The fragility of freedom of speech

Nicholas Shackel

doi:10.1136/medethics-2012-100628

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The fragility of freedom of speech

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Freedom of speech risks inciting race based abuse and vilification
Joseph Y Ting
Published on: 18 May 2017

Published on: 18 May 2017
Freedom of speech risks inciting race based abuse and vilification
- Joseph Y Ting, Adjunct associate professor, School of Public Health and Social Work
To the Editor: The rights to unrestrained free speech in Australia, including the abolition of the ban on hate speech in the Racial Discrimination Act that makes it it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" a person or group on the basis of their "race, colour or national or ethnic origin," could incite race based abuse.
Racial discrimination and vilification remains a prescient worry for the rece...
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To the Editor: The rights to unrestrained free speech in Australia, including the abolition of the ban on hate speech in the Racial Discrimination Act that makes it it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" a person or group on the basis of their "race, colour or national or ethnic origin," could incite race based abuse.
Racial discrimination and vilification remains a prescient worry for the recently arrived, with children at higher risk of its long-term adverse effects. As a child growing up in 1980s Australia, I was daily branded ''ching chong Chinaman''. As an intern in the early 1990's, I looked after the child of a fellow student who had repeatedly hurled racial abuse and spat at me as I left for home from school on the bus. During the week of typhoon Haiyan in late 2013, a man mimicked paddling a kayak to a Filipino colleague while heckling him to ''row back to where you came from''. A would-be parliamentarian declared that asylum seekers were clogging up traffic in western Sydney in the lead up to our most recent Federal Elections (2013).
None of these personal or very public instances of race-based vilification were taken seriously enough to court on the basis of injury to reputation and defamation. The effort and expense required to instigate and follow through legal proceedings compels most non-majority non-white Australians to take such insults and threats on the chin. This aids and abets strong electoral support for Australia's already curtailed foreign aid to be redirected from Indonesia if it did not allow boats to be turned away from Australian shores. The inhumane treatment of asylum seekers remains the biggest elephant in the room, racial prejudice implemented in a systematic rollout.
How is an immigrant child to deal with unbridled permission to express hateful abuse? Would its vehemence not be seared into his soul, just as the vilification 30 years ago at a bus stop remains fresh and alive in my memory? I am all for free speech, but racially motivated abuse is threatening and hurtful to the progress of hardworking minorities who just want to make a go of it in a new country.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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Conflict of Interest:
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