HERALD Sun columnist Andrew Bolt is being sued under the Racial Vilification Act by a group of Aborigines led by 73-year-old activist Pat Eatock over two columns he wrote last year.

The two columns are here and here. With all the sensitivity and nuance Bolt typically brings to his columns, they question the Aboriginality of a few easy targets – academics and artists, in the main. For what it’s worth, Bolt fails to grasp – or, deliberately ignores – the fairly simple and straightforward idea that cultural identity is, well, cultural. The columns are undoubtedly offensive and hurtful to their subjects.

But I don’t think even the most malevolent interpretation of Bolt’s columns would have them constitute a threat, or inciting a threat, against their subjects. We’re talking about personal insult here, however deep it may have been felt.

As such, I echo the concerns of Liberty Victoria President Michael Pearce SC:

“‘‘It is easy to imagine that it caused offence and hurt to the people against whom it was directed. However, hurt and offence are caused by all sorts of speech all the time.

‘‘It would be impossible to proscribe all speech which causes hurt and offence.’

Indeed. I’ve personally written things about Bolt which, had he a thinner skin, could cause hurt and offence.

It remains to be seen whether the case will go anywhere; however, the very fact that the case has been brought has a chilling effect on free speech. News Limited can afford legal counsel; others (notably, bloggers) may not.

Regardless of whether this case succeeds, there is little practical benefit to using the law to attempt to silence Bolt’s views on this issue – and, clearly, it’s what this is about, despite protests to the contrary. While shutting him up may be personally satisfying, it will merely make his considerable number of fans more convinced of his heroism and righteousness.

The Racial and Religious tolerance act has a decade of lengthy and pointless court action, and nothing else, to its name. It does nothing to actually help achieve racial and religious tolerance, and should be repealed.

That may be why the Coalition’s response to Burke’s appointment yesterday was a repeated effort to ignore the entire issue of population policy in favour of claiming too many boat people were coming.

On the other side, Labor has read the tea leaves on population and quickly and professionally put together a decent facsimile of action. The Prime Minister can now say that he has appointed the first Population Minister. A review is under way, giving Rudd an excuse to duck the issue between now and the election, but also providing the basis for a response to the Little Australianists like Dick Smith whenever they demand action to curb the plague of people coming here and eating our food.

Bear in mind Labor’s own heritage on immigration is mixed. The Parliamentary party has long been a “big Australia” supporter, from the days of Calwell through to its recent and occasionally continuing history of ethnic branch-stacking. But trade unions have been traditional opponents of high immigration, for exactly the reason business supports it, and the urban Left fringes of the party will lean to the environmentalist view that there’s very much such a thing as too many people.

As Robert noted, the Liberals are in conflict with their own business constituency, and the Coalition’s “broad church” encompasses some fairly wild extremes of nativism and racism. It’s worth underlining that these sentiments are more profound than electoral dog-whistling; they both reflect community attitudes deeply held in some sectors, and genuinely disturbing sentiments and reflexive prejudices on the part of those who articulate them. Kevin Andrews is a good example.

So, taking into account the argument Keane also makes about Labor’s heritage, what we have is a debate that doesn’t break neatly along partisan lines, and is overwritten with conflicting but complementary scissions around race, history and culture.

Julia Gillard’s interview on Lateline last night was interesting. She made what I thought were some insightful and incisive points about a Lowy Institute survey released today on population issues. Gillard showed a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of an apparently inconsistent and contradictory public opinion, and made the important point that projections (such as those in the Treasury’s 2010 Intergeneration Report) are just that, not immutable, shapeable into the future by political decisions we collectively take. At the same time, she deftly rubbished the Opposition’s opportunism on population and refugees.

Tony Jones’ questions appeared to presuppose a premise that politicians were wary of enabling a public debate on immigration, but also that such a debate could only be one which is highly partisan.

