Group rights are inimical to human rights

And of course once you invent a right, people will find ways to bring themselves under it, meaning a higher level of in- and out-group identification.

Worse, it appears that in fact, amongst all the factors leading us to form groups, race is nowhere near the strongest.

In a 2001 study, Kurzbon et al hypothesise that race doesn’t serve an evolutionary purpose and that it is just one piece of information that we use to make a judgment of someone else. The more information we have, the less important race is.

So if someone is part of your tribe, the less likely you are to judge them by race, because you have other more relevant considerations. A consequence of that must be that legislation that particularises wrongs to just one part of the population on the basis of race is more likely to cause people to use race as a basis for judgment, increasing the likelihood of racism.

Fortunately the real wrongs that can be dealt with under the act don’t revolve around race. It’s wrong for someone to intimidate another person, whether they reference that person’s race or not. And we have laws to deal with that.

Labor appears to understand that 18C discriminates against the broader community - Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus wants to extend the 18C approach to age, gender, disability and religion – but this multiplies points of grievance, and doesn’t actually fix the problem.

By multiplying the number of tribes who can use this legislation, it makes it less exclusive, and more like a universal right, but this is a cobbled together approach which doesn’t really meet the underlying principle that all men and women ought to be treated equally under the law. Under the you still have to scramble into a tribe to be covered.

Worse, it would import the trivialities that characterise the RDA into other areas of life. If you can’t say in a newspaper article that some aborigines game the system now, what won’t you be able to say about women, Christians, teenagers, swingers or blade runners in the future?

Recently ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said it was OK to break unjust laws. She might actually be on to something. If the courts interpreted an extended 18C as they interpret the current one, many of us would find the only ethical thing to do would be to exercise our right to conscientious objection and break it.

It would be hard to have a proper democratic society, one where all are equal under the law, and debate can take place without unnecessary and unjust restrictions, without doing so.