{"id":19182,"date":"2013-02-27T09:57:39","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T14:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19182"},"modified":"2013-02-27T09:57:39","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T14:57:39","slug":"australias-human-rights-enforcement-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/27\/australias-human-rights-enforcement-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s “human rights enforcement” industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia, like Canada, has a large and over-mighty set of bureaucracies empowered to pursue “human rights” scofflaws (I put “human rights” in scare quotes because the most prominent cases in both countries appear to be enforcement of certain privileges rather than ensuring equal rights for all). Nick Cater<\/a> says that the joyride for these — if you’ll pardon the expression — kangaroo courts may be coming to an end:<\/p>\n

Quietly at first, but with a swelling, indignant chorus, respectable Australians of unimpeachable character began howling Roxon\u2019s bill down. The contrivance of describing race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or 14 other grounds for victimhood as \u2018protected attributes\u2019 jarred; the inclusion of industrial history, breastfeeding or pregnancy or social origin suggested overkill; the reversal on the onus of proof, obliging alleged racists, misogynists and wheelchair kickers to demonstrate their innocence, seemed a step too far. The ABC\u2019s chairman, Jim Spigelman, a lawyer of some standing, voiced his concerns about the outcome of the Bolt case. \u2018I am not aware of any international human-rights instrument or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy that extends to conduct which is merely offensive\u2019, Mr Spigelman said. \u2018We would be pretty much on our own in declaring conduct which does no more than offend to be unlawful. The freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech.\u2019<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Unlike political opinion, attributes like age or gender or sexuality are objective facts. They did not have to be demonstrated. As Senator Brandis pointed out: \u2018There is no imperative for a 45-year-old man to go around saying, \u201cI\u2019m 45\u201d. That does not happen.\u2019 Political opinion, however, means nothing unless it is expressed.<\/p>\n

Brandis: \u2018I do not know if you are familiar with Czeslaw Milosz\u2019s work The Captive Mind<\/em>, or Arthur Koestler\u2019s book Darkness At Noon<\/em>\u2026 The whole point of political freedom is that there is an imperishable conjunction between the right to hold the opinion and the right to express the opinion. That is why political censorship is so evil — not because it prohibits us holding an opinion but because it prohibits us articulating the opinion that we hold.<\/p>\n

\u2018We all agree that there is no law in Australia that says you cannot have a particular opinion. We all agree that there are certain laws in Australia, including defamation laws, that limit the freedom of speech. My contention is that there should not, in a free society, be laws that prohibit the expression of an opinion\u2026 This attempt to say, \u201cHolding an opinion is one thing but expressing an opinion is quite different\u201d, is terribly dangerous in a liberal democratic politic.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia, like Canada, has a large and over-mighty set of bureaucracies empowered to pursue “human rights” scofflaws (I put “human rights” in scare quotes because the most prominent cases in both countries appear to be enforcement of certain privileges rather than ensuring equal rights for all). Nick Cater says that the joyride for these — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,84,9,10],"tags":[459,198,186,322,238],"class_list":["post-19182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-equalrights","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-nannystate","tag-offensensitivity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Zo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19183,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19182\/revisions\/19183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}