Podcasts about racial discrimination act

In this Report, Richard Wolstencroft discusses the continued persecution of Pauline Hanson. Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart recently ruled that Hanson violated 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act for telling Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to ‘piss off back to Pakistan' in response to Faruqi's slur against the late Queen Elizabeth II. The Unshackled Links:Website: https://www.theunshackled.netFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TUnshackledTwitter: https://twitter.com/Un_shackledGab: https://gab.com/theunshackledMinds: https://www.minds.com/The_Unshackled/Telegram: https://t.me/theunshackledMeWe: https://mewe.com/p/theunshackledInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_unshackledBitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/theunshackled/Free eBook: http://theunshackledbattlefield.net/ Unshackled Productions:WilmsFront: http://www.timwilms.comTrad Tasman Talk: https://www.theunshackled.net/ttt/The Report from Tiger Mountain: http://reportfromtigermountain.com/ Support Our Work: Membership: http://www.theunshackled.net/membershipDonate: https://www.theunshackled.net/donate/Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TheUnshackledStore: https://www.theunshackled.net/store/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over in Australia, One Nation's Pauline Hanson is copping backlash over telling another senator to 'go back to Pakistan'. Mehreen Faruqi claims Hanson breached the Racial Discrimination Act through her controversial tweet. Australian correspondent Murray Olds explains further. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

48年前的今天，也就是1975 年 10 月 31 日，澳大利亚出台了《种族歧视法》（Racial Discrimination Act），以确保澳大利亚的每个人都能得到平等的对待和同等的机会。

It's been 48 years since the Racial Discrimination Act was introduced in an effort to make sure everyone in Australia was treated equally and given the same opportunities. Almost half a century later, Diversity Council Australia and community leaders say Australia still has a persistent problem with race, with people reporting they're treated differently at school or in the workplace just because of the colour of their skin.

It's been 48 years [[31 Oct 1975]] since the Racial Discrimination Act was introduced in an effort to make sure everyone in Australia was treated equally and given the same opportunities. Almost half a century later, people still report they're treated differently at school or in the workplace just because of the colour of their skin.Listen to this SBS Sinhala explainer for more information. - ඔස්ට්‍රේලියාවේ නොනවතින වර්ගවාදී ගැටළුව ගැන වැඩිදුර තොරතුරු දැන ගන්න සවන් දෙන්න SBS සිංහල ගුවන් විදුලියේ දවසේ කාලීන තොරතුරු විග්‍රහයට.

There's a fine line between race and racism when dissecting the Australian mainstream media and its reportage of Indigenous Affairs.Over the last decade, conservative columnists and reporters in conservative legacy media have generated public debate over the validity of the Racial Discrimination Act. At the same time, Indigenous communities have accused the same media of covert and overt racism in reporting. TV presenter, journalist, and Whadjuk Noongar woman Narelda Jacobs explores coverage of the death in custody of Kumanjayi Walker and the resulting trial. While Professor Heidi Norman from UTS discusses the coverage of the Cindy Prior case, which became subject to a nationwide debate around racial discrimination.Warning: The following episode discusses the reportage of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody so if this is likely to raise anything for you, please give 13 YARN (13- 92-76), the national 24/7 Indigenous crisis line a call.Blak Bias is a collaboration between IndigenousX.com.au, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and 2SER Radio. It has been made possible with the support of the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas (JNI).Co-hosts: Rhianna Patrick and Madeline Hayman-Reber. Produced, edited, and mixed by Marlene Even at 2SER Radio.More information:Racialised opinion pieces in Australian mainstream media 2019-2020 - A snapshot- https://bit.ly/3BnXVYeAre Aboriginal people a threat to the modern nation?: A study of newsprint coverage of a racial discrimination complaint - https://bit.ly/3vmviXhThe Australian's coverage of Zachary Rolfe verdict condemned as ‘national disgrace', Guardian Australia, March 2022 -https://bit.ly/3PUO3sETile artwork:“Buldyan” (Grandfather), 2018 by Shannon FosterCommissioned for the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges at UTS.

