George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I can. The test should be the test of ordinary community standards. One of the ways the old section 18C was demonstrated to be unsatisfactory was in the case of Eatock v Bolt, in which the judge interpreted section 18D—which by the way will also be repealed under our reforms—as imposing a test not of community standards but of the standard of a member of the alleged target or the alleged victim group. In that way, section 18D of the old Racial Discrimination Act transformed an objective community standard to, as it were, a semi-subjective standard to be judged by a small and narrow group in the Australian community. We intend to restore the test of the ordinary, reasonable Australian—the community standard test.