The enactment of the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 heralded an historic shift in what was to be regarded as fair comment and race hate speech. Under this section of the act, racial vilification was no longer socially acceptable in a socially cohesive, multicultural society. However, George Brandis, the Federal Attorney General, has argued that Section18C of the Racial Discrimination Act unjustifiably restricts the democratic principle of freedom of speech; claiming in 2014 that “people have a right to be bigots”. As expected, Brandis later proposed a draft bill to remove Section18C entirely. Although to do so would undermine the interests of social cohesion in a society as multicultural as Australia’s. It would upset the balance between…show more content… Through the executive Council of Australian Jewry, Mr Jones made a formal complaint about Mr Fredrick Toben’s anti-Semitic and Holocaust denying literature. As it stood, it was alleged that Toben’s publication breeched Section18C of the Racial Discrimination Act on the grounds of being “humiliating and offensive” to the Jewish community. To a great extent, this vilification case was unprecedented at the time: it was one of the first serious reported cases of internet vilification. Despite the publications academic based background, Mr Toben was found guilty of violating Section18C. Furthermore, his writing was found to be of a malicious intent; even ethnically criticising Jewish people on the grounds of being of “limited intelligence” and “motivated by financial gain”. Nevertheless, while internet vilification was not explicitly regarded to in Section18C, it was portrayed to the wider community; the “publics” eyes. With this taken into account, Simon Rice, professor of law at the Australian National University, announced that “even Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben would never have breached federal racial vilification law under the proposed changes…that’s how weak they are” (The Drum, 2014). Subsequently, in the eyes of various legal critics such as Rice, to narrow Section18C would indeed open the doors to an array of legal consequences. In this case, due to the fact that the publication of Toben did not warrant the “cause of fear of physical harm”, it would be deemed legal under Brandis’ reforms. This would ensure that the likes of Toben would be able to humiliate, insult and offend the Jewish community and other minority groups at