I think there’s a certain insularity (in both the literal and metaphorical senses of the word) to the trope that immigration is best left unspoken; that it should be a matter of consensus between the two major parties, lest public sentiment upset the apple cart. There’s a paranoia among elements of the political class – a disdain for public opinion – which results in a policing of the borders of population issues as pernicious as the fear some pollies are fond of inculcating about the policing of Australia’s borders. There’s something of the Nineteenth century fear of the mob about this attitude; a parochial concern that Australians are incapable of having a civic conversation if race is at issue.

We actually have everything to gain as a nation, I would argue, in conducting a mature and reasoned debate on population and immigration. Even if some unsightly ghosts are summoned up in the process.

Labor’s tendency, after the One Nation phenomenon, and Howard’s race-baiting in 2001, was to retreat behind a fence on immigration; to soften the border control rhetoric but to leave its underpinnings intact. Gillard’s own crafting of a consensus immigration policy was part of that move. That Rudd Labor is now prepared to facilitate a responsible debate on these very same issues, and to reframe them, seems to me to be something quite significant, and something that ought to be welcomed. A truly Big Australia would be one that could craft a collective conversation with a horizon longer than that of the next day’s papers, and the next election.

There’s no doubt that there are problems with Facebook’s method of dealing with offensive content. But the fundamental errors in this debate are twofold:

(a) Social networking sites are far more akin to phone networks than a traditional publishing model. A huge multiplicity of users constantly and simultaneously post content. Unlike talking on a phone, it leaves a permanent trace, but it’s a much better analogy;

(b) The direction of causation is the wrong way round. It’s not that the internet encourages people to do dumb and wrong things. It’s that people do dumb and wrong things, and they do them on the internet too.

The noise coming from politicians, and the ‘solutions’, make one wonder whether they understand at all how social networking works. Part of the problem is one very easily resolved through taking more responsibility on the part of group creators for the little bit of the internet they set up, and using privacy and content management tools intelligently.

There’s an interesting take on all this from Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia, from whom I’ve borrowed the title of this post, and for a deeper examination of the issues, I’d also recommend the Oxford Internet Institute’s report on balancing freedom of speech and child protection online, which seeks to find some common ground between interlocutors who often seem to talk past one another.

“I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”

Australians are rightfully proud of the good thing we’ve got going on here. We know that we live in god’s own country and most of us wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that – in fact I couldn’t agree with it more. However, one area in which we’re certainly not world leaders is self reflection. Most of us are pretty happy with our lot in life and don’t feel the need to risk it by asking too many questions of ourselves. As a result, we’ve made avoiding direct public discussions about the (relatively minor) imperfections in the Australian way of life an art form. It’s trite, but it’s the Australian way to dodge any issues that have the potential to make us uncomfortable with a dismissive ‘She’ll be right’ or ‘No worries’.

I had cause to reflect on this recently when I posted a bit of a spray about the inadequacy of the police response to the recent attacks on Indians in Melbourne on my Facebook profile. This deliberately direct comment provoked some very odd responses (both public and private) from ordinarily sensible people. While the content of these responses was extremely varied, they had one fairly consistent theme – a desperate avoidance of confronting the role that racism (subjective or structural) has played in these attacks.

I knew that Mark shared my frustration at people’s reluctance to confront the issue head on, so to try and keep up the momentum for addressing the core of this problem I offered to set out a factual basis for discussion and respond to some of the more common dodges that I’ve seen employed to avoid these facts.

Factual Basis for Discussion:

1. Media coverage of violence in which racial minorities are the victim has increased substantially over the last 18 months or so. I don’t have data for this, but I don’t think anyone’s really disputing it.
2. Assaults and robberies of people of Indian appearance increased by 5.4% in 2008-09 (a total of 1525 incidents).
3. People of Indian appearance are 2 ½ times as likely to be the victim of an assault as non-Indians (an assault rate of 1700 assaults per 100,000 people compared to 700 assaults per 100,000 people). It could even be worse than this; a number of Indians who have contacted me privately has suggested that there is chronic under-reporting of attacks to the police driven by a fear of losing visas and a belief the police are apathetic.
4. Representatives of the Australian-Indian community and the Indian Government have publicly stated their belief that these attacks are racially motivated.
5. The public response from the Police to this situation has been inconsistent. Public responses to incidents are provided on a case by case basis without reference to broader trends. On some occasions the Police have conceded a racial motivation for attacks while in others Police have publicly rejected race as a causal factor despite evidence to the contrary.