Mike Isaacson: If your free speech requires an audience, might I suggest a therapist? [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome once again to The Nazi Lies Podcast. I am joined by two historians today. With us is Evan Smith, lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, and David Renton, who taught at a number of universities in the UK and South Africa before leaving the academy to practice law, though he still finds time to research and write. Each of them has a book about today's topic: the free speech crisis. Dr. Smith's book, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech, chronicles the No Platform policy of the National Union of Students in the UK from its foundation in 1974 to the present day. Dr. Renton's book, No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform' in History, Law and Politics, tells a much longer story of the interplay of radical leftist groups, organized fascists, and the state in shaping the UK's speech landscape and their significance in politics and law. Both are out from Routledge. I have absolutely no idea how we've managed to make the time zones work between the three of us, but welcome both of you to the podcast. Evan Smith: Thank you. David Renton: Thanks, Mike. Mike: So David, I want to start with you because your book goes all the way back to the 1640s to tell its history. So what made you start your story in the 1640s, and what did contention over speech look like before Fascism? David: Well, I wanted to start all that time back more than 300 years ago, because this is the moment when you first start to see something like the modern left and right emerge. You have in Britain, a party of order that supports the state and the king, but you also have a party which stands for more democracy and a more equal distribution of wealth. And essentially, from this point onwards in British, European, American politics, you see those same sites recreating themselves. And what happens again, and again, and again from that point onwards for hundreds of years until certainly say 50 years ago, you have essentially the people who are calling for free speech, whether that's the levellers in 1640s, Tom Paine 100 years later, J.S. Mill in the 19th Century. The left is always the people in favor of free speech. In terms of the right, if you want a kind of the first philosopher of conservatism, someone like Edmund Burke, he's not involved in the 1640s. He's a bit later, about a century and a half later. But you know, he supports conservatism. So what's his attitude towards free speech? It's really simple. He says, people who disagree with him should be jailed. There should be laws made to make it harder for them to have defenses. And more and more of them should be put in jail without even having a trial. That's the conservative position on free speech for centuries. And then what we get starting to happen in the late 20th century, something completely different which is a kind of overturning of what's been this huge, long history where it's always the left that's in favor of free speech, and it's always the right that's against it. Mike: Okay. Now, your contention is that before the appearance of Fascism, socialist radicals were solidly in favor of free speech for all. Fascism changed that, and Evan, maybe you can jump in here since this is where your book starts. What was new about Fascism that made socialists rethink their position on speech? Evan: So fascism was essentially anti-democratic and it was believed that nothing could be reasoned with because it was beyond the realms of reasonable, democratic politics. It was a violence, and the subjugation of its opponents was at the very core of fascism. And that the socialist left thought that fascism was a deeply violent movement that moved beyond the traditional realm of political discourse. So, there was no reasoning with fascists, you could only defeat them. Mike: So, let's start with David first, but I want to get both of you on this. What was the response to Fascism like before the end of World War II? David: Well, what you do is you get the left speaking out against fascism, hold demonstrations against fascism, and having to articulate a rationale of why they're against fascism. One of the things I quote in my book is a kind of famous exchange that takes place in 1937 when a poet named Nancy Cunard collected together the writers, intellectuals, and philosophers who she saw as the great inspiration to– the most important writers and so on that day. And she asked them what side they were taking on fascism. What's really interesting if you read their accounts, whether it's people like the poet W.H. Auden, novelist Gerald Bullitt, the philosopher C.E.M Joad, they all say they're against fascism, but they all put their arguments against fascism in terms of increased speech. So C.E.M Joad writes, "Fascism suppresses truth. That's why we're against fascism." Or the novelist Owen Jameson talks about fascism as a doctrine which exalts violence and uses incendiary bombs to fight ideas. So you get this thing within the left where people grasp that in order to fight off this violence and vicious enemy, they have to be opposed to it. And that means, for example, even to some extent making an exception to what's been for centuries this uniform left-wing notion: you have to protect everyone's free speech. Well people start grasping, we can't protect the fascist free speech, they're gonna use it to suppress us. So the Left makes an exception to what's been its absolute defense of free speech, but it makes this exception for the sake of protecting speech for everybody. Mike: Okay. Evan, do you want to add anything to the history of socialists and fascists before the end of World War Two? Evan: Yeah. So just kind of setting up a few things which will become important later on, and particularly because David and I are both historians of antifascism in Britain, is that there's several different ways in which antifascism emerges in the interwar period and several different tactics. One tactic is preventing fascists from marching from having a presence in public. So things like the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 is a very famous incident where the socialists and other protesters stopped the fascists from marching. There's also heckling and disrupting of fascist meetings. So this was big meetings like Olympia in June 1934, but then also smaller ones like individual fascist meetings around the country were disrupted by antifascists. There was also some that are on the left who also called for greater state intervention, usually in the form of labor councils not allowing fascists to congregate in public halls and stuff like that. So these kinds of arguments that fascism needs to be confronted, disrupted, obfuscated, starts to be developed in the 1930s. And it's where those kinds of free speech arguments emerge in the later period. Mike: Now immediately after the Second World War, fascist movements were shells of their former selves. They had almost no street presence and their organizations usually couldn't pull very many members. Still, the response to fascism when it did pop up was equally as vehement as when they organized into paramilitary formations with membership in the thousands. Something had qualitatively changed in the mind of the public regarding fascism. What did the immediate postwar response to public fascist speech look like, and what was the justification? Evan, let's start with you and then David you can add anything he misses. Evan: David probably could tell the story in a lot more detail. In the immediate post-war period in Britain, Oswald Mosley tries to revive the fascist movement under the title The Union Movement, but before that there's several kind of pro-fascist reading groups that emerge. And in response to this is kind of a disgust that fascists who had recently been imprisoned in Britain and their fellow travellers in the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and the continental fascists had been, you know, it ended in the Holocaust. There was this disgust that fascists could be organizing again in public in Britain, and that's where it mobilizes a new kind of generation of antifascists who are inspired by the 1930s to say "Never again, this won't happen on our streets." And the most important group and this is The 43 Group, which was a mixture of Jewish and communist radicals, which probably David can tell you a little bit about. David: I'd be happy to but I think before we get to 43 Group, it's kind of worth just pausing because the point Mike's left is kind of around the end of the Second World War. One thing which happens during the Second World War is of course Britain's at war with Germany. So what you start to get is Evan talked about how in the 1930s, you already have this argument like, “Should stopping fascism be something that's done by mass movements, or should it be done by the state?” In the Second World War the state has to confront that question, too, because it's got in fascism a homegrown enemy, and the British state looks at how all over Europe these states were toppled really quickly following fascist advance, and very often a pro-fascist powerful section of the ruling class had been the means by which an invading fascism then found some local ally that's enabled it to take over the state and hold the state. So the British state in 1940 actually takes a decision to intern Oswald Mosley and 800 or so of Britain's leading fascists who get jailed initially in prisons in London, then ultimately on the Isle of Man. Now, the reason why I'm going into this is because the first test of what the ordinary people in Britain think about the potential re-emergence of fascism comes even before the Second World War's ended. When Oswald Mosley is released from internment, he says he has conditioned phlebitis, he's very incapacitated, and is never going to be politically active again. And the British state buys this. And this creates–and an actual fact–the biggest single protest movement in Britain in the entire Second World War, where you get hundreds of people in certain factories going on strike against Oswald Mosley's release, and high hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions demanding that he's reinterned, and you start to get people having demonstrations saying Mosley ought to go back to jail. That kind of sets the whole context of what's going to happen after the end of the Second World War. Mosley comes out and he's terrified of public opinion; he's terrified about being seen in public. He's convinced that if you hold meetings you're going to see that cycle going on again. So for several years, the fascists barely dare hold public meetings, and they certainly don't dare hold meetings with Mosley speaking. They test the water a bit, and they have some things work for them. Evan's mentioned the 43 Group so I'll just say a couple sentences about them. The 43 Group are important in terms of what becomes later. They're not a vast number of people, but they have an absolute focus on closing down any fascist meeting. We're gonna hear later in this discussion about the phrase "No Platform" and where it comes from, but you know, in the 1940s when fascist wanted to hold meetings, the platform means literally getting together a paste table and standing on it, or standing on a tiny little ladder just to take you a couple of foot above the rest of your audience. The 43 Group specialize in a tactic which is literally knocking over those platforms. And because British fascism remained so isolated and unpopular in the aftermath of the Second World War, you know, there are 43 Group activists and organizers who look at London and say, "All right, if there going to be 12 or 13 public meetings in London this weekend, we know where they're going to be. If we can knock over every single one of those other platforms, then literally there'll be no fascists to have any chance to find an audience or put a public message in Britain." That's kind of before you get the term 'No Platform' but it's almost in essence the purest form of No Platforming. It's people being able to say, "If we get organized as a movement outside the state relying on ordinary people's opposition to fascism, we can close down every single example of fascist expression in the city and in this country." Mike: Okay. So through the 50's and 60's, there were two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, there was the largely left wing student-led free speech movement. And on the other hand, there was a new generation of fascists who were rebuilding the fascist movement in a variety of ways. So let's start with the free speech movement. David, you deal with this more in your book. What spurred the free speech movement to happen? David: Yeah. Look in the 50s and 60s, the free speech movement is coming from the left. That's going to change, we know it's going to change like 20 or 30 years later, but up to this point we're still essentially in the same dance of forces that I outlined right at the start. That the left's in favor of free speech, the right is against it. And the right's closing down unwanted ideas and opinion. In the 50s and 60s, and I'm just going to focus on Britain and America, very often this took the form of either radicals doing some sort of peace organising–and obviously that cut against the whole basic structure of the Cold War–or it took the form of people who maybe not even necessarily radicals at all, just trying to raise understanding and consciousness about people's bodies and about sex. So for the Right, their counterattack was to label movements like for example in the early 60s on the campus of Berkeley, and then there's originally a kind of anti-war movement that very quickly just in order to have the right to organize, becomes free speech movements. And the Right then counter attacks against it saying, "Essentially, this is just a bunch of beats or kind of proto-hippies. And what they want to do is I want to get everyone interested in drugs, and they want to get everyone interested in sexuality, and they want everyone interested in all these sorts of things." So their counterattack, Reagan terms this, The Filthy Speech Movement. In the late 60s obviously in states, we have the trial of the Chicago 7, and here you have the Oz trial, which is when a group of radicals here, again that their point of view is very similar, kind of hippie-ish, anti-war milieu. But one thing is about their magazines, which again it seems very hard to imagine today but this is true, that part of the way that their their magazine sells is through essentially soft pornographic images. And there's this weird combination of soft porn together with far left politics. They'll get put on trial in the Oz trial and that's very plainly an attempt– our equivalent of the Chicago 7 to kind of close down radical speech and to get into the public mind this idea that the radicals are in favor of free speech, they're in favor of extreme left-wing politics, and they're in favor of obscenity, and all these things are somehow kind of the same thing. Now, the point I just wanted to end on is that all these big set piece trials–another one to use beforehand is the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial, the Oz trial, the Chicago 7 trial, all of these essentially end with the right losing the battle of ideas, not so much the far right but center right. And people just saying, "We pitched ourselves on the side of being against free speech, and this isn't working. If we're going to reinvent right-wing thought, make some center right-wing ideas desirable and acceptable in this new generation of people, whatever they are, then we can't keep on being the ones who are taking away people's funds, closing down ideas. We've got to let these radicals talk themselves out, and we've got to reposition ourselves as being, maybe reluctantly, but the right takes the decision off of this. The right has to be in favor of free speech too. Mike: All right. And also at this time, the far right was rebuilding. In the UK, they shifted their focus from overt antisemitism and fascism to nebulously populist anti-Black racism. The problem for them, of course, was that practically no one was fooled by this shift because it was all the same people. So, what was going on with the far right leading into the 70s? Evan, do you want to start? Evan: Yeah. So after Mosley is defeated in Britain by the 43 Group and the kind of antifascism after the war, he moves shortly to Ireland and then comes back to the UK. Interestingly, he uses universities and particularly debates with the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union, and other kind of university societies, to find a new audience because they can't organize on the streets. So he uses–throughout the '50s and the '60s–these kind of university platforms to try and build a fascist movement. At the same time, there are people who were kind of also around in the '30s and the '40s who are moving to build a new fascist movement. It doesn't really get going into '67 when the National Front is formed from several different groups that come together, and they're really pushed into the popular consciousness because of Enoch Powell and his Rivers of Blood Speech. Enoch Powell was a Tory politician. He had been the Minister for Health in the Conservative government, and then in '68 he launches this Rivers of Blood Speech which is very much anti-immigration. This legitimizes a lot of anti-immigrationist attitudes, and part of that is that the National Front rides his coattails appealing to people who are conservatives but disaffected with the mainstream conservatism and what they saw as not being hard enough in immigration, and that they try to build off the support of the disaffected right; so, people who were supporting Enoch Powell, supporting the Monday Club which is another hard right faction in the conservatives. And in that period up until about the mid 1970s, that's the National Front's raison d'etre; it's about attracting anti-immigrationists, conservatives to build up the movement as an electoral force rather than a street force which comes later in the '70s. Mike: There was also the Apartheid movement, or the pro-Apartheid movement, that they were building on at this time as well, right? Evan: Yeah. So at this time there's apartheid in South Africa. In 1965, the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia has a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain to maintain White minority rule. And a lot of these people who are around Powell, the Monday Club, the National Front, against decolonization more broadly, and also then support White minority rule in southern Africa. So a lot of these people end up vocalizing support for South Africa, vocalizing support for Rhodesia, and that kind of thing. And it's a mixture of anti-communism and opposition to multiracial democracy. That's another thing which they try to take on to campus in later years. Mike: So finally we get to No Platform. Now, Evan, you contend that No Platform was less than a new direction in antifascist politics than a formalization of tactics that had developed organically on the left. Can you talk a bit about that? Evan: Yeah, I'll give a quick, very brief, lead up to No Platform and to what's been happening in the late '60s. So Enoch Powell who we mentioned, he comes to try and speak on campus several times throughout the late 60s and early 70s. These are often disrupted by students that there's an argument that, "Why should Enoch Powell be allowed to come onto campus? We don't need people like that to be speaking." This happens in the late 60s. Then in '73, Hans Eysenck, who was a psychologist who was very vocal about the connection between race and IQ, he attempts to speak at the London School of Economics and his speech is disrupted by a small group of Maoists. And then also– Mike: And they physically disrupted that speech, right? That wasn't just– Evan: Yeah, they punched him and pushed him off stage and stuff like that. And a month later, Samuel Huntington who is well known now for being the Clash of Civilizations guy, he went to speak at Sussex University, and students occupied a lecture theater so he couldn't talk because they opposed his previous work with the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. This led to a moral panic beginning about the end of free speech on campus, that it's either kind of through sit-ins or through direct violence, but in the end students are intolerant. And that's happening in that five years before we get to No Platform. Mike: One thing I didn't get a good sense of from your books was what these socialist groups that were No Platforming fascists prior to the NUS policy stood for otherwise. Can we talk about the factionalization of the left in the UK in the 60s and 70s? David, maybe you can help us out on this one. David: Yeah, sure. The point to grasp, which is that the whole center of British discourse in the ‘70s was way to the left of where it is in Britain today, let alone anywhere else in the world. That from, say, ‘64 to ‘70, we had a Labour government, and around the Labour Party. We had really, really strong social movements. You know, we had something like roughly 50% of British workers were members of trade unions. We'll get on later to the Students Union, that again was a movement in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. Two particular groups that are going to be important for our discussion are the International Socialists and International Marxist Group, but maybe if I kind of go through the British left sort of by size starting from largest till we get down to them. So the largest wing we've got on the British left is Labour Party. This is a party with maybe about half a million members, but kind of 20 million affiliated members through trade unions, and it's gonna be in and out of government. Then you've got the Communist Party which is getting quite old as an organization and is obviously tied through Cold War politics to the Soviet Union. And then you get these smaller groups like the IS, the IMG. And they're Trotskyist groups so they're in the far left of labor politics as revolutionaries, but they have quite a significant social heft, much more so than the far left in Britain today because, for example, their members are involved in editing magazines like Oz. There is a moment where there's a relatively easy means for ideas to merge in the far left and then get transmitted to the Labour Party and potentially even to Labour ministers and into government. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists? Evan: Do you want me to do that or David? Mike: Yes, that'd be great. Evan: Okay. So as David mentioned, there's the Communist Party and then there's the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group. The International Marxist Group are kind of heavily based in the student movement. They're like the traditional student radicals. Tariq Ali is probably the most famous member at this stage. And they have this counter cultural attitude in a way. International Socialists are a different form of Trotskyism, and they're much more about, not so much interested in the student movement, but kind of like a rank and file trade unionism that kind of stuff, opposition to both capitalism and Soviet communism. And the IS, the IMG, and sections of the Communist Party all coalesce in the student movement, which forms the basis for pushing through a No Platform policy in the Nationalist Union of Students in 1974. Mike: Okay. So in 1974, the National Union of Students passes their No Platform policy. Now before we get into that, what is the National Union of Students? Because we don't have an analogue to that in the US. Evan, you want to tackle this one? Evan: Yeah. Basically, every university has a student union or a form of student union–some kind of student body–and the National Union of Students is the national organization, the peak body which organizes the student unions on all the various campuses around the country. Most of the student unions are affiliated to the NUS but some aren't. The NUS is a kind of democratic body and oversees student policy, but individual student unions can opt in or opt out of whether they follow NUS guidelines. And I think what needs to be understood is that the NUS was a massive organization back in those days. You know, hundreds of thousands of people via the student unions become members of the NUS. And as David was saying, the political discourse is much bigger in the '60s and '70s through bodies like this as well as things like the trade union movement. The student movement has engaged hundreds of thousands of students across Britain about these policies much more than we see anything post the 1970s. David: If I could just add a sentence or two there, that's all right. I mean, really to get a good sense of scale of this, if you look at, obviously you have the big set piece annual conventions or conferences of the National Union of Students. Actually, it doesn't even just have one a year, it has two a year. Of these two conferences, if you just think about when the delegates are being elected to them how much discussion is taking place in local universities. If you go back to some local university meetings, it's sometimes very common that you see votes of 300 students going one way, 400 another, 700 going one way in some of the larger universities. So there's an absolute ferment of discussion around these ideas. Which means that when there are set piece motions to pass, they have a democratic credibility. And they've had thousands of people debating and discussing them. It's not just like someone going on to one conference or getting something through narrowly on a show of hands. There's a feeling that these debates are the culmination of what's been a series of debates in each local university. And we've got over 100 of them in Britain. Mike: Okay, how much is the student union's presence felt on campus by the average student? Evan: That'd be massive. David: Should I do this? Because I'm a bit older than Evan and I went to university in the UK. And it's a system which is slowly being dismantled but when I was student, which is like 30 years ago, this was still largely in place. In almost every university, the exceptions are Oxford and Cambridge, but in every other university in Britain, almost all social activity takes place on a single site on campus. And that single site invariably is owned by the student's union. So your students union has a bar, has halls, it's where– They're the plumb venues on campus if you want to have speakers or if you want to have– Again, say when punk happened a couple of years later, loads and loads of the famous punk performances were taking place in the student union hall in different universities. One of the things we're going to get onto quite soon is the whole question of No Platform and what it meant to students. What I want to convey is that for loads of students having this discussion, when they're saying who should be allowed on campus or who shouldn't be allowed on campus, what's the limits? They feel they've got a say because there are a relatively small number of places where people will speak. Those places are controlled by the students' union. They're owned and run by the students' union. It's literally their buildings, their halls, they feel they've got a right to set who is allowed, who's actually chosen, and who also shouldn't be invited. Mike: Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's a lot more than I knew about student unions. Okay. Evan, this is the bread and butter of your book. How did No Platform come about in the NUS? Evan: So, what part of the fascist movement is doing, the far-right movement, is that it is starting to stray on campus. I talked about the major focus of the National Front is about appealing to disaffected Tories in this stage, but they are interfering in student affairs; they're disrupting student protests; they're trying to intimidate student politics. And in 1973, the National Front tried to set up students' association on several campuses in Britain And there's a concern about the fascist presence on campus. So those three left-wing groups– the IMG, the IS and the Communist Party–agree at the student union level that student unions should not allow fascists and racists to use student buildings, student services, clubs that are affiliated to the student union. They shouldn't be allowed to access these. And that's where they say about No Platform is that the student union should deny a platform to fascists and racists. And in 1974 when they put this policy to a vote and it's successful, they add, "We're going to fight them by any means necessary," because they've taken that inspiration from the antifascism of the '30s and '40s. Mike: Okay. Now opinion was clearly divided within the NUS. No Platform did not pass unanimously. So Evan, what was opinion like within the NUS regarding No Platform? Evan: Well, it passed, but there was opposition. There was opposition from the Federation of Conservative Students, but there was also opposition from other student unions who felt that No Platform was anti-free speech, so much so that in April 1974 it becomes policy, but in June 1974, they have to have another debate about whether this policy should go ahead. It wins again, but this is the same time as it happens on the same day that the police crackdown on anti-fascist demonstration in Red Lion Square in London. There's an argument that fascism is being propped up by the police and is a very real threat, so that we can't give any quarter to fascism. We need to build this No Platform policy because it is what's standing in between society and the violence of fascism. Mike: Okay. I do want to get into this issue of free speech because the US has a First Amendment which guarantees free speech, but that doesn't exist in Britain. So what basis is there for free speech in the law? I think, David, you could probably answer this best because you're a lawyer. David: [laughs] Thank you. In short, none. The basic difference between the UK and the US– Legally, we're both common law countries. But the thing that really changes in the US is this is then overlaid with the Constitution, which takes priority. So once something has been in the Constitution, that's it. It's part of your fundamental law, and the limits to it are going to be narrow. Obviously, there's a process. It's one of the things I do try and talk about in my book that the Supreme Court has to discover, has to find free speech in the American Constitution. Because again, up until the Second World War, essentially America has this in the Constitution, but it's not particularly seen as something that's important or significant or a key part of the Constitution. The whole awe and  mysticism of the First Amendment as a First Amendment is definitely something that's happened really in the last 40-50 years. Again, I don't want to go into this because it's not quite what you're getting at. But certainly, in the '20s for example, you get many of the big American decisions on free speech which shaped American law today. What everyone forgets is in every single one of them, the Supreme Court goes on to find some reason why free speech doesn't apply. So then it becomes this doctrine which is tremendously important to be ushered out and for lip service be given to, just vast chunks of people, communists, people who are in favor of encouraging abortion, contraception, whatever, they're obviously outside free speech, and you have to come up with some sophisticated justifications for that. In Britain, we don't have a constitution. We don't have laws with that primary significance. We do kind of have a weak free speech tradition, and that's kind of important for some things like there's a European Convention on Human Rights that's largely drafted by British lawyers and that tries to create in Articles 10 and 11 a general support on free speech. So they think there are things in English legal tradition, in our common law tradition, which encourage free speech.  