Australia is exploring the notion of making it illegal to offend others (I guess it got precedence over the bill to make water run uphill…):
Have you ever called the Prime Minister ‘Juliar’? Or called a mate a dopey bastard? New laws could put a stop to name calling.
Civil Liberties Australia (CLA) warn the PM herself could be in trouble for calling Opposition Leader Tony Abbott a misogynist if proposed amendments to anti-discrimination laws take effect — although Julia Gillard has the protection of Parliamentary privilege.
What about cricket sledging, or paying out on a mate?
CLA chief executive officer Bill Rowlings has lashed out at the proposed amendments to anti-discrimination laws which make it unlawful to “offend” people.
His attack follows ABC chairman Jim Spigelman’s scathing appraisal this week — he said that the laws could breach our international obligations to freedom of speech.
Update: Of course, it’s rather unfair of me to point my finger and laugh at our Australian cousins when Albertans get up to similar japes of a quasi-legal kind:
One is surprised to discover that Hanna felt it needed to outlaw theft and assault, and also amused to contemplate the idea of a court trying to define “social out-casting”. But it turns out, anyway, that the law does not actually outlaw bullying! It instead does a bizarre half-gainer and prohibits the making-of-someone-feel-as-though-they-are-being-bullied.
1. No person shall, in any public place:
a. Communicate either directly or indirectly, with any person in a way that causes the person, reasonably in all the circumstances, to feel bullied.
To prove an offence under this scheme, one apparently only needs to show that one felt taunted, put down, or outcast. (Felt “reasonably”, that is. I would have thought the salient characteristic of feelings is that they are not reason, but there you go.) The Hanna Herald has said the bylaw is “based on similar laws passed around Alberta.” One hopes that this is not the case, but readers are invited to submit local intelligence. If we can call it that.
