3 Sep 2021

NSW’s anti-discrimination law is confusing and outdated

An anti-discrimination law is, in effect, a code of conduct.  An employer, an HR manager, a school principal, a shopkeeper, or hotelier needs to be able to pick up.

30 Apr 2021

When discrimination law doesn’t cover it

At the Curly Maljam pro-surfing event on Sydney’s northern beaches, the women’s event victor, Lucy Small, won less than half the prizemoney that the male winner received. That’s discrimination,.

12 Mar 2021

The legal ethics of sexually explicit conduct

Ordinarily, a barrister’s character and reputation would be at risk if, at a professional dinner, he greets a woman he doesn’t know by pushing her head and saying “suck.

10 Feb 2020

A perverse approach to religious freedom

Submissions on the second version Christian Porter’s religious discrimination bill are closed, and we await the verdict. The first version of the bill was widely criticised for going too.

23 Aug 2018

The truth behind ‘Harmony Day’

Who would have thought that Al Grassby would be back in fashion? Attorney-General Christian Porter, it appears. Grassby was Australia’s first community relations commissioner, appointed under the original Racial.

16 Jan 2015

Generous limits on free racist speech

Early in 2014, federal Attorney-General George Brandis released a proposal to significantly amend our law against racial vilification, Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, on the.

14 Apr 2014

The case against free racist speech

I have spent a professional lifetime trying to get people to know about (let alone respect) anti-discrimination law, and suddenly everyone knows about ‘section 18C’. For all the wrong.

27 Mar 2014

Race hate law reform is free speech on steroids

Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben would never have breached federal racial vilification law under the Federal Government’s proposed changes – that’s how weak they are. Senator George Brandis cannot be.

26 Mar 2014

Proposed reforms abandon racial vilification protection

Federal Attorney-General George Brandis is serious when he says that under his watch, ‘people do have a right to be bigots’. As drafted (and it is very poorly drafted),.

19 Apr 2013

Racially based threats of violence merit little protection

In the Australian newspaper on 12 April 2013, the Institute of Public Affairs’ Simon Breheny described as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘a radical expansion of the law as it currently stands’.