James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise tonight to speak on reforms to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act because what we are trying to do with these reforms tonight is continue in the fight against tyranny. I have said before in this chamber that we are at the end of the second hundred-years war, and this second hundred-years war is the war against tyranny. It started in the Great War with an expansionist Germany. It continued through fascism arising in Germany and continued with communism as it enslaved the peoples of Russia and Eastern Europe. Our fight against tyranny paused in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the freedoms that were fought for were given to the people who were formerly under the yoke of the Soviet oppressors. It erupted again, sadly, in New York in 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.

The components of this hundred-years war against tyranny that I want to talk about tonight I spoke about in my maiden speech. The first concerns governments restricting freedom of speech and freedom of association and how leftists delegitimise all views other than their own. How we see 18C operate is a classic demonstration of the consequences of the government back in 1995 bringing in changes to the Racial Discrimination Act that have had the effect of shutting down freedom of speech. We also see with the 18C debate that anyone who believes in freedom of speech is attacked, marginalised and portrayed as some hard-right fighter by those on the left. That is disappointing because, when it comes to this hundred-years war against tyranny, the principles which have underpinned this fight have been freedom of speech and freedom of association.

With 18C, who are the victims of this nefarious section of a piece legislation? Let's talk about the victims of 18C. One was a journalist—let's try and stop a journalist from expressing their views. Andrew Bolt probably is not my biggest fan. In fact, you could probably say he and I have what you would call a—