In the midst of the Fatima Paymania that intoxicated federal Parliament last month, the contribution of one politician to Australia’s vaunted social cohesion stood out: Peter Dutton.
The context was the Labor Party’s existential panic that Payman’s exit from the party may be the trigger for a political insurgency in safe Labor seats with large Muslim populations.
Asked about this, Dutton warned that the next Parliament could “include the Greens, it’ll include Green-teals, it’ll include Muslim candidates from Western Sydney. It will be a disaster”.
Standard Dutton, who never saw a division he didn’t think was worth stoking.
But this time he is being sued for it. A group called the Alliance Against Islamophobia has launched a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, alleging that Dutton’s comments breached section 20C of the Anti-Discrimination Act, which makes unlawful a public act that incites hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons because of their race. In short, racial hate speech.
While Dutton will dismiss the claim as political theatre, it comes at an interesting time and does raise a significant legal and societal question.
It also parallels another case, currently awaiting judgment in the Federal Court: Senator Mehreen Faruqi’s claim that Senator Pauline Hanson breached the equivalent federal hate speech law (section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act) when the One Nation leader tweeted that Faruqi should “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan” because Faruqi had dared to say that she was not mourning the Queen’s death. Full disclosure: I am Faruqi’s lawyer.
In both cases, the claimants are seeking to expand the boundaries of what has historically been treated by the courts as legally unacceptable hate speech. They are classics of a particular genre of racist rhetoric: the deniable slur.
Hanson’s defence was that, when issuing her imperative to Faruqi, she was blind to her target’s race, origin, religion or colour (in fact, she testified that she didn’t even know Faruqi was Muslim). She would, she said, have told anyone who dissed the Queen to do the same, although on what basis she drew a distinction between Faruqi and any other Australian citizen was less clear.
The point, however, was not so much whether Hanson’s justifications contained any internal logic, but the significance of the coded language she chose to employ. Faruqi’s case was that Hanson was using a form of words — essentially, “go back to where you came from” — that, while in literal terms race-neutral, is immediately understood in its full racist meaning by both its victims and perpetrators.
For Dutton’s part, he defended himself by exclaiming that “my problem is not with somebody of Islamic faith — quite the opposite … but when you say that your task is to, as a first order of priority, to support a Palestinian cause or a cause outside of Australia, that is a very different scenario”.
In other words, what Dutton said was — like Hanson — race-neutral. He referenced Payman’s reason for resigning, which was her support for recognising Palestinian sovereignty. That is a cause outside of Australia, and apparently enough to disqualify a politician from legitimacy in Dutton’s eyes.
He wouldn’t want to dig much deeper with that logic, given how many MPs on all sides frequently vote with their feet on causes outside Australia, including in favour of the cause of Israel.
The real meaning of Dutton’s words was not lost on anyone: Muslim politicians would vote Muslim, not in our national interest but in the interest of the nebulous force sometimes called “political Islam”.
It picks up on a trope that Hanson has been playing since she said we were “in danger of being swamped by Muslims”. She has claimed, repeatedly, that Muslim people hold values that are incompatible with those of Australia.
One Australian value is the dread fear of foreign invasion; not by hostile nations, but waves of people of colour. The White Australia policy was constructed to keep them at bay, and our offshore refugee gulags of today are manifestations of the same anxiety.
That’s what Dutton was consciously invoking, and he was using (admittedly not very) coded language to do it.
Victims of racism can easily explain what it’s like being subjected to the constant micro-aggressions of a society that only ever welcomes you on a conditional basis. For Indigenous peoples, the irony of being vilified on their own stolen land is ridiculous. For immigrants and their descendants, it just hurts.
Not that what Dutton or Hanson said was a micro-aggression. It was in-your-face silencing.
The debate we haven’t quite had, in this country of immigrants, is this: is it tolerable any longer to protect speech that does not overtly incite violence or dehumanise whole peoples completely (like Donald Trump calling immigrants “vermin”), but which tells racists their prejudices are fair and the targets of racism that their skin makes them lesser?
Everyone thinks they know where the line is. The courts will decide that for us. It’s good we’re asking the question.
What did you think of Dutton’s comments about “Muslim candidates”? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
