When Malcolm Turnbull defended controversial changes to the Racial Discrimination Act on Tuesday, he said it was about “standing up for the freedom of speech that underpins our society.”
Well, now thousands of Australians are using that privilege to slam the government’s move.
Collected under the hashtag #freedomofspeech are heartbreaking experiences of the racism Twitter users have experienced throughout their lives – from offhand comments to brutal physical assault.
Among them, are those shared by several high-profile Australians…
Cook, columnist and 2010 MasterChef Australia winner Adam Liaw was among those to contribute.
“I’ve had my accent (do I have one?) mocked THOUSANDS of times. I’ve been told to go back to where I came from THOUSANDS of times. I’ve been called a ‘gook’, ‘nip’, ‘ching-chong’ or any number of racist names THOUSANDS of times,” he wrote.
And sadly, he conceded, it will likely happen to his “beautiful, adorable children”:
Launched by author Benjamin Law this morning, the trending social media movement is in direct response to the bill passed today by the House of Representatives to remove the words “offend, insult and humiliate” from 18c and replace them with “harass” and “intimidate”.
The Government argues the bill, which is yet to be passed by the Senate, strikes a “careful balance” that protects Australians from discrimination while also shielding others from “spurious claims of racism”.
Listen: Randa Abdel-Fattah on her experience of racism and Islamophobia. (Post continues after embed.)
Facing vocal criticism from Labour, The Greens and crossbenchers today, Prime Minister Turnbull told parliament, “I believe all Australians are absolutely opposed to racism in any form.
“The suggestion that those people who support a change to the wording of Section 18C are somehow or other racist is a deeply offensive one.”
Speaking of deeply offensive…
Top Comments
It's awful anyone has had those kind of things said to them but the problem is 18C was used against a QUT student in an absolutely ridiculous way. Essentially he went to use a computer lab, discovered it was for aboriginals only which meant that he as a white guy wasn't allowed to use. So he said something online later which was basically that he thought it was segregation. Now you don't have to agree with him, but it seems to me just an opinion. But 18C was used against him and he endured a lot of litigation.
Now to be quite frank I don't really understand exactly what the difference is from the old legislation to the new amendment, but I have serious reservations about the old legislation if it was used in that case.
I would be interested in someone giving a practical example of what racists things will be able to be done/said before to now. For instance does it mean that people couldn't call someone the N word before but now they can? If that's the case I can understand why the change in legislation would be upsetting to some, but the problem if someone can't voice an opinion like the QUT student then I think the legislation had some holes in it.
The proposed change is to replace insult and offend with harrass and intimidate. I think a lot of racially based verbal abuse could still be described as harassment and intimidation. I think the average person would consider the examples in the article to be harassment and intimidation.
Commonsense finally prevails! I am sensing a long overdue pull back from the unbalanced extremes we have gone to to try and correct the unacceptable actions of a small part of our community.