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Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs backs section 18C changes but is tight-lipped on calls for her to resign. Picture: Hollie Adams.
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Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has ratcheted up the government’s attack on Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, accusing her of “jamming some sort of language code” down people’s throats by investigating The Australian’s cartoonist Bill Leak under race-hate laws.
Renewing calls for Professor Triggs’s resignation, Mr Dutton also said people would not “tolerate” Leak being “raked over the coals” for drawing a controversial cartoon depicting an Aboriginal man, with a beer in hand, who has forgotten his son’s name.
Conservative MPs are increasing pressure on Professor Triggs and Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane after the duo split over whether to reform section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Under section 18C, it is illegal to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person because of their race.
Professor Triggs has said replacing the words “offend” and “insult” in the act with “vilify” would only strengthen the law, while Dr Soutphommasane has declared there was “no case” for change.
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| Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. |
Twelve leaders from the Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Arab, Indian, Aboriginal, Jewish, Greek and Armenian communities yesterday rejected any reform of section 18C and section 18D, which provides a defence for artistic work done in “good faith”.
Mr Dutton said it was a “no brainer” that Professor Triggs should resign, pointing to her “humiliating” interview on ABC TV’s 7.30 program this week in which she claimed there was “a level of substance” behind a complaint made against three Queensland University of Technology students, despite the Federal Circuit Court finding there was no case to answer.
“She’s a lady that is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the taxpayer. The case with Bill Leak, I mean Australians want freedom of speech. They want to be able to talk to their mates in a sensible way without the political correct nonsense,” Mr Dutton told 2GB radio.
“They don’t want to have Gillian Triggs and other officials out of Canberra jamming some sort of language code down their throat.
“For a cartoonist in this country to be raked over the coals when he’s just expressing a thought and putting his words into pictures, people won’t tolerate that.
“And so Gillian Triggs should do the right thing, absolutely (and resign).”
Professor Triggs declined to comment on Mr Dutton’s remarks.
Cartoonist Paul Zanetti, who was taken to the HRC for a cartoon in the Kalgoorlie Miner that made a similar political point to Leak’s and has been an avid campaigner against section 18C, yesterday lodged his own complaint.
Zanetti said he complained against Labor MP Linda Burney, who said people advocating the removal of 18C were “white men of a certain age that have never experienced racial discrimination in their life”.
Zanetti, who wants $10,000 in compensation, said he was offended as it was an untrue statement, noting he had been targeted as a “wog” because of his ethnic background.
“My complaint is no less or no more vexatious or frivolous than the complaint against Bill Leak or the complaint against myself or the complaint against QUT,” Zanetti told The Australian.
“It is a genuine complaint. I will take it all the way. I’m prepared to negotiate within a dollar, I’m not completely hard about it; I’m flexible.”
