GetUp has taken aim at Malcolm Turnbull, depicting him on a poster with Pauline Hanson asking why the Liberals won’t stand up to racism.
The billboard, to be rolled out in multicultural electorates in western Sydney and Melbourne from Thursday, is part of the activist group’s racial justice campaign, including its efforts to retain prohibitions on speech that insults, offends, humiliates or intimidates based on a person’s race.
But despite the majority of formal submissions opposing the repeal of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the freedom of speech inquiry considering the provision has been inundated with 7,775 form letters in favour of repeal.
GetUp’s human rights director, Shen Narayanasamy, criticised the prime minister on his “weak response” to Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from a group of majority-Muslim countries and accused him of “cosying up to One Nation”.
“The Coalition is trying to make short-term gains from Trump-style divisiveness … but we are determined to show that there are long-term electoral costs associated with victimising minorities.”
At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Turnbull was asked why the Liberals in Western Australia appeared to be preparing to swap preferences with One Nation and whether the party would preference the rightwing nationalists at the federal level.
He said WA preferences were a matter for the state division and the federal Liberal party was prepared to work with all parties in the parliament, including One Nation.
But it is the freedom of speech inquiry, which held public hearings this week, that is the explicit focus of Get Up’s billboards with the messages “Why won’t the Liberals stand up to racism?” and “#HandsOff18C”.
“The Australian newspaper, the Institute of Public Affairs and the far right of the Liberal-National party have worked themselves into a lather to defend people’s right to be racist,” Narayanasamy said.
She said watering down or removing section 18C would be “outright permission” for racial abuse. “This is a country where almost a third of the population are from a non-Anglocentric background. For most Australians, there’s little demand for the right to be a bigot.
“However, if you are a person of colour or one of Australia’s first peoples, this is a serious issue which impacts your quality of life.”
The freedom of speech inquiry received 11,500 items from the public, including about 9,100 form letters, 1,300 pieces of correspondence and at least 200 formal submissions.
According to the committee’s website, 7,775 of the 9,100 form letters were for 18C to be repealed in its entirety, a campaign orchestrated by the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The letter claims 18C “restricts an individual’s ability to engage in lively and forthright debate”. It notes that, since it was introduced in 1995, 2,109 complaints have been made and “almost 100” have ended up in federal courts.
“The process chills speech by requiring defendants to spend time, energy and money defending themselves for their speech and the potential exists for lives to be ruined even if they are ultimately vindicated in the courts,” it said.
In its submission to the inquiry, the Institute of Public Affairs called for repeal of section 18C, arguing it infringed freedom of speech and there is “no right not to be offended”.
The IPA suggested that section 18C harmed social cohesion because people with racist attitudes were more “likely to feel better if allowed to be wrong and then corrected by the words and example of others, than if silenced and left to stew in resentment”.
It said while humiliation and intimidation are “arguably justifiable restrictions on freedom of expression”, those were prohibited by other laws.
Amnesty International, academics and the journalists’ union told the inquiry that laws restricting information about national security and immigration detention were a greater threat to freedom than race-speech laws.
Many organisations supported retaining 18C on the basis it struck the right balance between freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination.
These included the Victorian government, the Refugee Council, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Reconciliation Australia, the Australian Lawyers’ Alliance, the Arab Council of Australia and the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia.
A popular compromise position was to replacing the terms “offend” and “insult” with “vilify”, which was backed by Monash University’s Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Australian Industry Group.