On the basis of the response I received to my original post, I’m sure people are already starting to object that nothing in the above necessarily equates to a problem of racism. So let’s examine the most common responses that have been prevalent online in the past few days:

Disavowal: “You Can’t Prove That These Incidents Were Motivated By Race”

By far the most common response to claims of racist violence basically boils down to a correlation v causation argument. Anyone with a little knowledge of statistics knows that correlation does not imply causation. In layman’s terms, the mere fact that Indians are two and a half times as likely to be victims of violent crime doesn’t mean that they are victims of violent crime BECAUSE they are Indian. There could well be another cause that isn’t a function of their race – the frequently cited alternative causes are Indians over-representation in poorer areas, more dangerous jobs and shift-work (Mark’s already covered the structural racism angle here so I won’t go over old ground here).

This is an argument that’s not limited to the online debate – variants of this argument have been advanced by people as senior as Australia’s High Commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, who recently complained that:

There is an unfortunate tendency in the tabloid media to equate anything bad happening to a person of Indian origin to racism. Then they focus on why you won’t admit it is racism, because they take it as a given that any attack has to be a racist attack.’

Unfortunately, this argument is one of those examples of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. As XKCD has put it, while correlation doesn’t imply causation “It does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.” Unfortunately, in Australia, when correlation points to racism, we don’t ‘look over there’ – we resolutely look the other way. The avoidance instinct kicks in and we latch onto another causal explanation, any causal explanation to avoid having to confront the presence racism.

This instinct to look the other way that leads to extraordinary logical contortions like the following chain of reasoning from a Victorian Police spokesman:

I think there was a mention where there was a comment similar to `why don’t you go home?’ but there was nothing more… They appear to take some delight in the actual assault. It’s very disturbing and their propensity for violence is quite shocking… I think the motivation would have been robbery.

Well, obviously.

I’d be happy if the Victorian Police were able to make the case publicly that racially motivated violence isn’t a problem. It would be great if someone could publicly show that that the correlation between Indian and being a victim of violent assaults is not the result of a causal relationship. Show me some data that shows that taxi drivers, night shift store clerks or people in other at risk occupations are equally likely to be victims of assault as Indians (in fact, before you do that you’d better show me that Indians actually are over-represented in these professions).

But people don’t do this. Instead the default position of the Police seems to be to rule out a causal relationship, despite the overwhelming correlation and without any data of their own. Any honest evaluation of the statistical context of these crimes would lead someone to ask how the Police could possibly be justified in confidently ruling out racial prejudice as a causal factor in time for the next morning’s news.

It’s this automatic dismissal of a racial element to these crimes despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that’s causing so much resentment among Australian-Indians and the Indian Government. Neville Roach AO, the Chairman Emeritus of the Australia India Business Council hit the nail on the head when he said that:

Unfortunately, the seeming instant dismissal by local authorities of the possibility of racism being involved has created an impression of a nation in denial. This has seriously damaged Australia’s credibility and helped inflame public opinion in India and within the Indian community in Australia, who see the official line as indicative of an unwillingness to take complaints of racism seriously.

It is difficult to understand how the police are able to rule out racism completely and with such certainty. While a premature conclusion of racism would also be inappropriate, the apparent disproportionate number of attacks on Indians relative to other overseas students does suggest racism is a factor.

Quite. It’s not the people who are suggesting that racism is relevant here that have something to prove. It’s those who are denying it.

Other Countries Are Worse!

