18C Changes Dropped

What Starts As Bad Politics Ends As Bad Politics

I don't know of many governments that come to power as out of touch with community values than the government we currently have in Canberra. This week they have finally abandoned plans to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Having taken this idiotic policy to the election and won the election, it must have made sense to them to push this agenda, but I can't think of a more egregious example of having misread the electorate. Having whipped up a shitstorm of hysteria about broken promises over carbon pricing and the mining tax, it was conceivable that the Coalition had some claim to having an electoral mandate to repeal the carbon pricing system - as stupid and counter-to-history as it is - but the Racial Discrimination Act has been around for a long while now. Pushing for changes to it was not really something the electorate might have considered an important policy platform. Especially when the sole beneficiary seemed to be Andrew Bolt and people who want to be bigots.

Which, for a moment brings us to Andrew Bolt who is still smarting from his court case, whose open support of the Coalition  led to the Coalition government trying to open up some space for Andrew Bolt to essentially say bigoted things under the guise of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not the victim in this - it's George Brandis' 'right to be a bigot' that essentially found a lot of hostility. It only takes a moment to consider that what the Coalition was asking Australians with non-white backgrounds was that Andrew Bolt should be allowed to bad mouth people from his bully pulpit and propagate views that are hurtful to their pride because this was freedom of speech. It's bizarre that they thought this was going to fly with the electorate. It was asking Australia to go back to 'Kingswood Country' with Ted Bullpit calling every immigrant a wog for laughs. You wonder how these people thought this was going to make them look good.

It's worse than that now. Having proposed the bad changes and explained it badly, it has given the electorate a "goes-to-character" assessment of the government. the assessment would include the notion that the Coalition government, on some level, wants to protect bigots if not wanting to be bigoted racists themselves. they're right back at when John Howard went and slammed the Asian community back in the late 80s, which is to say they haven't changed their stripes one bit. It's notable that the people wanting to do the change and are spitting chips about it today are white, middle aged, and private school educated. You wonder how they'd respond if you gave them the medicine of their own freedom-to-be-a-bigot asked them how many Jewish forebears they have hidden in their family tree, and if they felt tainted by that.

Liberal Rule Blues

A Bolt Out Of The Poo

Rightwing nutjob columnist Andrew Bolt was in the news today complaining that he was insulted by being lablled a racist by people on 'Q&A', and when the ABC issued an apology, he found it to benot good enough. At which point I think I rolled my eyes. We all know this man; he's the one who got into that court case where he claimed a woman was somehow gaming the system by pretending to be an Aborigine despite the fact she had white skin - and promptly lost that court case. Since then it's metastasised into a cause celebre for the right, with George Brandis vowing to repeal section 18C of the Anti-Descrimination act. George Brandis thinks that somehow a great impeditment to freedomeof expression in this country (the very same George Brandis who is threatening to withdraw Australia Council funding from artists who boycott the Sydney Biennale! Scum and Villainy!).

Anyway, it strikes me as somewhat odd that there is a group a of white men who really want to repeal the bit of the Anti-Descrimination Act which is written so you can't belittle people for their race. But it turns out these people have skin as thin, if not more, than the groups of people who do not want it repealed. Indeed, the various 'wogs', 'chinks', 'gooks', 'kikes', 'spics' 'abbos' and 'boongs' of Australia have asked through their community groups and organisations not to repeal 18C.  If they do repeal it, I'll be the first to congratulate these honky-cracker-skippies by calling them one. But you do get the feeling they just don't quite get it.

It's one thing for 18C to be repealed by a bunch of white men of the dominant mainstream who are taking away the sense of protection from people who aren't anywhere near mainstream in their representation in Australia. It's entirely another thing to see a white man who has a dominant position in the mainstream through his presence in the mass media complains that he is somehow done wrong by being accurately described as a racist. If you talk about people in generalities based on their perceived race and make a pile of judgment calls based on that (faulty) perception, then you deserve to be branded a racist. They're the damn rules, Andrew Bolt, you dolt!

Brain Damage

Apropos of the Ian Roberts concussion thing I've been thinking about our Dear Leader Tony Abbott, who in his youth was a pugilist. We know from reports of the time that his style was 'raging bullshit' and not much skill, just flailing away hard hoping to connect with the other guy. Mike Tyson he was not - and you'd think that as such he must have taken quite a few blows to the head, boxing that way. And you wonder what sort of brain damage he must have sustained, and perhaps that is maybe why he is the way he is. Combined with the fact that the brain of a conservative is already misshapen towards needless fear and paranoia, you get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this country is being led by a severely deficient human being.

But then again, the total irrationality of his policy agenda would have alerted you to this fact. The real corker question is what's the rest of the Liberals doing following this madman about?