"If the warning bells are not ringing by now, they should be. Clearly, the Racial Discrimination Act is open to rubbery interpretation on just what an offensive or insulting tone is. If I go into my classroom and in the course of my lesson I use a tone that is apparently offensive or insulting to any racially identifiable group, then I am breaking the law. This background is worth keeping in mind in the light of the intention of Attorney-General Nicola Roxon to make changes that are in the exposure draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012. Under the mooted changes, there is a broadening of the definition of what constitutes offence or insult.
The draft goes further, stating that offending and insulting will come under the umbrella of "unfavourable treatment".
To quote King Lear: "That way madness lies."
The unspecified "unfavourable treatment" is a worrying catch-all phrase. The Roxon proposal intends to expand the reach of current anti-discrimination law to all those in "any area of public life", which is defined as work, education, membership of clubs and sport participation.
This means that if I go into my classroom and dismiss a particular indigenous, Chinese, American, Australian or any nationality text as bad writing, should anyone take offence or be insulted by my remarks, then I am in effect, under the Roxon view, breaking the law. Then there is the question of tone.
After the Bolt case, Marcia Langton, professor of Australian indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne, in a piece of untrammelled invective published in The Sunday Age, directed to "Bolt and his kind", said: "What Bolt refuses to acknowledge, or is deliberately misleading about is the fact that identifying as Aboriginal is almost certainly likely to lead to being run out of school by racists." This is wrong.
Her remarks were, and still are, to me as a whitefella, "offensive" and "insulting" and were made in a "tone" that is sneering and sarcastic. They imply that my school, which nurtures Aboriginal children and has staff give up their time to teach in remote communities, is one where Aboriginal children are likely to be excluded by racists on staff. This is not a "fact" and it discredits Langton as a serious academic.
Still, if an aggrieved student made a complaint against me because of what I said or the tone in which it was said, my employer would have to undertake, as would be the case for any educational institution, an exhaustive and time-consuming inquiry on the supposition that an insult was intended or offensive remarks made.
The Roxon laws would therefore make the flow of free speech untenable."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