“Australians on the whole are no more racist than anyone else, and possibly less so than quite a few places”. This one is often accompanied by gratuitous assertions that because of this fact, if you criticise anyone in Australia for being racist you are an anti-Australian, latte sipping, left wing basket weaver (those who know me will know how deeply insulting I find that).

The rejoinder this is short an obvious: Yes, so what?

I have no doubt that Asian, American and particularly European countries are far more racist than Australia (anyone who disagrees with that is either ignorant of the OS experience or into pointless self-flagellation). There probably is no other country in the world that I would rather live in if I was of another race (or more pertinently, that I would rather my child to live in).

But so what? Racism isn’t a relative concept. It’s not less bad because others are worse. To put it another way, we wouldn’t stop trying to stamp out paedophilia in Australia just because we discovered it was more common in another country.

Further, putting false relativism to one side, Australia’s uniquely exposed to negative economic consequences of being perceived as racist (to wit see projections of declining Asian student numbers). We’ve got good reason to hold ourselves to a higher standard than everyone else.

All Violence is Wrong – We Shouldn’t Focus on the Racial Element

Violence is violence is violence. It’s repulsive in any form and there are strong laws against it in all forms so we shouldn’t fixate on the racial element.

A week ago I probably would have agreed with this. I was against hate crime legislation because I thought that was already adequately covered by existing criminal laws and anything beyond that was getting close to criminalising thought.

However, upon reflection in light of the incident that I experienced, I think I’ve changed my mind. I think violence with a racial element IS in fact different to other violence because it has a differential impact. Violence with a racial element has an additional, targeted intimidation impact on minority communities that general violence doesn’t have. I hadn’t really thought about this before, but sitting on that train the news reports of racially violent incidents came immediately to mind in a way that I think general reports of violence wouldn’t have in that situation. In this way, the broader intimidation impact of violence is greater when it’s targeted towards an identifiable sub-group.

Further, generalising the problem in this way can blind policy makers to presence of important causal factors specific to the racial subgroup. It’s a bit like saying to an Aboriginal that alcoholism is bad wherever it manifests itself, therefore we shouldn’t focus on alcoholism in remote communities, rather simply on the general, Australia wide problem.

Don’t Talk About It – It’ll Only Make It Worse

The common objection to confronting the racial element of these incidents is that even if it does exist, if you talk about it in public, one of the following things will happen:

* You’ll ‘fuel’ the problem by given racist louts the publicity they crave;
* You’ll provoke a ‘law and order’ bidding war between Labor and the Liberals; and
* You’ll undermine the operational independence of the Police.

And on top of that, it won’t change the behaviour of people who are already flagrantly disregarding the norms of society.

I have to say, this is the response that irritates me the most. It amounts to little more than the advocacy of sweeping the issue under the carpet.

I simply can’t accept this – Words matter.

Words matter even more when they are being delivered by the Police – the bearers of the Government’s monopoly on the use of force. The Police enforce our society’s laws and as such are standard bearers for our values. Their public statements and behaviour carry special force. You could probably run off half a dozen slogans of police road safety campaigns. When the Police speak, they speak with authority.

However, when the Police simply ignore the overwhelming correlation between being Indian and being a victim of violent crime, they send the message that it’s ok for the rest of the community to similarly look the other way when confronted with racial prejudice. By equivocating in the face of overwhelming evidence of racially motivated violent incidents, the Police send the message that the broader community is also equivocal in the face of racism. When this prejudice is unchecked in the public debate it creates the impression that there is room for this in our society. And they send a message to the Indian community that they are not taking the issue seriously.

Let’s Face Facts and Act

It was this feeling that the representatives of law and order in our society, the Police force, were letting down the Indian community by not being honest about the issue that prompted my extremely minor contribution to remedying the problem. It was as much an act of absolution of guilt as community service (though there are international precedents and a strong public policy argument in favour of such an approach). I decided to start mapping incidents of racial violence and any consequent law enforcement response because I wanted to try to face the facts and see the scale of the problem for myself. I haven’t gotten far and I’m shocked that it has received the attention that it did, but I’ve already learnt more from people’s response to the idea than I probably expected to learn from the exercise itself. It hasn’t changed my view that Australians in general aren’t racist. But it’s made me realise that we’re more ‘actively complacent’ about it than I ever expected.