But if we've got it as a core principle of the UK law today, we've got it because of things like that like the European Convention on Human Rights. We haven't got it because at any point in the last 30, or 50, or 70 or 100 years, British judges or politicians thought this was a really essential principle of law. We're getting it these days but largely by importing it from the United States, and that means we're importing the worst ideological version of free speech rather than what free speech ought to be, which is actually protecting the rights of most people to speak. And if you've got some exceptions, some really worked out well thought exceptions for coherent and rational reasons. That's not what we've got now in Britain, and it's not what we've really ever had. Mike: Evan, you do a good job of documenting how No Platform was applied. The experience appears to be far from uniform. Let's talk about that a little bit. Evan: Yeah, so there's like a debate happening about who No Platform should be applied to because it states– The official policy is that No Platform for racists and fascists, and there's a debate of who is a racist enough to be denied a platform. There's agreement so a group like the National Front is definitely to be No Platform. Then there's a gray area about the Monday Club. The Monday Club is a hard right faction within the conservatives. But there's a transmission of people and ideas between National Front and the Monday Club. Then there's government ministers because the British immigration system is a racist system. The Home Office is seen as a racist institution. So there's a debate of whether government politicians should be allowed to have a platform because they uphold institutional racism. We see this at different stages is that a person from the Monday Club tries to speak at Oxford and is chased out of the building. Keith Joseph, who's one of the proto-Thatcherites in the Conservative Party, comes to speak at LSE in the 1977-78 and that there is a push to say that he can't be allowed to speak because of the Conservative Party's immigration policies and so forth like that. So throughout the '70s, there is a debate of the minimalist approach with a group like the International Socialists saying that no, outright fascists are the only ones to be No Platformed. Then IMG and other groups are saying, "Actually, what about the Monday Club? What about the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children? What about Conservative Ministers? Are these people, aren't they also sharing that kind of discriminatory agenda that shouldn't be allowed a platform?" Mike: Okay, and there were some objections within the National Union of Students to some applications of No Platform, right? Evan: Yeah, well, not so much in the '70s. But once you get into the '80s, there's a big push for it. But probably the biggest issue in the '70s is that the application of No Platform to pro-Israel groups and Jewish student groups. In 1975, there's a UN resolution that Zionism is a form of racism, and that several student groups say, "Well, pro-Israel groups are Zionists. If Zionism is a form of racism and No Platform should be applied to racists or fascists, shouldn't they the pro-Israel groups then be denied a platform? Should pro-Israel groups be disaffiliated from student unions, etc.?" Several student unions do this at the local level, but there's a backlash from the NUS at the national level so much so the NUS actually suspends No Platform for about six months. It is reintroduced with an explicit piece of it saying that if No Platform is reinstituted, it can't be applied to Zionists groups, to pro-Israel groups, to Jewish societies. But a reason that they can't, the NUS can't withhold No Platform as a policy in the late 1970s is because they've been playing catch up because by this time, the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism are major mass movements of people because the National Front is seen as a major problem, and the NUS has to have some kind of anti-Fascist, anti-racist response. They can't sit on their hands because they're going dragged along by the Anti-Nazi League. Mike: One thing that you talked about in your book, David, is that simultaneous to No Platform was this movement for hate speech prohibitions. Talk about how these movements differed. David: Well, I think the best way to convey it is if we go back to the motion that was actually passed at the National Union of Students spring conference in May '74. If you don't mind, I'll just begin by reading it out. Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance, financial or otherwise, to openly racist or fascist organizations or societies (e.g., Monday Club, National Front, Action Party, Union Movement, National Democratic Party) and to deny them a platform. What I want to try and convey is that when you think about how you got this coalition within the National Union of Students in support of that motion, there were like two or three different ideas being signaled in that one motion. And if you then apply them, particularly what's happening as we're talking 50 years later now, if you apply them through the subsequent 50 years of activism, they do point in quite different directions. To just start up, “conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance” dadadada. What's really been good at here, I'm sure some of the people who passed No Platform promotion just had this idea, right? What we are, we're a movement of students' unions. We're a movement of buildings which are run by students and are for students. People have said to themselves, all this motion is really committing us to do is to say that we won't give any assistance to racist or fascist organizations. So what that means in practice is in our buildings, in our halls, we won't invite them in. Now, it may be that, say, the university will invite a conservative minister or the university will allow some far-right person to have a platform in election time. But the key idea, one key idea that's going on with this, just those things won't happen in our students' unions. They're our buildings; they're our halls. To use a term that hasn't really been coined yet, but this is in people's heads, is the idea of a safe space. It's just, student unions are our safe space. We don't need to worry about who exactly these terrible people are. Whoever and whatever they are, we don't want them on our patch. That's idea number one. Idea number two is that this is really about stopping fascists. It's not about any other form of discrimination. I'll come on to idea three in a moment. With idea three, this is about fascist organizations. You can see in a sense the motion is talking to people, people coming on and saying like I might not even be particularly left wing, but I don't like fascists. Evan talked about say for example, Zionist organizations. Could a Zionist organization, which is militantly antifascist, could they vote this motion? Yes. And how they'd sell it to themselves is this is only about fascism. So you can see this in the phrase, this is about refusing systems to “openly racist or fascist organizations,” and then look at the organizations which are listed: the National Front, well yeah, they're fascists; the Union Movement, yeah, they're fascists; the National Democratic Party, they're another little fascist splinter group.And then the only one there that isn't necessarily exactly fascist is the Monday Club who are a bunch of Tories who've been in the press constantly in the last two years when this motion is written for their alliance with National Front holding demonstrations and meetings together. So some people, this is just about protecting their space. Some people, this is about excluding fascists and no one else. But then look again at the motion, you'll see another word in there. “Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance to openly racist or fascist organizations.” So right from the start, there's a debate, what does this word racist mean in the motion? Now, one way you could read the motion is like this. From today, we can all see that groups like the National Front are fascists. Their leaders can spend most of the rest of the decade appearing constantly in literature produced by anti-fascist groups, identifying them as fascist, naming them as fascist, then we have to have a mass movement against fascism and nazism. But the point is in 1974, that hadn't happened yet. In most people's heads, groups like the National Front was still, the best way to describe them that no one could disagree to at least say they were openly racist. That was how they described themselves. So you could ban the National Front without needing to have a theological discussion about whether they fitted exactly within your definition of fascism. But the point I really want to convey is that the motion succeeds because it blurs the difference between saying anything can be banned because it's fascist specifically or anything can be banned because it's racist or fascist. This isn't immediately apparent in 1974, but what becomes pretty apparent over time is for example as Evan's documented already, even before 1974, there have been non-fascists, there have been conservatives going around student unions speaking in pretty racist terms. All right, so can they be banned? If the answer is this goes to racists or fascists, then definitely they can be banned. But now wait a second. Is there anyone else in British politics who's racist? Well, at this point, both main political parties are standing for election on platforms of excluding people from Britain effectively on the basis of the color of their skin. All right, so you can ban all the main political parties in Britain. All right, well, how about the newspapers? Well, every single newspaper in Britain, even the pro-Labour ones, is running front page articles supporting the British government. All right, so you could ban all newspapers in Britain. Well, how about the television channel? Well, we've only got three, but the best-selling comedies on all of them are comedies which make fun of people because they're foreigners and because they're Black. You can list them all. There's dozens of these horrible programs, which for most people in Britain now are unwatchable. But they're all of national culture in Britain in the early '70s. Alright, so you say, all right, so students we could ban every television channel in Britain, every newspaper in Britain, and every political party in Britain, except maybe one or two on the far left. It's like, wait a second people, I've only been doing racism. Well, let's take seriously the notion, if we're against all forms of racism, how can we be against racism without also being against sexism? Without being against homophobia? So the thing about No Platform is there's really only two ways you can read it in the end, and certainly once you apply it outside the 1970s today. Number one, you can say this is a relatively tightly drawn motion, which is trying to pin the blame on fascists as something which is growing tremendously fast in early 1970s and trying to keep them out. Maybe it'd be good to keep other people out too, but it's not trying to keep everyone out. Or you've got, what we're confronting today which is essentially this is an attempt to prevent students from suffering the misery, the hatred, the fury of hate speech. This is an attempt to keep all hate speech off campus, but with no definition or limit on hate speech. Acceptance of hate speech 50 years later might be much more widely understood than it is in early '70s. So you've got warring in this one motion two completely different notions of who it's right politically to refuse platforms to. That's going to get tested out in real life, but it's not been resolved by the 1974 motion, which in a sense looks both ways. Either the people want to keep the ban narrow or the people want to keep it broad, either of them can look at that motion and say yeah, this is the motion which gives the basis to what we're trying to do. Mike: Okay. I do want to get back to the notion of the maximalist versus the precisionist view of No Platform. But first before that, I want to talk about the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism to just get more of a broader context than just the students in Britain in terms of antifascism. David, do you want to talk about that? David: Okay. Well, I guess because another of my books is about Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, so I'll try and do this really short. I'll make two points. First is that these movements which currently ended in the 1970s are really very large. They're probably one of the two largest street movements in post-war British history. The only other one that's candidate for that is the anti-war movement, whether that's in the '80s or the early 2000s. But they're on that same scale as amongst the largest mass movements in British history. In terms of Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, the total number of people involved in them is massive; it's around half a million to a million people. They're single most famous events, two huge three carnivals in London in 1977, which each have hundreds of thousands of people attending them and bring together the most exciting bands. They are the likes of The Clash, etc, etc. It's a movement which involves people graffitiing against Nazis, painting out far-right graffiti. It's a movement which is expressed in streets in terms of set piece confrontations, clashes with far-right, Lewisham in ‘76, Southall in ‘79. These are just huge movements which involve a whole generation of people very much associated with the emergence of punk music and when for a period in time in Britain are against that kind of visceral street racism, which National Front represents. I should say that they have slightly different attitudes, each of them towards the issue of free speech, but there's a massive interchange of personnel. They're very large. The same organizations involved in each, and they include an older version of the same activist who you've seen in student union politics in '74 as were they you could say they graduate into involvement in the mass movements like Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. Now, I want to say specifically about the Anti-Nazi League and free speech. The Anti-Nazi League takes from student politics this idea of No Platform and tries to base a whole mass movement around it. The idea is very simply, the National Front should not be allowed a platform to speak, to organize, to win converts anywhere. Probably with the Anti-Nazi League, the most important expressions of this is two things. Firstly, when the National Front tries to hold election meetings, which they do particularly in the run up to '79 election, and those are picketed, people demonstrated outside of them  A lot of them are the weekend in schools. One at Southall is in a town hall. These just lead to repeated clashes between the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front. The other thing which the Anti-Nazi League takes seriously is trying to organize workers into closing off opportunities for the National Front spread their propaganda. For example, their attempts to get postal workers to refuse to deliver election materials to the National Front. Or again, there's something which it's only possible to imagine in the '70s; you couldn't imagine it today. The National Front is entitled to election broadcasts because it's standing parliament. Then the technical workers at the main TV stations go on strike and refuse to let these broadcasts go out. So in all these ways, there's this idea around the Anti-Nazi League of No Platform. But No Platform is No Platform for fascists. It's the National Front should not get a chance to spread its election message. It's not yet that kind of broader notion of, in essence, anything which is hate speech is unacceptable. In a sense, it can't be. Because when you're talking about students' unions and their original No Platform motion and so forth, at the core of it is they're trying to control their own campuses. There's a notion of students' power. The Anti-Nazi League, it may be huge mass movement and may have hundreds of thousands people involved in it, but no one in Anti-Nazi League thinks that this organization represents such a large majority that they could literally control the content of every single TV station, the content of every single newspaper. You can try and drive the National Front out, but if people in that movement had said right, we actually want to literally carve out every expression of racism and every expression of sexism from society, that would have been a yet bigger task by another enormous degrees of scale. Mike: Okay, I do want to talk a little bit more about Rock Against Racism just particularly how it was founded, what led to its founding. I think it gives a good sense of where Britain was at, politically. David: Right. Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976. The two main events which are going on in the heads of the organizers when they launched it, number one, David Bowie's weird fascist turn, his interview with Playboy magazine in which he talks about Hitler being the first rock and roll superstar, the moment where he was photographed returning from tours in America and comes to Victoria Station and appears to give a Nazi salute. The reason why with Bowie it matters is because he's a hero. Bowie seems to represent the emergence of a new kind of masculinity, new kind of attitude with sexuality. If someone like that is so damaged that he's going around saying Hitler is the greatest, that's really terrifying to Bowie fans and for a wider set of people. The other person who leads directly to the launch of Rock Against Racism is Eric Clapton. He interrupts a gig in Birmingham in summer '76 to just start giving this big drunken rant about how some foreigner pinched his missus' bum and how Enoch Powell is the greatest ever. The reason why people find Eric Clapton so contemptible and why this leads to such a mass movement is weirdly it's the opposite of Bowie that no one amongst the young cool kids regards Clapton as a hero. But being this number one star and he's clearly spent his career stealing off Black music and now he's going to support that horror of Enoch Powell as well, it just all seems so absolutely ridiculous and outrageous that people launch an open letter to the press and that gets thousands of people involved. But since you've asked me about Rock Against Racism, I do want to say Rock Against Racism does have a weirdly and certainly different attitude towards free speech to the Anti-Nazi League. And this isn't necessarily something that was apparent at the time. It's only kind of apparent now when you look back at it. But one of the really interesting things about Rock Against Racism is that because it was a movement of young people who were trying to reclaim music and make cultural form that could overturn British politics and change the world, is that they didn't turn around and say, "We just want to cut off all the racists and treat them as bad and shoot them out into space," kind of as what the Anti-Nazi League's trying to do to fascists. Rock Against Racism grasped that if you're going to try and change this cultural milieu which is music, you actually had to have a bit of a discussion and debate and an argument with the racists, but they tried to have it on their own terms. So concretely, what people would do is Rock Against Racism courted one particular band called Sham 69, who were one of the most popular young skinhead bands, but also had a bunch of neo-nazis amongst their roadies and things like that. They actually put on gigs Sham 69, put them on student union halls, surrounded them with Black acts. Knew that these people were going to bring skinheads into the things, had them performing under Rock Against Racism banner, and almost forced the band to get into the state of practical warfare with their own fans to try and say to them, "We don't want you to be nazis anymore. We want you to stop this." That dynamic, it was incredibly brave, was incredibly bold. It was really destructive for some of the individuals involved like Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69. Effectively saying to them, "Right, we want you to put on a gig every week where you're going to get bottled by your own fans, and you're going to end up like punching them, just to get them to stop being racist." But we can't see any other way of shifting this milieu of young people who we see as our potential allies. There were lots of sort of local things like that with Rock Against Racism. It wasn't about creating a safe space in which bad ideas couldn't come in; it was about going onto the enemy's ideological trend and going, "Right, on this trend, we can have an argument. We can win this argument." So it is really quite an interesting cultural attempt to change the politics of the street. Mike: Okay, now you two have very different ideas of what No Platform is in its essence. Evan, you believe that No Platform was shifting in scope from its inception and it is properly directed at any institutional platform afforded to vociferous bigots. While David you believe that No Platform is only properly applied against fascists, and going beyond that is a dangerous form of mission creep. Now, I absolutely hate debates. [laughter] I think the format does more to close off discussion than to draw out information on the topic at hand. So, what I don't want to happen is have you two arguing with each other about your positions on No Platform (and maybe me, because I have yet a third position). David: Okay Mike, honestly, we've known each other for years. We've always been– Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David: –your listeners will pick up, there's loads we agree on, too. So I'm sure we can deal without that rubbish debate. [Evan laughs] Mike: All right. So what I'd like to do is ground this discussion as much as possible in history rather than abstract moral principles. So in that interest, can each of you talk a bit about the individuals and groups that have taken the position on No Platform that you have, and how they've defended their positions? David let's start with you. What groups were there insisting that No Platform was necessary but its necessity was limited to overt fascists? David: Well, I think in practice, that was the approach of Rock Against Racism. They took a very different attitude towards people who were tough ideological fascists, to the people who were around them who were definitely racist, but who were capable of being argued out of that. I mean, I've given the example of the policy of trying to have a debate with Sham 69 or use them as a mechanism to change their audience. What I want to convey is in every Rock Against Racism group around the country, they were often attempts to something very similar. People talk about Birmingham and Leeds, whether it be sort of local Rock Against Racism groups, they might put on– might get a big band from some other city once a month, but three weeks out of four, all they're doing is they're putting on a local some kind of music night, and they might get a hundred people there. But they'd go out of the way to invite people who they saw as wavering supporters of The National Front. But the point is this wasn't like– We all know how bad faith debates work. It's something like it's two big ego speakers who disagree with each other, giving them half an hour each to debate and know their audience is already persuaded that one of them's an asshole, one of them's great. This isn't what they were trying to do. They were trying to win over one by one wavering racists by putting them in an environment where they were surrounded by anti-racists. So it was about trying to create a climate where you could shift some people who had hateful ideas in their head, but were also capable of being pulled away from them. They didn't do set piece debates with fascists because they knew that the set piece debates with fascists, the fascists weren't going to listen to what they were going to say anyway. But what they did do is they did try to shift people in their local area to try and create a different atmosphere in their local area. And they had that attitude towards individual wavering racists, but they never had that attitude towards the fascist leaders. The fascist leaders as far as they're concerned, very, very simple, we got to close up the platform to them. We got to deprive them of a chance. Another example, Rock Against Racism, how it kind of made those sorts of distinctions. I always think with Rock Against Racism you know, they had a go at Clapton. They weren't at all surprised when he refused to apologize. But with Bowie, there was always a sense, "We want to create space for Bowie. We want to get Bowie back because Bowie's winnable." That's one of the things about that movement, is that the absolute uncrossable line was fascism. But if people could be pulled back away from that and away from the ideas associated with that, then they wanted to create the space to make that happen. Mike: Okay, and Evan, what groups took the Maximalist approach to No Platform and what was their reasoning? Evan: Yeah. So I think the discussion happens once the National Front goes away as the kind of the major threat. So the 1979 election, the National Front does dismally, and we can partially attribute that to the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, kind of this popular antifascist movement. But there's also that Margaret Thatcher comes to power, and there's an argument that's made by historians is that she has pulled away the racist vote away from the National Front back to the conservatives. It's really kind of a realignment of leftwing politics under Thatcher because it's a much more confrontational conservative government, but there's also kind of these other issues which are kind of the new social movements and what we would now term as identity politics, they're forming in the sixties and seventies and are really big issues in the 1980s. So kind of like feminism, gay rights, andthat,  there's an argument among some of the students that if we have a No Platform for racism and fascism, why don't we have a No Platform for sexism? Why don't we have a No Platform for homophobia? And there are certain student unions who try to do this. So LSE in 1981, they endorse a No Platform for sexist as part of a wider fight against sexism, sexual harassment, sexual violence on campus is that misogynist speakers shouldn't be allowed to have a presence on campus. Several student unions kind of have this also for against homophobia, and as a part of this really divisive issue in the mid 1980s, the conservative government is quite homophobic. Section 28 clause 28 is coming in in the late eighties. It's a whole kind of homophobia of AIDS. There's instances where students object to local Tory politicians who were kind of outwardly, explicitly homophobic, that they should be not allowed to speak on stage. Then also bubbling along in the background is kind of the supporters of apartheid, so South African diplomats or kind of other people who support the South African regime including Conservative politicians, is that several times throughout the 1980s, they are invited to speak on campus, and there's kind of a massive backlash against this. Sometimes the No Platform policy is invoked. Sometimes it's just simple disruption or kind of pickets or vigils against them. But once fascism is kind of not the main issue, and all these different kind of politics is going on in the eighties, is that there's argument that No Platform for fascism and racism was important, but fascism and racism is only one form of hate speech; it's only one form of discrimination; it's only one form of kind of bodily violence; and we should take them all into consideration. Mike: Okay. Now there's been a fair bit of backlash against No Platform in kind of any of its forms from various sectors, so let's talk a bit about that. Let's start with the fascist themselves. So their response kind of changed somewhat over time in response to No Platform. David, you talk about this. David: Yeah. In the early ‘70s in Britain or I suppose in the late ‘70s too, what's extraordinary is how little use fascist make out of saying, "We are being attacked, free speech applies. We've got to have the right to be heard." I made the point earlier that Britain doesn't have a strong legal culture of free speech. We do have some culture of free speech. And again, it's not that the fascists never use these terms at all, they use them, but they use them very half-heartedly. Their dominant approach is to say, "We are being attacked by the left. The left don't understand we have better fighters than them. If they attack us on the streets, we'll fight back. In the end, we'll be the ones who win in a kind of battle of machismo, street fighting power." Now A, that doesn't happen because actually they lose some set piece confrontations, mostly at Lewisham in 1977. But it's interesting that they don't do the kind of thing which you'd expect the far right to do today, which is to say, like the British far right does today, they constantly say, "We're under attack. Free speech demands that we be heard. We're the only people who take free speech seriously." There's a continuous process in the British far right these days of endlessly going on social media every time anyone even disagrees with them a little bit, they immediately have their faces taped up and present themselves as the victim of this terrible conspiracy when in the mid-'70s when there really were people trying to put the far right out of business, that isn't what the far right did. I think, in essence, a whole bunch of things have to change. You have to get kind of a hardening of the free speech discourse in the United States; you have to have things like the attack on political correctness; the move by the American center-right from being kind of equivocal on free speech to being extremely pro-free speech; and you need to get the importation into Britain of essentially the same kind of free speech discourse as you have in States. Once we get all of that, the British far right eventually twigs that it's a far more effective way of presenting themselves and winning supporters by posing as the world's biggest defenders of free speech.  But in the ‘70s, they haven't learned that lesson yet, and their response is much more leaden and ineffective. In essence, they say, "No Platform's terrible because it's bullying us." But what they never have the gumption to say is, "Actually, we are the far right. We are a bunch of people putting bold and dangerous and exciting ideas, and if we are silenced, then all bold and dangerous and difficult ideas will be silenced too." That's something which a different generation of writers will get to and will give them all sorts of successes. But in the ‘70s, they haven't found it yet. Mike: Okay. Now fascists also had some uneasy allies as far as No Platform is concerned among Tories and libertarians. So let's talk about the Tories first, what was their opposition to No Platform about? Evan, you talk about this quite a bit in your book. Evan: Yeah. So the conservative opposition to No Platform is essentially saying that it's a stock standard thing that the left call everyone fascist. So they apply it to broadly and is that in the ‘80s, there's a bunch of conservative politicians to try to go onto campus, try to speak, and there's massive protests. They say that, "Look, this is part of an intolerant left, that they can't see the distinction between fascism and a Conservative MP. They don't want to allow anyone to have free speech beyond that kind of small narrow left wing bubble." In 1986, there is an attempt, after a kind of a wave of protest in '85, '86, there is an attempt by the government to implement some kind of protection for free speech on campus. This becomes part of the Education Act of 1986, that the university has certain obligations to ensure, where practical, free speech applies and no speech is denied. But then it's got all kind of it can't violate the Racial Discrimination Act, the Public Order Act, all those kind of things. Also, quite crucially for today, that 1986 act didn't explicitly apply to student unions. So student unions argued for the last 30 years that they are exempt from any legislation and that they were legally allowed to pursue their No Platform policy.

