On its final outing for the year Q&A; went to war, with the usual 2016 suspects - Donald Trump, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Bill Leak, racism, sexism, and so on, and on and on and on - among the contested territory. There was plenty of crossfire. But taking no prisoners - and taking honours for the night - was an unusual suspect onQ&A;.
Bravo, Nakkiah Lui.
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Q&A; panel clash over section 18C
Writer Nakkiah Lui disagrees with journalist Greg Sheridan's assertion that Bill Leak's controversial cartoon was not racist. Vision courtesy ABC.
The playwright and actor was a breath of fresh air among all the hot air - air made all the warmer by her panel positioning to the literal and figurative left of Eric Abetz, the Coalition's man on a mission to ensure that if we bond over nothing else, Australia will always be united in making jokes about Tasmanians.Â
Abetz is the sidelined senator from a party whose multimillionaire and Point Piper-residing leader Malcolm Turnbull has recently been keen to take Trump-like hostage of the word "elite" as an insult to describe those on the left who might take issue with the conservative agenda on issues such as… well, almost everything.Â
Seemingly as an after-thought but no less brilliantly for that, Lui was keen to liberate the description and reclaim it, in a discussion over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
"Do you have any view on the Bill Leak cartoon?" inquired host Tony Jones of Lui, referring to a controversial sketch by The Australian's resident martyr for the right to humiliate and degrade the most disadvantaged members of society. Abetz, as you may be aware, is of the tribe that would dump 18C in the nearest bin. As is Greg Sheridan, another Monday night panellist and another News Corp opinionator.
Sheridan: "Bill Leak is a magnificent guy. There's not a racist bone in his body. That was not a racist cartoon. Even if you think it was…"
Lui wasn't having any of it.
"As an Aboriginal person, I do think it was racist. As an Aboriginal person, please do not make that general statement it wasn't."
She had just taken Abetz to task, too.
"I think it's very, very racist. Very, very, very racist. Yes, I know you don't think so, Eric. I do have some numbers. I did a bit of research. I wrote it down because this is not my forte … what we're saying is we're looking at changing an entire law for less than 0.001 per cent [of the population]. So to say that this is a question, this is an issue that affects the majority of Australians, to say this is something that's on the tips of the tongues of every single Australian … is not correct.Â
"What we have is a bunch of elite politicians abusing their power and wasting funds on their personal pursuits and own agendas that are not a public matter nor are they in the public interest. We're paying a senator $195,000 a year on an issue that affects 0.001 per cent of Australians."
It was not the first time Lui drew on personal experience to own the panel. Most powerfully, she silenced the room with her personal reflections in a discussion of domestic violence in indigenous communities.Â
Tony Jones inquired: "Do you bring your own personal experience to bear when you think about this issue, trying to work out what to do about it?"
Lui: "This topic is very, very dear to me. And the reason I say we should not talk in big brush strokes is whether we start demonising Aboriginal men, what we're also doing is demonising Aboriginal women …. I didn't realise this stigma until I was a victim of domestic violence myself and my mother was a survivor of domestic violence. It wasn't until I remember 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 are so disappointing and you're disappointing to your community'. I thought it was me being a victim of domestic violence was inherent to who I was as a person. That's why we need to not paint broad brush strokes."
At one point, Lui was keen to down play the power of her words - "I'm just a writer and an actor and I have no idea what I'm talking about and people say things that I feel are over my head" - but she seemed only to gain power as she did so. On Monday's panel she had allies - the writer Benjamin Law, Labor's Terri Butler - and in her advocacy she threw shade on her foes.
The American election, she said, may have appeared a choice between two evils - "like choosing who will be King Shit of Turd Island"Â - but what the result suggested was the need for powerful dissent; the need to not sit this one out.Â
"Understand you do have a voice … eventually the politicians will have to come to you. And we have powers in numbers. So spread the word. Be there. Practise your dissent in anyway you can. I'm shaking my fists like it's a power movement."