by PAUL COLLITS – GOUGH Whitlam once responded to a heckler at a public gathering who was banging on about his policy on abortion by saying, “Madam, in your case could we make it retrospective?”
Well, hate speech is in the news, as always, now. Following the recent marches for a lost past.
- Now waving the Aussie flag can be deemed Islamophobia.
- Yet, our political class couldn’t give a rat’s about anti-Semitism. Certainly, the Labor Party doesn’t.
- “Normal” people regard this as high farce.
I wonder if we could make hate speech laws retrospective. It was Gough Whitlam’s immediate predecessor as Labor leader – and a something of a Labor icon, even though he never won an election – Arthur Calwell, who notoriously said, defending the then white Australia policy, “Two Wongs don’t make a white”.
Those were the days. I am guessing it wouldn’t pass muster in these enlightened times, when the coppers would come for you were you to dare say something similar, or even (apparently) to question immigration policy.
TAKE OFFENCE
Calwell would probably find himself in jail for that one. I am sure that at least someone would “take offence”. Like our very own Wong.
The old Labor Party was in the cart for white Australia. We should never forget that it was three Liberal leaders who, between them, took us from white Australia to today’s divided, angry, multi-monoculturalist society.
Harold Holt, who, like Daniel Andrews, may or may not have been a Chinese spy, was the one who ended the old immigration policy that had served us pretty well (in 1967).
Then Malcolm Fraser ushered in the theory of multiculturalism, in the late seventies.
Finally, it was John Howard who, for economic reasons, upped the immigration rate substantially in the early 2000s. And up it has stayed.
All this came to mind with the announcement by NSW Premier Chris Minns that he was going to “investigate” speeches from last’s months flag rally to see whether hate speech laws were infringed.
Minns is also acting on the inevitable Islamophobia wave that isn’t. Islamophobia is a bit like the climate catastrophe and the pandemics. And the lack of women politicians. It doesn’t exist.
Of course, the totally unnecessary new hate speech laws materialised under the cover of a (very real) wave of anti-Semitism, something for which these laws are not needed and which have very different purposes.
Our political class couldn’t give a rat’s about anti-Semitism. Certainly, the Labor Party doesn’t. As everyone including Blind Freddie knows.
As UK commentator Douglas Murray recently agreed, you could be done for Islamophobia these days for suggesting – well, for pointing out – that Muslims want to exterminate the Jews. I wonder what people think “from the river to the sea” actually means.
Now waving the Aussie flag can be deemed Islamophobia, I guess.
A very good friend of mine, Stephen McInerney, gave a speech at the Sydney rally. It is worth the watch.
Anyone less like a neo-Nazi – whatever that even is – you couldn’t hope to meet. In fact, a senior academic, a literary scholar, a solid Christian, an erudite social commentator, a family man (as they say).
Are these the speakers that Chris Minns means?
In Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain, mainstream journalists can have a visit from multiple coppers responding to an always anonymous complainant claiming to have been “offended” by an unidentified tweet, or some such.
The main focus of attention? The good old non-crime hate incident (NCHI), which is the largest driver of police getting off their arses these days.
The estimable Lord Sumption has called all this a “charter for grudges”.
WOKE
Another nail in the coffin of what is left of liberal democracy and free speech, and further evidence of the woke capture of our key institutions determined to make places like Britain and Australia “progressive utopias”.
And, in Britain’s case and perhaps in Australia’s, one of those woke-captured institutions is the police force. They are now political police. Military police. I guess it saves them the trouble of doing their day jobs.
Every (sorry, trigger word alert) “normal” person regards this as high farce, but in no way is it comedic.
The way to get police attention in Britain? Wave the St George cross flag. The way to get a British council employee into the streets to actually fix something? Paint the St George’s cross on the inner pavement of a roundabout.
I am not sure that Minns or anyone else has “investigated” any of the language used on the Harbour Bridge a few weeks back when all the Palestinian flag wavers let their feelings be known about Israel.
There might be some rich pickings there for the hate speech investigator class. Of course, at the inevitable Palestinian celebration of 7/10 in 2023 in Sydney, the single arrest that was made was of someone carrying an Israeli flag. For his own safety, they said.
What does anyone think Minns is doing with his referral of the “marches” to the police for “investigation”, other than intimidating opponents of his and his class’s world view into silence?
I guess there is a reason why contemporary cricket commentators – the sort who say “batters” instead of “batsmen” – no longer use terms like “French cut”, “Chinese drive” and “going Irish” (for reverse swing).
Better safe than in jail.PC