25/11/2021. Бюлетень новин українською мовою. Новий законопроєкт Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 представлено у Парламенті Австралії, де уже діють а Sex Discrimination Act, a Racial Discrimination Act, a Disability Discrimination Act and an Age Discrimination Act. Про це наголосив Прем'єр-міністр Австралії, а також додав, що таким чином Уряд виконує свою передвиборчу обіцянку перед виборцями. Є і більше про деякі важливі події на 5-му континенті планети...

In 1976 a group of stockmen entered into a contract to purchase a cattle station in Far North Queensland. The sale was blocked by the Queensland Government because the men were Aboriginal. The subsequent court case was one of the first tests of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975, and the beginning of a 40 year land rights battle. Follow us on INSTAGRAM & TWITTER @australianarama SOURCES: ABC, SBS Living Black, Anti-Discrimination Commission QLD, QLD Department of Environment & Science.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of The Daily Breakdown - The Week That Went: Conflicting messages on COVID vaccinations - AZ is fine, just give up your legal rights. The left celebrates the death of Donald Rumsfeld, but how did they deal with the death of true evil? And what the hell is the use of conservative governments? Why do we keep electing them if they don't do anything that's actually conservative? Like defend free speech and get rid of garbage laws like 18C. Why raise 18C? Because 18C created an environment where people were afraid to question the bona fides of Dark Emu. Speaking of which, academics are addressing the cost to Black of Australia of Five-Minute Black Fellas. It's another debate 18C has helped stifle and it's time it was addressed.

