Aly’s self-wedge on figures of speech

Instead Labor is indulging cheap party tricks and rhetorical questions about "what people want to say that they currently can't" to oppose change.

Recently, Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus presented at a Jewish community debate on 18C reform in Melbourne.

An audience member asked whether he thought there should be equivalent 18C protection to make it unlawful to offend people on the basis of their age, disability, gender and sexual orientation.

Dreyfus didn't reject the idea, and confirmed a future Labor government would look into it.

Unsurprisingly, religious leaders have since strongly questioned granting the same legal privileges they want to enjoy to others ­because it would stop them taking moral positions in public debate.

Now both Dreyfus and Aly are caught in hypocritical incoherence. They now think making it unlawful to harass someone on the basis of race amounts to licensing "hate speech", and concurrently argue making it unlawful to offend any other section of society is an unsupportable restriction on free speech.

The irony is that every example Aly has put forward about the conduct she wants made unlawful is harassment; which is exactly the test proposed by the Turnbull government's considered and constructive reforms.

Instead of pandering to victimhood Dreyfus, Aly and Labor should be supporting a sensible and consistent test to protect ­people from harassment.