Where are the cartoonists to defend Leak?

Cartoonist John Spooner is astonished that so few fellow cartoonists have the courage or integrity to defend Bill Leak from the censor's eraser. And he disagrees with me on the best way for Leak to defend himself. (UPDATE: Another cartoonist attacked.)

Lobbecke

Cartoonist John Spooner is astonished that so few fellow cartoonists have the courage or integrity to defend Bill Leak from the censor's eraser.

Spooner:

I’ve known and admired Bill Leak for many years and we have become good friends. He is a man of courage and forthright integrity. I telephoned him as soon as Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane invited anyone offended by Leak’s “racism” over a cartoon portraying an Aboriginal father and son to formally complain to the Human Rights Commission. I offered to give evidence in support of the cartoon should he be formally charged.

I couldn’t offer much. I felt like someone who has scaled the walls of a besieged city to offer a friend a thimble full of boiling oil. He will need a lot more help than that and luckily his employer is strenuously supporting him.

Nevertheless I was also aware that hardly any of his cartooning colleagues were supporting him (with honourable exceptions like Mark Knight and Dean Alston). In fact a lot of his fellow cartoonists seemed to be decorating the state battering ram...

Who would have thought that some cartoonists, obsessed by big noses, bushy eyebrows on grotesquely insulting caricatures would be so placid, obsequious, and soothingly compliant in the face of censorship like 18C?

That is astonishing - but I know that phenomenon only too well. See, the trouble is that many on the Left are actually collectivists, and collectivism appeals most to the weak. Collectivists tend to believe in the side rather than the principle, which means that a law being used to censor a conservative can't be all bad, and to hell with free speech. And if a few feel the prick of conscience, well, it's a bit too scary to defend a principle, anyway.

Spooner agrees:

I’ve come to the view that the most potent but least understood force in modern life is tribalism. A huge number of people would rather die than be disapproved of by their tribe and we all belong to a tribe. But tribal approval doesn’t guarantee thought. Politically correct box ticking is just a badge. We can all do better than that. The world will not end if we freely discuss everything. But our civilised world will end if we turn a blind eye to suppression of our freedoms, for whatever reason of plausible politeness.

But that freedom should surely be defended, and especially here. How on earth can the Human Rights Commission get away with branding Leak's cartoon racist and then touting for complaints under the Racial Discrimination Act to punish him?

As Spooner notes:

Leak cartoon

If Leak’s intention was to make some broad racist generalisation about all Aboriginals, then why did he make the policeman, holding the delinquent child, an Aborigine? The policeman represents the voice of moral accountability and ethical authority. He accuses all neglectful fathers in the end. He wants to transfer some of the responsibility for the child’s behaviour onto the parent. All parents are aware of this and we are all anxious to do our inadequate best.

By making the policeman Aboriginal Leak has instantly disarmed the charge of racism. In fact, isn’t it a trifle racist to view this cartoon as racist? Wouldn’t it be racist to insist that an Aborigine could not be a policeman? That an Aborigine could not be a delinquent, or a neglectful father? What kind of specious condescension denies a people their humanity?

 Last week I argued - perhaps with more emotion than reason - that Leak and The Australian should refuse to offer any defence of their right to draw and publish his cartoon than the right to free speech. Defy the censors to do their worse and discredit their own laws. To defend the cartoon by arguing defences of truth, good tone, reasonableness and fair comment would be to implicitly acknowledge the right of these witch-hunters to rub out other cartoons they like even less.

Spooner disagrees, to a point:

There is another angle. Why should Leak have to explain his cartoon to the government at all? There is a strong view that he should just refuse to answer to the authority of the commission, that he be a conscientious objector. Should he just insist on his right to freedom of speech and leave it at that?

I disagree with this view. I think he should defend himself. Rather than argue against the government’s right to interfere with our freedom (they can legitimately do so in cases of criminal conspiracy for example) Leak should defend himself if possible with satire.

He should force everyone to focus on the dangerous overreach of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. After all the right to offend and insult are, in part, necessary ingredients of serious argument. How else can we combat racism? And don’t tell me about exemptions in 18D. The overall intent of the act is intimidatory. You need an expensive lawyer to rid yourself of the stigma of prosecution.

Chris Mitchell, former editor-in-chief of The Australian, has also noticed the refusal of so many in the media to defend the key freedom on which the proper practice of their craft depends:

Hopefully the [Human Rights Commission]’s decision a fortnight ago to accept a complaint under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act over a Bill Leak cartoon published on August 4 will be enough to stir the public into action.

Many are starting to realise something evil is being done in our country under the guise of protecting the feelings of minority groups. The modern thought police really do have power.

Yet it is remarkable how few in the media have been prepared to defend either Leak or, five years earlier, Bolt, who was prosecuted over two articles he wrote about part-Aboriginals. While there have been honourable exceptions in the past fortnight such as Brett McCarthy, editor of The West Australian newspaper, and his ­editor-in-chief Bob Cronin, the ABC and Fairfax have for a couple of years largely ignored the behaviour of [HRC boss Gillian] Triggs, who they see as a compassionate fighter against an unjust asylum seeker detention system...