Bindi Cole Chocka became 'The Cancelled Artist' after coming out as Christian in the art world. Initially a wildly successful artist on the back of her edgy work around race and Aboriginality, especially her black face work 'Not Really Aboriginal'. Despite being lauded nationally as a left-wing hero in Australia, Bindi was 'cancelled' after her political and religious conversion. She also publicly apologised to columnist Andrew Bolt, whom she successfully sued using s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act - a high profile case. Watch this interview on Youtube: https://youtu.be/cVgAR5bqoMw BINDI COLE CHOCKA Artist, Curator, Writer & Speaker http://www.bindicolechocka.com https://twitter.com/bindicolechocka https://www.instagram.com/bindicolechocka DISCERNABLE The Podcast: http://discernable.io/listen The Crew Mailing List: https://discernable.io/crew The Video Archive: https://www.youtube.com/discernable https://www.discernable.io/ --------------------- 1:25 Bindi's art work that started the Andrew Bolt controversy 2:17 Bindi's Aboriginal heritage 4:48 The political correctness of race 6:58 Andrew Bolt and his infamous articles 8:49 Taking Andrew Bolt to court 11:42 Bindi's conversion to Christianity 17:18 Andrew Bolt GUILTY 19:35 Would Bindi do it again? 21:00 Bindi is cancelled 25:18 Critical Theory and progressive movements 34:11 Lifechanging forgiveness 35:34 Bindi finds Jesus in Jail 40:16 What is the core of Christianity? 41:25 Leaving behind victimhood 43:30 The left wing doesn't own compassion 46:35 How to reach those with on the left with grievances 49:22 Reconciling with Andrew Bolt? 59:23 Christianity has ceded the arts 1:01:54 How should conservatives approach progressives? 1:08:24 Bindi's political transformation 1:17:06 Removing Christian ethics from government 1:22:28 Christianity's impact on the world 1:23:29 Is Christianity like a virus? 1:24:17 The persecution of the Church