Elsewhere: Hoyden About Town.

If, as we discussed on the previous thread, it is the case that students or recent immigrants working in servos, 24 hour convenience stores, cleaning jobs, taxi driving and so forth are more at risk of assault and abuse, then it follows that working conditions in the night time economy are part of the problem. It’s well accepted, for instance, that highly skilled shift workers such as nurses can obtain, through the industrial system, protections from dangerous journeys to and from work; for instance, well lit and surveilled routes to car parks, security, cab fares home. Similarly, workers in occupations where abuse and threats of or actual violence are likely to be a frequent risk, such as in emergency rooms and Centrelink, also have established protocols and risk management measures (including quick access to police) in place to safeguard their right to work in an environment free of danger and harrassment. Such protections are at the cost of the employer.

There seems no reason, in justice or fairness, why less skilled workers should not be entitled to the same protections.

A range of decisions and modes of social organisation have come together to create an underclass in the night time service industry; immigration and visa regulations which have the effect of facilitating cash in hand and illegal work, the promise of permanent residency after courses in areas where there are perceived skills shortages (retail, hospitality…) and dodgy requirements for ‘work experience’, threats by unscrupulous employers leveraging visa status, and more.

At the same time, as myriad suggested, there may well be a focus of resentment in low socio-economic areas towards those who have access to education and work at a time of high youth unemployment, whose manifestation is racist attacks and victimisation.

Nurses and public servants achieved safer working conditions through unionism. But there appears to be an ideological belief in Australia that running a small business is some sort of sacred right, and that any attempt to ensure better conditions for workers is a dastardly impost, if not evil socialism.

The consequences of a globalising capitalism are among the factors which create workplace ghettos for international students.

We need to recognise that, and deal with it.

Related thread: Guest post by Glen Fuller on student labour.

Elsewhere: Gary Sauer-Thompson:

I am continually surprised by the attempts of both the politicians in Canberra and Victoria and the police in Australia to downplay the racism in Melbourne’s western suburbs that is expressed in the violent attacks against Indian students. All sorts of convolutions are involved, including pointing to the finger to Indian media, in the attempt to avoid the obvious—the curry bashing.

The obvious is that racism in Australia is pervasive, part of the fabric of everyday life and normalised in ways that render it invisible, and make it one of the strongest forms of structural violence. This is what is being denied by the Brumby Government in Victoria, with its talk about random violence and opportunistic crimes, and its unwillingness to set up an agency that is responsible for international student safety.

Yeah , I know. Canberra is battling to reassure New Delhi that Australians aren’t racist, fearful the outcry over violent assaults may harm relations and stop the flow of lucrative education dollars. The real concern is to keep the dollars flowing in from the international students not the racist undercurrents of Australian nationalism.

The constant appeals to Australian multiculturalism (a tolerant and fair society) is an important policy image in attracting international students. Racism and multiculturalism are two sides of the same coin.

Update: Guest post by Tim Watts.

I think there is no doubt that hate crimes occur in Australia, and that it would be futile to deny that racism is a real problem in this nation.

However, there are a few issues around these events worthy of comment.

My impression, and it’s only that, is that the majority of these crimes appear to have occurred in Melbourne. I don’t think that’s because there’s a particularly high proportion of Indian students studying there. It may be higher, but there is certainly a large number in Brisbane. Is there something particular to Melbourne that may account for this?

Secondly, I wonder, above and beyond educational measures universities and others may have implemented to advise new students about safety, what can be done? The response to this, and previous incidents, seems to me to carry a demand in its wake that the government take action, but it’s not at all clear to me what action would be desirable or effective. I am sure, though, that the disavowal of racism, which cannot be unrelated to other issues in the Australian-Indian bilateral relationship, and concerns about the image Australia projects more broadly, is not helpful.

