‘Nice to know the system works’: Yassmin Abdel-Magied says racial hatred complaint dismissed

YASSMIN Abdel-Magied says a racial hatred complaint against her has been dropped - and has celebrated with a Twitter spat.

YASSMIN Abdel-Magied says a complaint under the Racial Discrimination Act about her tweets has been dismissed by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

The controversial Muslim activist and author first tweeted about the HRC referral last week, without specifying the nature of the complaint.

“Update: The complaint against me — which alleged Racial Hatred under the Racial Discrimination Act — has been terminated due to lack of substance,” the 26-year-old tweeted on Tuesday.

“Alhamdulilah! Nice to know the system works. And the ‘system working’, my father will say, is why he decided to move us to Australia.”

Update:

The complaint against me - which alleged Racial Hatred under the Racial Discrimination Act - has been terminated due to lack of substance.

Alhamdulilah! Nice to know the system works. 😋 #AusPol

— Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) February 20, 2018

Imagine if it had worked that swiftly for our dear friend Bill. Or for the QUT students. The process is the punishment...and mercifully you have been spared it. https://t.co/OvAWCZgTzt

— Chris Kenny (@chriskkenny) February 20, 2018

Funny what can happen when someone actually looks at or, shock horror, investigates a complaint... instead of sitting on it for 14 months without even contacting the majority of the respondents. https://t.co/SnZJhV7sOB

— Calum Thwaites (@CalumMThwaites) February 20, 2018

News Corp columnist Chris Kenny compared the swift resolution of her case with the HRC’s bungled handling of a racism complaint against a group of Queensland University of Technology students, and the treatment The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak, who died last year of a heart attack at the age of 61.

“Imagine if it had worked that swiftly for our dear friend Bill,” Kenny tweeted. “Or for the QUT students. The process is the punishment ... and mercifully you have been spared it.”

In response, Ms Abdel-Magied wrote, “Lol. Or maybe I just don’t harbour racial hatred?”, prompting one Twitter user to ask whether she was accusing Kenny of racial hatred, or Leak or the QUT students.

“Neither of those options,” she wrote. “Sigh. Let me spell it out — the complaint was about racial hatred. If I don’t harbour racial hatred, it makes it easy to terminate a complaint about it, no? Y’all need to chill.”

Calum Thwaites, one of the students involved in the QUT case, tweeted, “Funny what can happen when someone actually looks at or, shock horror, investigates a complaint ... instead of sitting on it for 14 months without even contacting the majority of the respondents.”

Ms Abdel-Magied, a former ABC TV presenter who has made headlines with a number of politically charged statements about Islam, Anzac Day and African gangs, moved to the UK last year in the wake of the controversies, comparing Australia to an “abusive boyfriend”.

A spokeswoman for Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane declined to comment.

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