William Liu was a tireless campaigner for the rights of other Chinese Australians to live and settle peacefully in this country. Earlier in his life, he had been instrumental in exporting Australia’s department store model to China and Hong Kong. William fervently believed that economic ties between the two countries was the key to a strong relationship. He was often a lone voice in his fight, but he eventually saw success with the normalisation of relations between China and Australia in 1972. More importantly, the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 officially ended the White Australia Policy. In 1983, William was appointed to the Order of the British Empire. He was a true Australian pathfinder, bringing hope and security to hundreds of Chinese Australians. He died in 1983 on Anzac Day. https://newstories.net.au/william-liu-the-pathfinder-who-fought-for-chinese-rights/

On Friday 12 July 2019 Justice White handed down his ruling that the exclusion of Barngarla Native Title holders who do not live in the Kimba District from participating in a ballot to gauge community support for the radioactive waste facility was not a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. On this radioactive show, Nuclear Free Campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Dave Sweeney, explains this legal challenge, the outcome and where to from here.This legal challenge was initiated by the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) the Native Title holders for the Kimba area. BDAC released a statement after the ruling.  You can read it at: www.nodumpalliance.org.au/barngarla_statement To keep up to date with the campaign for responsible management of Australia's radioactove waste, go to www.foe.org.au/nuclear_free_sa and www.nodumpalliance.org.au 

#ITC14: Jeremy Jones on the Scully and Bible Believers cases Section 18C  is a fiercely debated section of the Racial Discrimination Act. In a series of cases in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry relied on this provision to tackle the problem of antisemitic behaviour. This is a short supplementary episode about the cases of Olga Scully and the Bible Believers, following on from #ITC13, which concerned a long series of proceedings relating to Frederick Toben, a Holocaust denier.

#ITC13: Jeremy Jones on the Toben case In 1995, new provisions were introduced into the Racial Discrimination Act. One of those sections, 18C, still excites considerable controversy. It prohibits certain kinds of offensive, racially motivated conduct. Jeremy Jones, from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was centrally involved in efforts to use s18C to deal with Holocaust deniers. One particularly long-running and significant instance of this involved Frederick Toben, who was imprisoned for contempt of the Federal Court, after many years of litigation.

As a part of Project Voice’s rebranding movement, I’ve been reaching out to speakers outside the U.S. and putting more focus on identifying the podcast as a platform for the Asian diaspora all over the world. This time, we’ll be learning about the Asian activist community and culture in Australia. In today’s podcast, I have invited Erin Chew, who I first heard about through her work on YOMYOMF.com, will be sharing her knowledge about the history of Asian Australia as well as what’s been hot on the current agenda for the organization she founded, the Asian Australian Alliance. Moving forward, Project Voice will be inviting from activists and content creators to share their fight against toxic Internet culture. Erin Chew will share her bit on her combat against online bullying during her active years online.  Erin Wen Ai Chew (周文愛) is an Australian entrepreneur, policy advisor and social activist, who is just about to complete a Masters of Human Rights. Erin is the founder for the Asian Australian Alliance, which is a grassroots advocacy based network with its primary aim of advocating for the common interests of the Asian Australian community. The Asian Australian Alliance is now a national brand and has around 20 conveners working on different areas and sectors. These sectors include: Asian Australian Alliance, Asian Australian Alliance Women’s Forum, Asian Australian Alliance Young Leaders, Asian Australian Rainbow Alliance and the Movement for Asian Australian Academics. Via Erin, the Asian Australian Alliance has created positive change for the community and highlighted the issues of concern at a mainstream level. Examples include, running a national campaign against the changes of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, speaking to the media against racism and discrimination, and highlighting the issues of the bamboo ceiling. Erin has been featured in many media platforms including, The Guardian Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, SBS, ABC News, News.com.au, Daily Mail Australia, The Age, Canberra Times, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review. Erin has also written for SBS News, The Guardian and other media platforms in the USA and the UK on issues of cultural diversity and social cohesion.

This week on Curtain the podcast, in just the past week three more examples have emerged of police targeting Aboriginal people. Firstly in the attempt to imprison the cousin of Ms Dhu, again for unpaid fines, despite all that has happened to the family and the situation you'll hear. A WA Snr Sergeant has struck with a vehicle a young 18 year old leaving him in hospital and the community of Palm Island has been awarded 30 million dollars, after the QPS was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act. It sets the scene for what its like for Aboriginal people dealing with police in Australia and shines further light on how they handled the case of Curtain

The story of shipwreck survivor James Morrill who spent 17 years among Aboriginal People in the Bowen Region of North Queensland.

