Luke McNamara

Freedom of speech and racial vilification in Australia: ‘The Bolt case’ in public discourse

This article examines the public discourse that emerged in the aftermath of the 2011 decision of the Federal Court of Australia in Eatock v Bolt. We characterise the narrative of ‘the Bolt case’ as a ‘mobilising discourse’ that countered rather than echoed the decision itself. This discourse had three main messages: encouraging scepticism about the authenticity of fair-skinned Aboriginal persons and judgment by non-Aboriginal persons about the legitimacy of Aboriginal identity according to skin colour; questioning the legitimacy of racial vilification laws and strengthening a libertarian conception of freedom of speech. We explain how such a contrary discourse became dominant in the wake of a successful racial vilification action and consider the implications of these events. 本文研究了2011年澳大利亚联邦法庭就伊脱克诉博尔特案做出判决后的公众议论。博尔特案的叙事属于“动员话语”，是对判决的反弹而非反响。该话语主要包括三个信息：鼓励对浅肤色原住人士的真实性的质疑，鼓励由非原住人士根据肤色判定原住民身份的合法性；质疑种族诽谤法的合理性；支持言论自由的观念。笔者解释了何以这种矛盾的话语盛行于一次成功的种族诽谤行动之后，并讨论了这些事件的影响。

Evidencing the harms of hate speech

ABSTRACT The ways in which targeted communities experience hate speech is an important, but often neglected, component of the debate over the legitimacy of hate speech laws. This article reports on data drawn from interviews conducted with 101 members of Indigenous and minority ethnic communities in Australia regarding their experiences of hate speech. We give voice to targets’ experiences of face-to-face and more widely broadcast hate speech, and outline the constitutive and consequential harms they claim to have suffered. We assess these against the alleged harms of hate speech in the literature, finding a close correlation between targets’ reports and the literature.

Changes in the expression of prejudice in public discourse in Australia: assessing the impact of hate speech laws on letters to the editor 1992-2010

This article seeks to fill a gap in the literature on empirical research into the experiences of countries with hate speech laws. We report on the results of a qualitative document analysis of letters to the editor published between 1992 and 2010 in Australia, a country with 25 years of experience of civil hate speech laws. The analysis demonstrates the tension between publishing views of members of the public and remaining within the confines of legally permissible expression. Positive findings include an awareness of the existence of hate speech laws; a noticeable shift in language use, as evidenced by the elimination or reduction (depending on the minority being targeted) of crudely prejudicial expressions; and an overall reduction in the proportion of prejudicial letters published. Contrarily, prejudice is still being expressed to a significant degree, at times quite virulently.

Street Music and the Law in Australia: Busker Perspectives on the Impact of Local Council Rules and Regulations

ABSTRACT Street performers have long had an ambiguous relationship with the law. At various times they have been castigated and policed as “beggars in disguise” or treated as an urban nuisance to be tightly controlled and tolerated at best. Recent decades have seen something of an about-face. City governments in many countries are embracing buskers as a cultural and commercial asset and are putting in place legal regimes that aim to simultaneously encourage and control busking. Field work in Australia’s two largest cities—Melbourne and Sydney—can be used to assess whether the rules and conditions that are associated with permit systems are compatible with the goals of most buskers: to make an artistic contribution to the quality of urban life and to make a living. Contrary to the view that state-imposed rules are incompatible with the nature and ethos of busking, contemporary busking laws are widely supported by street musicians and are regarded as facilitative of, rather than a barrier to, busking’s positive contribution to the vitality of the everyday life of the city.

Letters to the editor: the impact of hate speech laws on public discourse in Australia

The data here are comprised of: 1) a word document outlining the method for collection of letters to the editor, the timeframe, the events selected, and the newspapers from which letters were collected, and 2) a spreadsheet containing the coding for each letter, and the totals across different time periods in each category.