Elsewhere: Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at GreensBlog.

Update: New post.

Australia has some of the worst racial disparities in the developed world. The average household income of indigenous Australians is only 60% of the average. The proportion with high-school or higher educations is only half that of the average (a fifth for university qualifications), while their unemployment rate is triple that of non-indigenous Australians. Their health statistics are equally appalling, with complication and disease rates at least double the average, with a consequent effect on life expectancy. The average indigenous Australian dies a decade earlier as a result of poverty, disease, poor access to health services and institutionalised racism.

The Australian Federal Government spends billions trying to correct these disparities, with apparently little effect. But that’s because most of the money never actually reaches its target, instead being diverted to buy votes in marginal seats:

THE Northern Territory Labor government has for the past five years diverted $2 billion earmarked for indigenous disadvantage and other key services to mainstream spending in marginal Darwin seats.

Detailed figures obtained by The Weekend Australian reveal that hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars provided by the commonwealth and intended for indigenous health, homelessness, delivery of services and families have been used to service debt and bolster superannuation payments.

The figures come as the Territory government continues to defend its handling of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Project, which has so far failed to result in one new house being built, despite $45m being spent in the first 15 months of the project.

This is not a new story; the National Indigenous Times highlighted it back in 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. But still it goes on – and indigenous Australians suffer as a result.

It is time to end this organised racist theft, and for state governments to spend the money they are allocated for indigenous peoples for its proper purpose, rather than misappropriating it. But that would require Australians to accept that indigenous people matter, that they are human beings equally deserving of government attention. And looking across the Tasman, even after Rudd’s historic apology, that acceptance is still a long way away.

In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a “state of emergency” in Northern Australia, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race. Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was fundamentally discriminatory. And he didn’t mince his words in saying so:

“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”

The Australian has more:

Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were “overtly discriminatory” and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.

“People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.

“It’s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.”

The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor’s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.

“It’s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples … aren’t capable of taking care of their homes,” Prof Anaya said.

“Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples’ development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.”

As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: “There should be reparations,” he said.

That’s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better. It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has moved a long way from Howard’s position, responds.

In the Sydney suburb of Manly, hundreds of youths draped in “Aussie pride” livery wore slogans declaring “f–k off we’re full” as they smashed car windows and ran up the famous Corso targeting non-white shop keepers.

A 18-year-old Asian female in one of the cars was showered with shattered glass, giving her numerous cuts to her arms. She was treated on the scene by ambulance officers.

A taxi driven by a Sikh Indian was also targeted while an Asian shopkeeper was reportedly assaulted.

Groups of men jumped up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within, and were heard singing “t*ts out for the boys” at passing girls and yelled “lets go f–k with these Lebs”.

Echoing some comments on the Mick Dodson thread, I’m also interested in knowing exactly when and why running around like a porkchop with a flag draped over you became a “tradition” for Australia Day. I suppose there’s some consolation in the fact that John Howard isn’t popping up saying “inexcusable, but just exuberance” or something anymore, but how neutral precisely is the national flag as a symbol on at least One Day Of The Year when it’s appropriated as permission for violent, xenophobic and misogynist behaviour?

Elsewhere: Skepticlawyer, The Radical Radish.

Prince Harry’s comments were little more than everyday army banter. He’s no racist – his heart is definitely in the right place.

Since the comedy stylings of Professor David Flint AM have been absent from Crikey recently, and wondering what Australia’s leading monarchist had to say about the latest Royal brouhaha, I was lucky enough to happen upon “No Republic!”. At first, I thought Prof. Flint was maintaining a dignified silence. His latest post refers to the important and pressing issue of the refusal of royal assent in Luxembourg. However, scrolling down, I found the Australian monarchist case from the horse’s mouth, and it’s not “he’s just a lad”. It’s all a Murdoch led conspiracy, apparently. And an act of revenge!

There is actually a serious side to Prince Harry’s comments, if not to the Prince. That’s neatly discussed at The Global Sociology Blog.