Voltaire awards
Apparently free speech is only free if it attacks us conservatives. Liberty Victoria has announced Gillian Triggs as the 2017 winner of the Voltaire Award for her contribution to free speech.
Yep…really…free speech
Chris Kenny at The Australian says;
This is the ultimate sellout of the human rights crowd. Triggs is lauded not for adhering to their lofty principles but for being on the right side of their partisan political debates. Look at her record: she delayed an inquiry into children in detention for 18 months for political reasons; pursued three university students for years over innocuous Facebook posts; allowed the commission to spruik for complaints that were then taken up against cartoonist Bill Leak; and has repeatedly misled and been forced to correct her evidence to various parliamentary inquiries.
All of which suits Liberty Victoria’s charter.
In July Professor Triggs will share the stage at a gala award function in Melbourne with Georgie Stone, Liberty Victoria’s first recipient of its Young Voltaire Award for becoming, at age 10, “the youngest person in Australia to be granted permission by a court to take hormone blockers, the first stage of medical treatment for transgender children.”
I understand that from a left perspective anyone who attacks free speech such as Triggs does, is worthy of the award but what the hell has a poor trouble gender confused kid got to do with free speech?
According to Georgie Stone her first words were “Mum, I want a vagina.” and that was when she was two!
Right….nothing suss there.
According the Mayo Clinic website;
Although every child grows and develops at his or her own pace, toddler speech development tends to follow a fairly predictable path. For example, the average 2-year-old:
- Speaks at least 50 words
- Links two words together, such as “my cup” or “no juice”
- Speaks clearly enough for parents to understand about half of the words
But not our Georgie. No sir! She’s way ahead of that. Full sentence…complicated word.
“Mum, I want a vagina”.
I understand and have empathy with kids with gender problems but Georgie is obviously an alphabet promotion and propaganda tool as is the Voltair award itself.
Come back Lewis Carroll, we need you to explain this.
Previous recipients of the left-wing gala award include Julian Assange, Get Up!, Julian Burnside, David Marr, Richard Ackland, Stephen Mayne and Waleed Aly.
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Far be it from me to disagree with anything you post, Kev, but perhaps a few notes about AHRC (the organisation led by the much-maligned Gillian Triggs) might inform any discussion.
First up, breaches of 18C are a very small part of what this organisation deals with, day by day. Check out these statistics on the issues dealt with and how they are resolved – http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/complaint-statistics-annual-report-2009-2010-australian-human-rights-commission
Note that complaints against (for example) discrimination on the grounds of disability rank highest, with employment next. Race comes in third. (Table 3).
Note also that 47% of complaints lodged with the Commission over the last 5 years were finalised through conciliation, without resort to the courts or penalty. Also 35% were terminated or declined, which means they were thrown out (Table 6).
I had personal experience of one of the conciliated complaints, when I acted (pro bono) for the parent of a disabled child who had made a complaint against a wealthy private school. The school had employed a teacher aide (salary paid for the parent), and then proceeded to use that person for purposes other than supporting the child. It was resolved by the school refunding the costs, and apologising to the parent. A less tolerant parent could have sued for criminal fraud.
At the hearing, the school employed a very expensive solicitor, who, it turned out, hadn’t bothered to read the relevant legislation (Disability Discrimination Act 1992). I never did find out how much he was paid, or if the school got their money back, but his embarrassment when his ignorance was admonished by the Commissioner, was delicious.
The bottom line is, the Commission does good work, and most of it behind the scenes, never making it into the public arena. Unfortunately, sometimes it gets used by both sides of politics and the media has a field day.
As for your comment – “Apparently free speech is only free if it attacks us conservatives”, you must have missed the spectacle of News Ltd and assorted shock jocks going off like frogs in socks about a young Muslim woman making comments on Anzac Day.
When it comes to two-year-olds using language they don’t have the capacity to understand, in my experience, that’s neither unusual nor exceptional. I was once principal of a special school where many of the kids were being brought up in institutional care. One little girl was slow to speak, but when she did begin to talk, her first words were, to say the least, not those used in polite company. Her teacher (a well-brought up young person) was horrified.
Turns out the child had no idea what they meant, but repeated what she heard from nursing staff when they were under pressure dealing with what might be called very “difficult” situations – no excuse, but there you go…
The Mayo Clinic is a medical, not a developmental website. I’ve learned after 49 years in the field, that medicos often have a very poor understanding of child development. Try – https://bulletin.unl.edu/undergraduate/courses/EDPS/250
BTW, Voltaire has an “e” – can’t help it, I’m a teacher……
Mate, the world as we knew it has gone to shit. I am convinced that Australia has been taken over by those who want to destroy everything that has been achieved by those that migrated here, those people that integrated and worked together to become uniquely Australian. Poor fella, my country.
Commenter #1 is not very smart.
He states that those who objected to the comments made by the ABC’s tame Muslim girl were opposing free speech.
The robust response by decent people, to the comments of Yasmin Abdul-Magpie, on Anzac Day, were not threatening her free speech.
Nobody was wanting to jail her, or criminalise her, and certainly not to subject her to years of legal harassment, or to slap her with a $250,000 lawsuit in a kangaroo court without any conciliation, or even letting her know she was being sued.
Those who objected to Yasmin Magpie’s offensive words were simply objecting to offensive speech.
As they are entitled to do.
Unlike Triggs & the persecution Triggs engages in.
Spot the difference?
Go back and read my post, and point out where I wrote that people crititicising YAM were “opposing free speech”. I was simply pointing out that there was a flood of invective directed at her Facebook post, a simple statement of fact.
If a complaint had been made to HRC about her statement, they would have been obliged to investigate it. They are bound by the legislation. Read it sometime,. It’s available on their website..
Triggs does not “engage in persecution”. She carries out her commission. Surely that’s not difficult to understand.
“If a complaint had been made to HRC about her statement, they would have been obliged to investigate it. They are bound by the legislation.”
Nice segue into some backpedalling.
Got a quick opinion on why the HRC is so selective in what they investigate?
(Regardless of whether they are “obliged” to investigate complaints, there are many complaints the HRC refuses to investigate – they indisputably are NOT bound by the legislation).
“there are many complaints the HRC refuses to investigate”
Big call – I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty providing verifiable examples.
Whilst you’re doing that, here’s a link to the AHRC’s conciliation process – hrc.act.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Conciliation-Guide-March09.doc
From that august document –
“The rules are really simple rules of courtesy:
• one person speaks at a time – don’t interrupt each other
• both sides agree to keep the discussions confidential
• no personal attacks
• discussion should focus on the issues in question – not unrelated matters
• no cross-examination
• no abusive behaviour”
There are some posting here who could learn from that.