Does the government changing the constitution simply by redefining a word far beyond its originally intended use require a referendum? Have we legislated for punishment of "precrime", a notion of futuristic science fiction where you can be found guilty without evidence and punished for crimes you haven't YET committed based on psychic technology? Is Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in effect a blasphemy law: Shariah law by stealth? My distinguished guest this week is Prof. Augusto Zimmermann LLB LLM PhD (Monash University). He is the former Law Reform Commissioner, Law Reform Commission of WA (2012-2017), a Fellow at the International Academy for the Study of the Jurisprudence of the Family (IASJF), recipient of the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research, Murdoch University (2012), Editor-in-Chief, The Western Australian Jurist - the yearly academic publication of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association (WALTA), and the Senior Vice-President of the Liberal Party of WA Fremantle Division. ******* Pellowe Talk is an online show interviewing guests discussing Truth and Politics in important public issues. Join Dave Pellowe and his guests each episode for discussion and debate about the important public issues that can change our votes. Hear unchained common sense without political correctness, and help rebuild the strong Judeo-Christian values – the foundations of our nation – to their proper place in Australian society. Pellowe Talk is viewer-funded. You can support this free and independent voice monthly or with a one time donation here: https://www.DavePellowe.com/donate ******* What are your thoughts? Comment below, or on • https://facebook.com/DavePellowe or • https://twitter.com/DavePellowe or • https://instagram.com/DavePellowe • https://youtube.com/DavePellowe Sign up for new episode updates or get more content at: • https://www.DavePellowe.com

Weand're talking to WA Law Reform Commissioner Dr Augusto Zimmerman about his concerns about Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Help Vision to keep 'Connecting Faith to Life': https://vision.org.au/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To celebrate the success of Just Words, 2SER 107.3 has teamed up with Audiocraft to present a live listening event at 107 Projects this Thursday May 18thWe are excited to announce that we will be joined on the night by special live guest Jeremy Jones, Director of International & Community Affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). Jones is no stranger to 18C – in fact, he has filed the most cases under the Racial Discrimination Act in Australia, using 18C to protect the Jewish community against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Join the 2SER team as we record the final episode of Just Words live on stage,  and put 18C on trial  one last time, to determine if our race hate laws really did murder free speech. DETAILSEvent: Audiocraft Presents: 2SER 107.3's Just WordsDate: Thursday 18th May, 7pmVenue: 107 Projects (107 Redfern St, Redfern 2016)Tickets: available online or at the doorJoin the event on Facebook

Audiocraft Presents: 2SER's Just WordsTo celebrate the success of 2SER's first ever investigative podcast series Just Words, Audiocraft are teaming up with Sydney community radio station 2SER 107.3 for a live listening event.Just Words goes beyond the hype and headlines of Australia's racial discrimination laws.Watch the 2SER team record their final episode, live at 107 Projects as they put 18C on trial and determine if our race hate laws really did murder free speech.Doors open at 7pm, show starts 7.15pm.On Thursday 18 May 2017LOCATION107 Projects107 Redfern Street, Redfern, NSW 2016CONTACT DETAILSAmy Willing: amy@107.org.auTICKETS$12 Concession$15 FULLBOOK NOW: HTTPS://WWW.TRYBOOKING.COM/BOOK/EVENT?EID=275956

This is the story of what happens when a free speech advocate attempts to use 18C to restrict what another person can say.  In August 2016, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm was interviewed on the ABC’s Insiders where he said offence is always taken, not given and if you don’t want to be offended by something that is up to you.Fairfax journalist Mark Kenny happened to be watching that very interview and decided to test Leyonhjelm’s proposition to the fullest.The result was a colourful 18C case that showed just how the law is working.

James Paterson has been a Victorian senator for the Liberal Party for just over a year now. He's been making a name for himself as a passionate advocate for freedom of speech in regards to the reforming of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and by proposing that Australia help deal with its debt problem by selling off Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles.  Here the Senator and I talk about our first meeting years ago, his position as something of a political anomaly within his own family, why he's so strident on 18C, racism, offshore detention and corporate tax cuts.  Stand Up For Mehdi at MICF 2017 - only a handful of tickets left!  Problematic begins at MICF 2017 this week Boundless Plains To Share is at MICF for one show only on Saturday April 22nd My piece for The Guardian: Politically incorrect comedy can work - if the audience gets it  My piece for The Saturday Paper: Satire, free speech and Mehdi Savari @SenPaterson senatorpaterson.com.au Article: The Senate blocks the government's changes to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act   Article: Even among Australians worried about political correctness 18C is not a big issue  Article: A history of Section 18C and the Racial Discrimination Act  Article: 18C Debate is not over say both Liberal Senator and Labor MP   Senator Paterson's first speech Senator Paterson's speech on 18C Article: What is Section 18C and why do some politicians want it changed  Article: An inconvenient truth gets in the way of the company tax cut chants Joint Human Rights Committee report into Freedom of Speech in Australia Article: Doctors freed to speak about Australia's detention regime after U-Turn  Article: 'Voodoo economics' lie at the heart of Scott Morrison's budget Article: There is no such thing as trickle-down economics  Article: 10 reasons why the company tax cut is a really bad idea  Article: Australia doesn't need to chase Donald Trump on corporate tax cuts Article: Company profits surge as wages fall   Cause of the Week: Soldier On (soldieron.org.au)  

In this episode I’m joined by Matt as we discuss Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and try and work out why it’s such a hot topic. Stuff that we discussed: The Jewish community weren’t too happy when Attorney-General George Brandis announced he would repeal S18C as a 2013 election promise. It […]

This week Alice and Mark chat with the first female Muslim politician Labor’s Anne Aly about whether or not Islam is a race and her ideas for changing the Racial Discrimination Act. We also talk to The Daily Telegraph’s political editor Sharri Markson about why she thinks the ABC has a left wing bias, and debut a new segment - That Escalated Quickly!

On March 30, a  late-night debate  in the Senate saw the  Government's attempt to change section 18C of the  Racial Discrimination Act reach defeat, after an alliance by Labor, Greens, Nick Xenophon’s team and Jacqui Lambie, voted down the proposed changes - 31 to 28.This means that the plan to remove ‘offend, insult or humiliate” from section 18C and replace it with the term “harass” will no longer go ahead. Although we do expect to see some changes to the processes of the Human Rights Commission.Just Words producer Myles Houlbrook-Walk spoke to Senator David Leyonhjelm on March 21,  a week prior to the bills defeat.

Just Words spoke to 18C plaintiff Jeremy Jones, who has used racial hatred laws to fight anti-Semitism since the section was introduced over 20 years ago.Jones is concerned that the proposed draft laws will open the flood gates when it comes to racist speech. He says the Coalition Government's plan to remove 'offend, insult and humiliate' and replace it with the term 'harass', as well as to more narrowly define the term 'intimidate' is a sign of 'immoral' leadership.Will the proposed changes to 18C still capture the concept of Holocaust denial?Just Words producer Anthony Dockrill spoke to Jeremy Jones, Director at the Australian Israel and Jewish Affairs Council on Wednesday 22 March, the day after Malcolm Turnbull flagged changes to Australia's race hate laws.

Jacob Andrewartha and guest Felix DanceAcknowledgement of countryDiscussion about the opposition of the Adini coal mine project in QueenslandNewsNews from Green Left Weekly - Donald Trump breaking promises, Fight against Adani steps up, Defeat of 12-week semesters at UniSydDefeat of the amendment to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in the senate.NUW take strike actionNews from Green Left Weekly ABC Foreign correspondent wrong on venezuala and Campaign updates on refugee rightsInterviewsJacob and Felix speak with Zebedee Parkes, Listen here. a refugee rights activist and Green Left Weekly writer on the deportation of asylum seeker Saeed and the campaign to stop his deportation.Jacob and Felix speak with Scott Lewington about the launch of his band's new album The Same Boat and how it supports political movements. Listen here.Activist calendar

On March 21, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a potential watering down of the controversial Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.Under the proposal the words “offend, insult, humiliate” will be replaced by “harass”.The reforms were debated in the Senate on Tuesday, but little attention has been given to proposed procedural changes to the Australian Human Rights Commission, which will not only apply to 18C complaints but all complaints of discrimination handled by the Commission, including, sex, age, disability and race.Experts say this could make it more difficult for vulnerable members of the community to make complaints of vilification and discrimination.Just Words  host Nic Healey spoke to  Luke McNamara, Professor of Law from the University of New South Wales about the proposed 18C reforms and what they could really mean.Just Words Podcast Extra produced by Emma Lancaster

In this mini episode I am joined by Lauren and Anthony as we read Hansard from 1975. With all this talk about Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, we delve into the history books to find out some of the reasons behind why it was needed and what our lawmakers thought of discrimination more than 40 […]

Katharine Murphy and Gabrielle Chan look back on the issue of the week: 18C. It is unlikely the legislation will pass the Senate but if the government was serious about freedom of speech would it really be focussed on the Racial Discrimination Act?

- This episode covers child free women. - The importance of adopting kids. - Debating the issue not the person. - The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. - Anti natalism. - The origin of the missionary position. - Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, free speech and privilege. - For more information on this episode and for links to all of the stories and clips from it, go to: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2017/03/23/166/

Alternative News.Nick Wallis of 3CR’s Enpsychedelia presents a vignette on the Victorian Government accepting submissions to a wide-ranging inquiry into drug law in the state.  Dean speaks with Stephanie Cousins, Advocacy and External Affairs Manager at Amnesty International Australia, about how Amnesty International has welcomed the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ decision not to water down the Racial Discrimination Act (section 18C).Matt Kunkel of 3CR’s Stick Together presents a quick fire news segment of trade union news and stories.Dean speaks with Sophie Verass, Content Editor and concept creator photo series -‘Muslim, Aboriginal and outspoken’, about the 2011 National Census’ report, SBS’ campaign #FU2RACISM.

