Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a dark view the Labor Party have just shown that they have of their fellow Australians. You simply do not trust your fellow Australians with free speech because you do not believe in free speech yourselves. You want to see a government bureaucracy, headed by the likes of Mrs Triggs, to monitor and control not only the speech of Australians but the type of cartoons that they can draw.

I have a different view. I have a different view of the average Australian. I believe the average Australian is good and decent and rejects racism in all manners that it may come up. I believe that the average Australian has a sense of humour and a disrespect of pompous authority. But they have had a gut full of political correctness. It is simply a corrosive toxin that is undermining our Australian culture.

The member for Isaacs says today that section 18C is clear; it works; it has clarity. Let me go through what happened to the late Bill Leak. This is from his submission to the parliamentary inquiry only a few months ago. He said:

I was put through two months of incredible stress by the Commission’s investigation—

That is the Australian Human Rights Commission—

The first complainant … didn’t have to justify anything she did. No one asked her any questions and it didn’t cost her a cent … the tortuous process had thrown my life into a state of utter chaos, and it’s not over yet. Three months after the cartoon was published, two more complaints were received and accepted by the Commission … So now, two months after being notified of the first complaint and four months after the publication of the cartoon, the possibility that I may yet be required to defend myself in court still hovers, like a dark cloud, over my life.

Two weeks ago, on Wednesday evening, in his final speech, Bill Leak talked about how he had to flee from Islamist terrorists and move to a safe house. He said:

… last year I realised there’s another group of people who are just as capable of making life hell for me if they fail to be amused by my wit and artistry.

Of course he was being facetious.

It’s just my luck that causing offence has been made an offence at the same time that taking offence has become fashionable. So now there’s a mob that won’t only punish you if your cartoon offends them, they’ll punish you if it's offended someone else. They may be a little less murderous than your Islamist terrorists, but they’re no less unhinged and dangerous. They’re also driven by the same authoritarian impulse to silence anyone who transgresses against the unwritten laws of political correctness. I’m talking about the thought police at that rogue totalitarian outfit, the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Thirty-six hours later Bill Leak was dead of a massive heart attack. And you come in here and claim that section 18C is working fine and you do not want to change a syllable. If you cannot see that there is a problem with what happened to Bill Leak and the QUT students, then I say shame on the lot of you. Shame on you all.

What is also disappointing is that the program that we heard that Labor are going to run out—the campaign against this—is actually divisive and separates Australians. It tells the minority that they need protection from racist Australians and all that is there to protect them is 18C. This breeds division and dissent in our society. That is the campaign that you lot are about to run. So I would ask you to think twice. Look at what these changes are. They are minor changes to clarify the act so that what happened to Bill Leak will never happen to any Australian ever again. That is what we want these changes for.

We hope that Labor get on board with this. We do not want to see this program of dividing one Australian from another by this false campaign that they have got. I hope that they change their attitude. The average Australian is decent and good—(Time expired)

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