This was published 7 years ago
Why are freedom of speech warriors such a bunch of crybabies?
You can't say that all speech should be free and then hide behind lawsuits and tantrums when someone says something you don't like, guys.
By Andrew P Street
Free speech has been under attack in Australia more than ever before in recent years, with our pitiful whistleblower protections for workers, the controversial (and now watered down) Border Force Act provisions that made it an offence for workers to report on conditions in offshore detention and deliberate "freezing" of the operation of Freedom of Information laws in Australia.
So it's great that all the fights about free speech in this country centre exclusively about one bit of a law introduced in 1975, almost as though the most pressing issue this nations faces is that we're all being far too gosh-darn polite to one another.
This week we had another reminder of one of the weirder things about the whole free speech sabre rattling that's been going on since Andrew Bolt was successfully pursued under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act back in 2011: that the most outspoken defenders of the freedom to say whatever one likes get exceptionally furious when other people dare to do so.
Most people generally recognise that words are not somehow separate to actions and that they can be used to hurt people – after all, that's the entire point of insults and threats.
Pauline Hanson, during her parliamentary rendition of Moving Picture's classic 'What About Me?' Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Yet all the people who angrily bleat about how the people they criticise need to grow a thicker skin when they're called nasty names get exceptionally sensitive whenever someone takes them at their word: like Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who accused critics of Wicked Campervan's misogynist messages to be "particularly wowserish" and then had a little sulk on Twitter about the big meanies at the Chaser after they made him a van of his own – almost as though words do have the power to hurt people!
But, as ever, the best example of this exceptional level of doublethink comes courtesy of One Nation's leader Pauline Hanson who insisted in Parliament that "I've had it up to here with my tolerance." Which is impressive, really: her ability to tolerate her own tolerance has become intolerable.
In a nutshell, her problem is that free speech is being strangled by the onerous restrictions of, as always, 18C which makes it a crime to do something in public that "is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and… the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group" (except for the many, many, many situations under which this is perfectly fine, as outlined in the oddly overlooked 18D).
"People have come to our country – and I remember most, years ago, when they came; there was the Greeks and Italians and different ones, they were called 'wogs' – they keep telling me, they said 'my God we actually had everything thrown at us'," she passionately opined. "'But we said 'nah, we got on with it'. Because when the Aussies had a go at them in that Aussie way they then became part of the community, they assimilated."
Yes, Pauline hungers for a simpler time, when you could call people wogs and they just took the insult without doing anything uppity and reverse racist like saying "how about you don't call me that deliberately offensive term, you rude weirdo?"
Also, perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that maybe Pauline somewhat overestimated just how much these "wogs" enjoyed being insulted.
The comedian and actor Simon Palomares – who came to prominence as co-creator of Wogs Out Of Work – didn't mince words in his eloquent replay on Facebook:
"Let me tell you Pauline, there were no 'happy days' when we were called wogs! And we didn't just get on with it, we put up with that stupid ignorant shit and some of us appropriated the word and turned it into a term of solidarity so as to take the insult out of it… A Labor minister is now being sued for calling someone a racist on Q&A: where is your cry for freedom of speech and why don't you just 'get on with it' when someone calls you racist?"
Then again, it's awfully hard to suggest that One Nation is the party determined to stand up for the rights of people to express their opinion, no matter how unpopular, at the same time that one of its senators has a rich history of filing defamation suits against people that say unflattering things about him on social media.
And Hanson's no stranger at strangling her beloved free speech with defamation laws when it suits her, such as her case against the drag artist Pauline Pantsdown, or her threats to sue BuzzFeed for daring to ask what exactly former Peter Slipper staffer and alleged phone-hurler James Ashby was doing in her employ.
Hanson loves to talk about how she stands for equality for all Australians, regardless of their background. The problem is that what she appears to be arguing for is the equality for all Australians, regardless of their background, to call other people wogs and get angry if they don't get "get on with it".
And that's a strange sort of freedom to be calling for.
Andrew P Street's new book The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull: the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat is out now through Allen & Unwin,