Discrimination police indulging in gay abandon

DURING the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of high-minded angst and general hand-wringing over the freedom of speech implications of Andrew Bolt's conviction under the Racial Discrimination Act.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis has said that "if the Bolt decision is not overturned on appeal, the provision in its present form should be repealed". Many people think the legislation should be repealed anyway.

Whether one agrees with the interpretation of Bolt's opinions as sneering and borderline racism, there should be no legislation for bad behaviour or poorly expressed opinions unless they are defamatory or an incitement to violence. Anyway, Bolt is a big boy, a high-flying columnist, who - as Paul Kelly rightly pointed out in The Australian on Wednesday - has enjoyed rather more freedom of speech than most.

So what of individuals who do not enjoy the protection of a powerful media organisation and a reputation that can only be enhanced by self-conscious martyrdom to the cause of free speech?

This week, Toowoomba GP and pro-family activist David van Gend found himself in conciliation before the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland over a complaint that an article he wrote for Brisbane's The Courier-Mail, as part of a debate about same-sex marriage, vilified the homosexual community.

Van Gend was told he must appear for conciliation or he would be fined and forced to pay costs. However, the complainant, a gay activist from NSW, did not have to appear and would suffer no penalty for not appearing.

In the letter sent to van Gend, the commission stated that its decision to accept the complaint "does not indicate that the complaint has merit".

So what summary justice compels a busy GP to appear for compulsory conciliation even though the complainant might not appear and, by the admission of the commission itself, the complaint might not be made out? Indeed, the complaint was withdrawn, but not until after the compulsory hearing.

So what sparked the complaint? It was based on this paragraph: "Yes it is discrimination to prohibit the marriage of two men, but it is just and necessary discrimination because the only alternative is the far worse act of discrimination against children brought artificially into the world by such men, compelled to live their whole lives without a mother. Now that approaches the abominable."

Reading this out of context the complainant, and apparently the anti-discrimination tsars, took no notice of van Gend's protest that his use of "abominable" in the final statement was paraphrasing a statement at the Labor conference by the party's Queensland president, Andrew Dettmer, who characterised opposition to gay marriage as no better than racism: "Discrimination against people on the basis of their gender or their sexual orientation is just as abominable and just as unsupportable as discrimination on the basis of race." Hence van Gend's use of the contentious word.

But not content with the specious interpretation of van Gend's language, the complainant claimed the entire point of his article amounted to vilification simply because he didn't like the doctor's point of view: "The lack of a general statement with regards to all families with only a parent of one sex shows how vilifying the statement is towards same-sex families and also fails to recognise the structure of modern families and the involvement of the community around those families in raising children."

So a brief article opposing same-sex marriage was limited in its reference to same-sex parenting. What else would one expect? The complainant simply didn't like van Gend's point of view, so in effect was demanding that the commission force van Gend to make a different argument.

And by accepting this complaint and forcing a hearing, the anti-discrimination police, despite official denials, seemed to accept the logic of that.

That the complaint did not succeed in going further is neither here nor there. The mere fact the onus was on van Gend to prove his innocence of something that amounts to a person being offended by his point of view should be a warning against this law.

As for van Gend, he is left wondering what next for other individuals with an opinion, even newspaper letter writers: "I had nothing to 'conciliate'. I resent being compelled to allocate patient consultation time to converse with this Sydney homosexual activist, as I consider that to be rewarding political harassment . . . at the personal cost of some thousands in legal advice and time off work, and the wearing of a defamatory accusation of being a hate-speaker and vilifier. [What of] the next complaint that any activist cares to lodge with the commission? I have to go through the same disgusting process."

But it is not solely the commission at fault; it is the existence of anti-vilification laws and tribunals. Queensland Nationals senator Ron Boswell hit the nail on the head in the Senate on Wednesday: "I did not think that we lived in an Australia where a disagreement of opinion can result in hauling someone before an anti-discrimination board . . . this is a country where people are not intimidated from sharing their point of view.

"Or is it? First Andrew Bolt, now David van Gend . . . The case of Dr van Gend makes a mockery of the anti-discrimination law . . . if people like Dr van Gend are forced to appear before the Anti-Discrimination Commission of Queensland then this is a threat to one of Australia's greatest freedoms, the right to free speech.

"This is a major disincentive to people making a contribution to debate across Australia. Anti-discrimination bodies should not be used as star chambers by those who simply don't like what someone else says."