18C: Mark Dreyfus and Labor target freedom of speech

Federal Labor’s passion for identity politics comes at a price. And part of that price was made explicit this week.

Mark Dreyfus, Anton Block, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, and Tim Wilson at the 18C forum.

Federal Labor’s passion for identity politics comes at a price. And part of that price was made explicit this week when Mark Dreyfus found himself denying reality.

A more tangible price could eventually be paid by countless others who might find themselves on the wrong side of a new wave of litigation if Labor wins the next federal election.

Thanks to an unguarded moment at a community forum, the man who would be Labor’s attorney-general has drawn attention to the knock-on effect from Bill Shorten’s refusal to reform section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

If Shorten maintains that stance it means 18C will become a sacrosanct part of Labor’s plan to consolidate all federal anti-discrimination statutes. That raises the prospect that the restrictions on speech contained in 18C will have much greater reach.

Unless something changes, a future Labor government looks set to use 18C-style restrictions to stifle public debate across every area covered by federal anti-discrimination law: age, disability, race and sex.

What happened to Bill Leak and the QUT students under 18C would be just the beginning. There is now a prospect that the aged, the disabled and those with particular gender identities will eventually be lining up to extract financial settlements and apologies when public debates hurt their feelings.

The news media would be under pressure to remove anything that could offend Labor’s favoured cohort. Debates on touchy subjects such as gender “fluidity” and the ludicrously named “safe-schools” program would be off limits to all but the brave or impecunious.

All this emerged after a community forum last week when Dreyfus let slip that if Labor returns to power he will be considering imposing a new limit on freedom of speech as part of what he hopes will be the consolidation of anti-discrimination laws.

The fact that this is part of his thinking should come as no surprise, given the attacks on freedom of speech that were a feature of the last federal Labor government. Remember Stephen Conroy’s attempt to regulate the content of newspapers? Dreyfus backed that.

What is startling about this incident is the fact that Dreyfus allowed himself to be goaded into making this fumble by Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson, who was also part of the community forum.

After this newspaper reported his remarks, and their implications, Dreyfus issued a statement that says: “Today’s story in The Australian newspaper is utterly false.”

“There is no ‘secret plan’ to overhaul discrimination law in this country. I made comments last week at a public forum, in front of more than 200 people including Liberal MP Tim Wilson, that refer to a longstanding policy in Labor’s national platform to consolidate anti-discrimination law,” his statement says.

It is worth noting that his statement bags this newspaper for something it did not do. The Australian reported on Thursday that Labor was considering a secret plan to extend the reach of 18C and impose new restrictions on speech. It did not report that Labor had a new secret plan to consolidate anti-discrimination law.

It is also worth noting what Dreyfus did not dispute: Section 18C is holy writ to Labor and in government he will consider using the consolidation of anti-discrimination law to impose a new general standard for speech that infringes the consolidated law.

A video of the community forum shows what happened. When he was asked by someone in the audience if 18C should be extended to cover gender and disability he said Wilson had “reminded me painfully of the failed project, which I hope to return to, of consolidating the five anti-discrimination statutes when we are next in government”.

“One of the things we’ll be looking at is this very point of whether or not we should set a standard about speech generally.

“I want to have standards set in a community which respect the dignity of every Australian. I think it’s very important and something to be fought for,” Dreyfus said.

Restricting free speech while consolidating anti-discrimination law is the same policy graveyard that helped destroy the political career of former Labor attorney-general Nicola Roxon.

When Dreyfus succeeded her as attorney-general in the Gillard government, Roxon’s consolidation plan had triggered so much outrage it had to be shelved.

And one of the main reasons was her attempt to entrench the 18C mechanism at the heart of her new law.

Shorten’s rejection of reform for 18C means Labor is heading for the same sort of trainwreck that prompted Jim Spigelman, a former chief justice of NSW, to join the critics of the Roxon plan.

Thanks to his leader’s intransigence over 18C, Dreyfus is stuck: If he changes tack and tries to confine the 18C mechanism to disputes over racial discrimination, how will he explain the inconsistency to all the others who were expecting a similar free kick in the courts?