NT News cartoonist Colin Wicking worried about consequences of proposed new anti-discrimination laws

THE Territory’s favourite cartoonist could be forced to pay compensation or be subjected to costly legal battles under the NT’s proposed new anti-discrimination laws

Darwin based cartoonist Colin Wicking's daily cartoons that grace the NT News may have to be toned down depending on the NT Governments new legislation. Picture: Justin Kennedy

THE Territory’s favourite cartoonist could be forced to pay compensation or be subjected to costly legal battles under the NT’s proposed new anti-discrimination laws.

The NT Government has refused to guarantee Colin Wicking won’t fall foul of the proposed legislation, which will make it unlawful to insult or offend on the grounds of race, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief, gender identity or intersex status.

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That could spell bad news for Wicking whose deliberately provocative work has been entertaining – and in some cases offending – Territorians for almost three decades.

“There are people out there who don’t like me, I know that thanks to social media, and there will be mechanisms for them to go after me personally,” Wicking said.

The laws – outlined in a discussion paper released last month – include provisions to protect freedom of expression, but Attorney-General Natasha Fyles couldn’t guarantee Wicking’s work wouldn’t breach the legislation. “I can’t guarantee that there won’t be a complaint that comes forward,” she said.

“But what I can say is I hope that those complaints, when they’re dealt with, under what I hope to see in a modern act, is that they’ll be dealt with reasonably.”

It would be up to the Northern Territory’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Sally Sievers, to decide what was a reasonable complaint.

Cartoonist Colin Wicking has always been deliberately provocative.

If she decided the cartoonist had a case to answer, he could face an expensive legal battle to defend his work in the Northern Territory Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

A similar fate was dealt to The Australian newspaper’s late cartoonist Bill Leak under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act over his work depicting dysfunction in the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal communities.

“The whole process was the punishment, so going through that, would be a nightmare,” Wicking said.

But the NT’s proposed laws would go further than Section 18C, allowing representative bodies such as religious organisations, indigenous groups or human rights bodies to lodge complaints, rather than just individuals who claim to have been offended.

Wicking said the proposed laws would only lead to fewer conversations about the issues we need to be discussing.

“A lot of people immediately thought because Bill Leak portrayed a drunken Aboriginal that he’s a racist.

“I’ve done it myself, but it’s to make a point, particularly in the Northern Territory where we’re exposed to Aboriginal dysfunction and we’ve seen it, rather than the latte sippers in Sydney, we’ve experienced it, we know how big an issue it is and we know that it’s critical to address that issue,” he said.

Wicking's cartoons often raise a few eyebrows.

He said many people today were quick to take offence to cartoons without understanding their meaning, a problem that was getting worse thanks to social media.

“Take Bill Leak again, that whole thing was driven by a Twitter hate fest,” he said.

“The day it happened I was watching the feed and it just blew up into this massive festival of hate against Bill personally rather than anybody looking at the message he was trying to achieve.”

Among Wicking’s most controversial cartoons are his Easter offerings, which have often drawn the ire of Christians.

A cartoon published more than a decade ago depicting Jesus on the cross asking the Roman nailing him up there if he got his hammer from Bunnings, drew a flood of letters to the editor from people who labelled it “sick”, “offensive”, “insulting” and “blasphemous”.

One of Wicking's most infamous cartoons.

But Wicking said this cartoon, like many, had sought to make a point about the commercialisation of Easter, and had been misunderstood by most of its critics.

“Eventually courts are going to decide what my intent was without knowing what the intent was,” he said.

“Somebody’s going to have to decide what was going on in my head at the particular time I drew a cartoon and decide whether I’m a racist or a sexist or I’ve offended somebody because of their gender.”

The NT News attended a public consultation session about the proposed new laws last week and asked if Wicking’s Easter cartoons might fall foul of the legislation.

In response, we were told there would likely be “levels of vulnerability” when it came to deciding which complaints would be accepted.

Those running the session could not say if this meant Christians might not be able to proceed with a complaint, but other minority groups could.

In a twist, most of those at the information session were Christians who are concerned about other aspects of the proposed legislation. These proposed changes would see faith-based schools stripped of their ability to hire teachers who adhere to their beliefs and banned from excluding prospective students who are not of a particular religion.

Cartoonist Colin Wicking has always been deliberately provocative.

One of the attendees, Topher Hallyburton, said he applauded the Government’s efforts to give a voice to people who were being discriminated against, but said he had two main concerns.

“One is with regards to freedom of speech and the introduction of that vilification law and the second one is freedom of belief, getting rid of exemptions that apply specifically to schools, to teachers, families and of course to religious sites,” he said.

Ms Sievers was unavailable for comment and her office directed questions to Ms Fyles.

Ms Fyles said the Government was seeking to revise an outdated Anti-Discrimination Act and would listen to the concerns of the community through public submissions and community consultations.

“There are no firm changes that the Government has flagged, we’re simply out there listening to the community about what they would like to see in a modern Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Act,” she said.