The problem is free speech should not be just for people you agree with. And if newspaper ­editors and senior journalists, not just flaky Twitterati, can’t support the freedom of Leak to draw a ­cartoon that accurately portrays the situation some young Aust­ralians find themselves in, I would have to suggest they leave ­journalism and try social work or academia, where repressing the truth and distrusting the wisdom of the majority of Australians are now the norm.

As Leak told Lateline host Emma Alberici on the ABC last Thursday night: “I think 18C is an abomination. Look I can only ­assume that a lot of people ­genuinely believe that freedom of speech means the legal right to hurl abuse. Freedom of speech is what created our civil and free ­society. It is all about ... letting ­people express their views in the marketplace of ideas.”

UPDATE

Kerry Stokes now joins the battle for free speech:

Media proprietor Kerry Stokes has launched a blistering attack on a controversial ­investigation by the Australian Human Rights Commission over a cartoon by The Australian’s Bill Leak portraying an Aboriginal father and son.

Mr Stokes, the Seven Group executive chairman, said the probe was the “most substantial threat” to press freedom in his five decades of owning and running media businesses.

One of the problems with the law was its “vagueness”, Mr Stokes said, which left the community uncertain about what could or could not be said, without inviting a complaint to the Human Rights ­Commission...

“It (section 18C) is the worst ­because it isn’t definable,” Mr Stokes said yesterday.

“It’s so difficult to define because it’s so broad. It snuck through under the Labor government when none of us were really aware of the wider ranging implications of it.”

Under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, it is unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or ­intimidate people on the basis of their race, colour or national or ethnic background.

“The fact is that under 18C none of us can write or say what needs to be said to make the public fully aware of the issues,” Mr Stokes warned...

Mr Stokes, whose mining and media company operates the top-rating free-to-air Seven Network and The West Australian newspaper, said the decision to publish [Leak's] cartoon was “appropriate” to bring the issue to the “wider attention of the public” as part of a broader campaign to highlight the “seriousness of the situation”.

Leak should not need the defence that his cartoon was "appropriate". Does that mean activist judges can rub out cartoons they feel are "inappropriate"?

UPDATE

The Racial Discrimination Act has been poisonous for longer than most people realise:

Seven years ago Bob Cronin, the editor-in-chief of West Australian Newspapers, learned first-hand about the practical impact of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It left him in a state of fury that is yet to subside.

This provision, in his view, is “b*******t” that needs to be ­repealed. It may have been ­intended to achieve a noble purpose but its practical impact has been to “encourage blackmail”.

Even worse, Cronin admits that for a time the impact of section 18C meant he considered having West Australian Newspapers abandon its coverage of Aboriginal affairs.

Cronin’s view has been ­informed by his struggle to defend a cartoon by Paul Zanetti that raised exactly the same idea that was floated in August by Bill Leak’s now famous cartoon in The Australian...

Just like Leak, Zanetti had wanted to force the community to think about the plight of children in dysfunctional families. This would have been unremarkable but for one fact — the children in both cartoons were indigenous.

Zanetti’s work was published on July 4, 2009, in the Kalgoorlie Miner,which at the time was under the editorship of John Horner. It led to complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission, six months of legal correspondence and “conciliation” conferences ­before a settlement was put in place with the lead complainant.

At the heart of both cases is section 18C, which makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or ­intimidate people on the basis of their race, colour or national or ethnic background.

One of the problems with this law is its vagueness...

When this law was invoked against journalist Andrew Bolt, his defeat in the Federal Court was mistakenly viewed by his critics as proof that he was out of step with Australian standards.

The judgment in that case shows that Justice Mordecai Bromberg believed he was obliged by section 18C to judge Bolt’s journalism according to the standards of a hypothetical reasonable representative of the group that had sued him.

His articles about light-skinned Aborigines were therefore judged according to standards that have little to do with those of mainstream Australia, and a great deal to do with those of the plaintiff... Others may view it as law that has been rigged...

In 2013, James Allan of the University of Queensland noted that in some of those tribunals “complainants had a 100 per cent success track record. Those accused of hate speech always lost.”...

Cronin is very clear that the settlement of that complaint [against Zanetti] was not put in place because WAN ­accepted it had engaged in wrongdoing. It was simply about the money. It was cheaper to settle than face the prospect of being sued under section 18C in the Federal Court...

After taking part in this process in defence of the Kalgoorlie Miner, Cronin is not convinced that both parties received fair treatment...

“There is an assumption that this poor person has been offended and you are a media no-hoper and you have no concern for his sensibilities and the hurt you have caused...

The entire affair, according to Zanetti, was ludicrous: “... “At least Bill (Leak) is lucky to have News to ­defend him. What about the solo blogger who would also be vulnerable under this law? That’s why it needs to be ­repealed.”

(Thanks to reader Margaret.)