Group rights are inimical to human rights

In fact, international polling shows that Australia is one of the most racially tolerant countries on earth.

So it’s not surprising that the trivialities litigated under Section 18C are as bad as it gets. We’re so good at policing these things socially, most abuse is likely to be bad-tempered, on the spur of the moment, and away from the public.

Who can forget the scorn poured out on the 13 year old girl who called Adam Goodes an ape?

Not that all these cases are what I would describe as trivial. Rugema v Gadsten Pty Ltd & Derkes [1997] was a case of serious workplace harassment, and this points to another defect in the legislation.

When it does deal with serious matters, they are matters which would either be described as “harassment” and therefore fall under the government’s proposed reforms, or could be dealt with by laws predicated on one’s rights as an individual and member of society, rather than one’s membership of a sub-group.

Rugema could have been dealt with under workplace laws that didn’t require a race element. Bolt could have alternatively been litigated as defamation, which would have been more appropriate, but introduced a higher bar for the plaintiff to clear. Race was incidental to these cases, not the main factor at all.

Submissions to the Joint Parliamentary Inquiry into Free Speech pointed to an increase in incidents of racial abuse in recent years. While this is subjective, it is backed up by other, more solid research.

The Scanlon Society’s Mapping Social Cohesion National Report claims a more than 100% increase in experience of racial or religious discrimination in the nine years to 2016 from 9% to 20%. And the 2016 Reconciliation Australia Barometer found an increase in the belief that Australia was a racist country from 35 per cent in 2014 to 39 per cent in 2016.

If S18C is a bulwark between us and the racism tide, why is it rising at the same time as 18C is in place?

Could it be that rather than discouraging racism 18C actually encourages it?

What we know of social psychology suggests this to be the case. We know that human beings are “groupish”. Even if we are arbitrarily assigned to a team by something like a coin toss we will readily and quickly start to discriminate in favour of our team.

When you make remedies available to people on the basis of what group they belong to, then not only is it going to make them identify more strongly with that group, but it will also make non-group members differentiate themselves from that group more strongly as well.