law – we’ve got that here in Australia and we should cherish it and we should never, ever, be ashamed or afraid of looking at the balance between protecting people from race hate speech and freedom of speech,” the prime minister said on Thursday.
“This is a very legitimate area to discuss, to debate.”
Parliament’s human rights committee on Tuesday tabled a bipartisan report after a three-month public inquiry floating 22 reform options for the government to consider – but the new report stops short of making specific recommendations on legislative reform, because the committee members could not reach consensus.
The lack of concrete recommendations reflects a split inside the government between rightwingers and moderates over the issue. The fence-sitting by the joint parliamentary committee has prompted government MPs to pick up the cudgels on the issue once again.
Immediately after the tabling of the report, Liberal moderates and rightwingers resumed their respective campaigns to either overhaul 18C or to limit any changes to the current regime to procedural changes.
While moderates in the wake of the tabling of the report have launched a strong pushback against legislative change, fearing a major backlash from ethnic communities in Melbourne and Sydney – rightwingers will continue to press the case.
Changing 18C is an article of faith for many rightwing Liberal parliamentarians, and the breakaway senator Cory Bernardi is already using the failure of a parliamentary committee to recommend changes to 18C as a recruitment drive for his new Australian Conservatives movement.
On Thursday, outspoken conservative LNP backbencher George Christensen smacked down the treasurer, Scott Morrison, who this week argued reforming 18C wouldn’t create one job, and his own party leader Barnaby Joyce, who has shown little inclination to prosecute the case for reform of the regime, saying people aren’t raising it when he visits constituents in their sheds.
Christensen referenced both Joyce and Morrison’s arguments explicitly and slammed them as “nonsense.”
“I have heard it stated that this issue doesn’t create one job. Neither does the omnibus savings and child care reform bill, but we’re still doing that,” the LNP backbencher said.
“I have also heard it said that it’s not the issue people are talking about in pubs or in farm sheds. They weren’t talking about the Australian Building and Construction Commission either, but we still brought it back.”
“Section 18C is political correctness enshrined into law, and it stifles freedom of speech in Australia. Nothing could be more of an affront to Australian values. And nothing could be more at odds with National and Liberal party values.”
“We should repeal, or at the very least amend, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act sooner rather than later. Failure to do so will represent a fundamental breach of faith with our base.”
The continued brawling on Thursday comes as Coalition senators Ian Macdonald and James Paterson have called for the Australian Human Rights Commission president, Gillian Triggs, to be recalled by a Senate committee to explain her evidence about the Bill Leak 18C case.
On Tuesday Triggs told a Senate estimates hearing that Leak could have ended the 18C complaint against him months earlier if he had taken the opportunity to argue his cartoon depicting a drunk Aboriginal father who had forgotten his son’s name was drawn in good faith.
The Australian released correspondence from Leak’s lawyers, Justin Quill, to the AHRC dated 21 October in which Quill said Leak intended to rely on the defences in 18D, including that the cartoon was created in good faith and for a genuine purpose in the public interest.
The letter accuses the AHRC of “actual or perceived bias” because of Tim Soutphommasane’s statements in the media advising people of their rights to complain under 18C if they were offended by the cartoon.
It called for the AHRC to appoint an independent delegate to conciliate the complaint, and said if it failed to do so Leak would have “nothing further to say” to the AHRC.
The letter attached a schedule of issues to be addressed to an independent delegate – who was never appointed. The schedule stated that Leak intended to advance submissions and evidence – preferably at a public hearing – that the cartoon was drawn to promote thought and discussion around youth offending in remote Aboriginal communities.
In a statement Triggs responded that she stands by her testimony that the AHRC made two requests to Leak to justify an 18D basis for the cartoon.
“Despite those requests, neither Mr Leak nor the Australian newspaper, which published the cartoon, made any submission justifying why section 18D applied to the cartoon,” she said.