Today - a report into 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is handed down, rumours about Malcolm Turnbull's replacement once he retires from politics, and Centrelink under fire for leaking personal details to Fairfax

This is the story of a holocaust denier, a holocaust survivor and the man who made it his mission to put himself in-between the two. Australia isn’t like other countries around the world where holocaust denial is a crime. In fact there were almost no ways to legally challenge holocaust denial until section 18C was introduced in 1994. 

Co-Host: Jakob Morris News of the Bogus: 0:56 – Cindy Prior ordered to pay costs after trying to sue students under 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/cindy-prior-ordered-to-pay-costs-over-qut-racial-discrimination-case/news-story/466f3168375a6afec461b78e25c98154 Cindy Prior: Doctor casts doubts on QUT employee's 18C racism claim http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/doctor-casts-doubts-on-qut-employees-18c-racism-claim/news-story/acef2c0721cee62b98c564f837bdbeac 4:26 – Encrypted messaging app Signal uses Google to bypass censorship http://www.pcworld.com/article/3152769/security/encrypted-messaging-app-signal-uses-google-to-bypass-censorship.html Doodles, stickers, and […]

Earlier this week, footage aired of Attorney-General George Brandis speculating that Queensland's Liberal National Party might demerge. But Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says this won't happen. “It's not going to happen. You know why? Because the people who make that decision is not George, or myself or anybody else, it's the membership and the membership would have to decide they want to do it and I haven't heard any big swathes of members having meetings saying that want to demerge.” Joyce tells Michelle Grattan the Nationals need to differentiate themselves from the Liberals. “I think people clearly understand there's a difference between the National Party and the Liberal Party. They recognise the qualities in both. If there wasn't a reason to differentiate then you would amalgamate. So I'm very - always have been - parochially National. "When I first came into politics back in 2005 and we got down to 12 members and senators I think, there was always this ‘oh we should just fold this show up' and I fought as hard as I could with others to make sure that didn't happen,” Joyce says. Acknowledging the threat posed by One Nation, Joyce puts that party's success into the context of a global wave of right-wing populism. “In those messages are things that matter to people - are messages that matter, that resonate. People wouldn't just change [their vote] because they got a giggle. They change because they get a message and go ‘yep, that's all I needed to know and that's enough for me to change my vote'. And that's what's happening now and we've got to compete in that space.” Joyce also has a reality-check for his colleagues pushing for changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. “There's a set of people who are more intensely involved in politics and they might be concerned - but if you think I go past the guys working on the road and as I say ‘g'day' to them and ask them how's the job going [that] they'd say ‘I really want to talk to you about 18C' - no they don't. "They are interested in the things they can touch. They do not occupy themselves in the deeper philosophical thoughts. "What we've got to be really careful of is once you leave the party room meeting - whether it's here or whether it's your branch meeting back in the country - don't think that's the issue that's going to get across to people in the pub on a Friday night.” Music credit: “What tomorrow brings”, by Ketsa on the Free Music Archive

Ruby Hamad (Daily Life and SBS Life), Ben Raue (The Tally Room and The Guardian Australia) and conservative commentator Mark Fletcher discuss: how the media was blindsided by Trump's victory; how Trump framed the media as 'the elite'; and what's energising the campaign to amend Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. Hosted by Marcus Costello. Fourth Estate is produced by 2SER 107.3 in Sydney and broadcasted across Australia via the Community Radio Network.

Liberal senator James Patterson joins Katharine Murphy and Gabrielle Chan to discuss the movement to change or remove section 18C from the Racial Discrimination Act. We also look at the possible effects of Trump victory to our region

Many in the government have clamoured for changes to be made to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Liberal backbencher Julian Leeser, however is not one of them. The member for the northern Sydney seat of Berowra tells Michelle Grattan there are definitely people within the Liberal Party who share his view that Section 18C “achieves a good balance between allowing people the freedom of speech which is necessary in a democracy like Australia but also protecting racial minorities from racial vilification and racial slurs”. “But the thing that I think unites everybody in this debate, regardless of your view on Section 18C, is that the process underscored in the QUT case and also in the Bill Leak case, just didn't work as well as it should have,” Leeser says.

Gay Alcorn has been a journalist for over 25 years. She's been a Washington correspondent, edited The Sunday Age, won three Walkley Awards and is now the Melbourne editor for Guardian Australia. I wanted to talk with Gay about a whole many things (we began by talking about this week's 4Corners report on the refugee children of Nauru and the roles and biases of journalism), but the bulk of our chat became focussed on the notion of "political correctness": the nature of our public discourse, section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, identity politics and cultural appropriation. Gay describes herself as a progressive person but is a staunch advocate of the freedom of speech and has concerns about the way we go about talking with each other. Is it now longer possible for us to "reasonably disagree"?  This piece by Gay on PC is the basic starting point for our chat, I'd recommend reading that first before listening here. We also got on to Lionel Shriver's speech at the Brisbane Writer's Festival and the ensuing furore; this will also be the focus of next week's episode with Yassmin Abdel-Magied.  Boundless Plains To Share at Belvoir Theatre in January 2017 The World Keeps Happening is being filmed for Stan at the Comedy Theatre on Saturday December 3rd; details on comedy.com.au @gay_alcorn Gay's writing at Guardian Australia The Media's Moment of Truth by Frank Bruni  Hunt For The Radical Centre: Confronting Welfare Dependency by Noel Pearson  The Pacific Solution's brutal fact: we need it by Jonathan Holmes Those fighting offshore detention don't need all the answers by me  Section 18C Explainer: What is it, and why do some politicians want it changed? by Luke McNamara We need to talk about cultural appropriation: why Lionel Shriver's speech touched a nerve by Stephanie Convery Cause of the Week: Guardian Australia (theguardian.com/au), Oxfam Australia (oxfam.org.au)  

In the first sitting of the new parliament, conservatives within the government have muscled a proposed amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act onto the agenda. Senator Eric Abetz, a strong advocate for change, tells Michelle Grattan that he doubts it will be dealt with this year. “It will be introduced and then I think it would make sense for it to go through the normal processes. It may well go to a Senate committee, things of that nature. So how it transpires - no timetable has been set but we did want to put it up there on the agenda so it could be dealt with in due course,” he says. “We would hope that in the period of a three-year parliament, we can chew gum and walk at the same time and that there will be time set aside for what is a very minimalist amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act to remove the words offend and insult.” Abetz, a former leader of the government in the upper house and a minister in the Abbott government, remains resentful of being banished by Turnbull to the backbench and still harbours frontbench ambitions. “Chances are there's still some ministerial capacity left within myself. Senator David Bushby, who's the chief government whip in the Senate - clearly ministerial capacity as well. So I think it's a disappointment that the prime minister did not see fit to appoint somebody from Tasmania for the frontbench when, if I might say, there is ministerial talent available from Tasmania.” “I would like to be able to serve on the frontbench again but as I've said many a time - I got into politics to serve, not to ‘succeed', in inverted commas. But of course if you can be on the frontbench you can make a good and positive contribution.”

This episode was recorded before Mark held a press conference to comment about the AFP NBN raids on August 24, 2016. But he does have plenty to say about Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition Government, the Nauru files and section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @polliepodcast www.radelaidemedia.com

Egmont USA to Close After Sale Attempt Falls Through Christian publisher pulls heaven book after boy retracts story Human rights lawyer in Tajikistan jailed for nine years Racial Discrimination Act would outlaw Charlie Hebdo cartoons, say critics City of Paris to sue Fox News over on-air comments West Virginia Delegates consider adding journalists to list of protected workers David Petraeus: From military rock star to possible prosecution regarding biography Follow ups: Court Filing Ends AG v. HathiTrust Copyright Litigation Legal Fight Ends for James Risen of the New York Times Photo by Hector Alejandro >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Download the show as mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes

CeBIT Australia/Flickr, CC BY-SAFreedom of speech is often seen as a cornerstone of democracy, but the unfettered right to express opinions can infringe other fundamental rights. Minority groups are especially at risk of verbal attacks and intimidation, and some countries, including Australia, have legislated protections that limit free speech. When Attorney-General George Brandis ordered a review of the Racial Discrimination Act and introduced amendments in a failed attempt to remove some of these protections in March this year, he ignited a passionate debate on the importance of free speech and its intersection with other human rights. In this podcast, Tamson Pietsch speaks with Sarah Sorial about the role of free speech in a democracy and how it can co-exist with other rights. Sarah Sorial is a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong who is researching the limits of free speech and deliberative democracy. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Image: flickr/CeBIT Australia Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Laura Murphy-Oates reports on the proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, Karla Grant discusses the changes with Dr Tim Soutphommasane, Larteasha Griffen reports on the push for Constitutional recognition, Hannah Hollis visits the NSW town of Gunnedah and Nevanka McKeon reports on the 25th anniversary of Bangarra Dance Theatre. Hosted by Karla Grant. Living Black Series 20 Episode 11, Broadcast 16 June 2014 (An NITV/SBS Production) CC #LivingBlackSBS

There’s been a lot of talk about free speech lately – and there’s 73 minutes of free speech on this week’s Balls Radio – although, download charges may apply, ask your internet provider.The big question is, though, is the Attorney General right to seek to repeal section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act? Should Andrew Bolt be able to say what he likes about fair-skinned aboriginals without any legal repercussions? As we discuss with Richard Kazimer, could it open the flood gates for the right-wing talk radio we see in the US? Or do we have that here anyway?We also look at the death of British socialist MP Tony Benn – the man too far left for many in the Labour party, but who did speak a lot of sense in his lifetime. We visit some Tony Benn moments on the programme with John Dobbie in the UK.Plus, the mystery around the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. For a moment it looked like it could have arrived in New Zealand. But, a false alarm. Still, David Campbell says it’s the closest they’ve had to a news story this week.And our entertainment reporter Brian Haverty looks at some of the best TV shows around at the moment and asks are we living in the golden age of television drama?That and more in a far-too-long edition of Balls Radio.