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FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

Let’s be politically incorrect. I have to be if I plan to comment rationally on the extraordinary case of a federal Senator. His name is Ross Lightfoot. Politically correct people would call him Ross Leadfoot. Or
Deadfoot.

In court this week he was held to account and it will cost him probably
around 10,000 dollars.

His crime? He said something offensive, something crass, something vulgar about indigenous Australians.

An elected member of federal Parliament said that Aboriginal people “in their native state” were the most primitive people on earth.

An aboriginal woman took exception to those comments to a journalist back in 1997 and took Senator Lightfoot to court under the new Racial Discrimination Act.

A court this week found the Senator guilty. Justice Christopher Carr ruled that Senator Lightfoot had breached the Act, had vilified Aborigines and ordered him to pay costs of around $10,000.

Now, at the risk of being politically incorrect, at the risk of offending indigenous people, at the risk of breaking the same law, I have to ask: What the hell is going on here?

I find what Senator Lightfoot said –on the surface – offensive. But surely there is freedom of speech in this country?

Isn’t that what thousands of Aussies fought and died for in two world wars?

The Aboriginal complainant, Hannah McGlade, said that she had a right not to have her culture “ vilified”. That Lightfoot’s views were unlawful.

Well, sorry. I don’t agree. I don’t agree with Lightfoot. But it was an opinion. In a country where freedom of speech is supposedly revered.

And if you don’t like what Lightfoot says or stands for then vote him out. Kick him out.

But think about some of the things he says, or said five years ago, when talking about primitive people.

II believe it is not right that Aboriginal people can be treated differently in our courts. I do not believe it is right that we split our forms of justice and allow a man to be speared through the thigh in some tribal punishment.

I do not believe it is right when so many tribal aboriginal men believe it is right to sexually assault young indigenous women or beat their women or gouge out a woman’s eye for some real or imagined slight.

I am sick of Koori courts and hankering to Koori customs. This is supposedly a multi-cultural country. And one of those cultures is Aboriginal.

And if a man is a racist and mocks that culture or criticises that culture
it is no different to an aboriginal man mocking a whitey.

Plead tolerance but accept that there is freedom of speech in this country – supposedly – and savaging Senator Lightfoot in the courts doesn’t help. It actually hurts.

Thursday, November 28, 2002

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002