Nick McKim’s hateful bile against Peter Dutton shouldn’t be tolerated

Not so long ago we were a country where politicians were expected to be exemplars in public debate and where that debate was conducted in a public square that upheld community standards. Human imperfections abounded but there was an expectation — not a legal obligation but a social expectation — that debates would be rational and reasonable. We have been a robust society, egalitarian and eager to tilt at authority but we have always tended to conduct our affairs in a fair-minded way.

No longer. The national political debate has become toxic, even putrid. The descent is being driven by the frenzied feeding ground of social media and it is the green Left activists and their political representatives who are at the forefront.

Nick McKim, who is a Greens Senator from Tasmania, yesterday called Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton a “racist” and a “fascist.” He did this live on television where my former Sky News colleague Samantha Maiden gave him the opportunity to double down on his insult but did not demand evidence for this slight, tell him how offensive it was or suggest that he might retract and apologise.

Along with accusing someone of a heinous crime, racism is the ugliest slur that can be made against another person. It is a horrendous slight that is every bit as toxic as a racial barb if it is applied against anyone other than someone about whom it is demonstrably true. And fascism? McKim even invoked Nazism, so the link to atrocities and repression was undeniable. It is as ludicrous as it is odious.

McKim’s case against Dutton is disingenuous and rooted in partisan politics. He attacks Dutton because of the government’s successful border protection regime that has saved thousands of lives and allowed for the nation’s highest ever refugee intake — as opposed to the policies McKim endorsed that saw hundreds die, tens of thousands pushed through detention and legitimate refugee applications delayed and obstructed.

Dutton has knowingly provoked the Greens Senator, to be sure. He has done this by pointing to the plight of persecuted white farmers in South Africa and suggesting they might qualify as refugees in this country. It is a fair observation and a timely one, designed to point out the grave injustices occurring in South Africa and pressure its government to intervene. No doubt Dutton also hoped to expose the hypocrisy of virtue-signallers like McKim. It worked.

But the toxic response from McKim should not be tolerated in a decent democracy. Mainstream media should not air such views unless those uttering them are pressed for evidence, censured or at least told that their interventions are beyond the bounds of common decency. This is how we uphold standards of debate – not by laws and edicts – but by sensible marshalling of public debate within the bounds of fairness and good sense.

Sky News anchor Sam Maiden with Nick McKim yesterday.

When I decried McKim’s hateful bile on social media yesterday the response was predictable enough. In the sewer of Twitter, apparently it was me and my views that warranted attack. We expect this from the lunatic fringes and anonymous posters of the Right and Left but the difference with the Left is that it is their thought leaders who are happy to lead the plunge into uncivil debate.

Senators, activists and even Anglican priests are happy to denounce their fellow citizens as amoral or immoral over essentially political differences. Their sanctimony often becomes ugly.

ABC broadcaster Adam Spencer responded to me on Twitter by pointing out I was “entitled” to my opinion. Gee thanks, what a generous gift from the politically correct gods. But he dared not criticise McKim; such admonishments of their side seem too fraught for the Left.

Instead Spencer wondered if I had publicly decried unspecified hate speech from Pauline Hanson, George Christensen and Cory Bernardi. He did not identify their alleged transgressions nor specify where I had supported, endorsed or failed to criticise these unidentified views. It was just the social media trick of linking me to the targets of the Left and inviting the usual pile on from hateful tweeps.

Absolutely entitled to your opinion here @chriskkenny but curious, have you ever tweeted the same about Hanson, Bernardi, Christenson, etc? Are their (right wing) prognostications “hateful” or “idiotic” ? If not by what metric are you measuring to allocate such reprimands? https://t.co/XUx2wHWqwH

— Adam Spencer (@adambspencer) March 22, 2018

For the record I have never interviewed Christensen or Hanson and have never seen a political intervention from either of them that I have admired. I have railed against Hanson’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration since the day she announced it. I know Cory Bernardi well and respect him but have disagreed with many of his policy positions including on Muslim immigration, same sex marriage and the monarchy. I refuse to denounce or dehumanise people like Bernardi — or Christensen and Hanson for that matter — just to placate the hateful partisans of the Left.

Welcome to public debate in 2018. Where the ABC’s thought leaders cannot bring themselves to condemn a Greens politician for publicly shaming a minister as racist and fascist. Instead, they orchestrate anger against the Right or anyone they choose to identify on the Right.

McKim might be at the vanguard of an ugly decline in political debate but there are plenty of others helping out. It will not be easy to improve the situation but I think we should start by ensuring mainstream media upholds far higher standards in the public square than apply on social media. Mainstream media must not join a race to the bottom, its usefulness and its success must lie in hosting more reasonable but nonetheless robust debates.