The attorney general confirms the government will go ahead with plans to remove sections of the Racial Discrimination Act

The attorney general, George Brandis, has declared “people have the right to be bigots” as he confirmed plans to remove sections of the Racial Discrimination Act while ensuring the laws were better able to deal with incitement to racial hatred.



“People have the right to be bigots you know,” Brandis said in answer to a question by the Indigenous Labor senator Nova Peris. “In this country people have rights to say things that other people find offensive or bigoted.

“There is no law that prohibits the incitement to racial hatred. When the government deals with this matter the law will be in a better position to deal with incitement to racial hatred.”

The government is planning the changes, after a federal court judge in 2011 found that conservative columnist Andrew Bolt breached section 18C of the act in newspaper articles that questioned the motivations of fair-skinned people who identified as Aboriginal. The section makes it unlawful to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” a person or group because of their “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”.

In a heated Senate debate, Peris asked Brandis about comments by the Indigenous Liberal backbencher Ken Wyatt that the changes may result in a “regression” to “bigoted views” allowing the vilification of people. Wyatt had raised his concerns in the party room last week.

“It is certainly the intention of the government to remove from the Racial Discrimination Act those provisions that enabled Andrew Bolt to be taken to the federal court merely because he expressed an opinion about a social or political matter,” Brandis said.

“I will very soon be bringing forward an amendment to the RDA which will ensure that that can never happen in Australia again.”

Brandis said no one should be taken to court for expressing a political opinion and section 18C dealt with racial vilification in the wrong way.

“People like Mr Bolt should be free to express any opinion on a social, or a cultural or a political question that they wish to express, just as Mr Bolt would respect your right to express your opinions about social or political or cultural issues,” Brandis said.

Last week, Bolt demanded an apology from the ABC after he was accused by the Indigenous academic Marcia Langton on Q&A of subjecting a woman to foul “racial abuse”. Q&A’s host Tony Jones apologised on a later episode of Q&A, but Bolt said he was not satisfied with the broadcast.

“The ABC’s apology did not go far enough, failing to include a specific acknowledgement that claims I’d subjected Dr Misty Jenkins to ‘foul abuse’ and driven her from ‘public life’ were utterly false. But it is a start,” Bolt wrote in a blogpost published on Tuesday morning.

Peris asked Brandis whether he was a personal signatory to the London declaration on combating anti-semitism and whether he stood by his plans to legislate effective hate crime legislation including incitement to hatred offences.

Brandis did not confirm whether he was a signatory to that declaration but accused the Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, of making bigoted statements.

“Senator Wong interjects, ‘Yes George, you go out there and defend the right to be a bigot’,” Brandis said.

“Well you know, Senator Wong, I think a lot of the things I have heard you say in this chamber over the years are to my way of thinking, extraordinarily bigoted and extraordinarily ignorant but I would defend your right to say things that I find to be bigoted and ignorant. That is what freedom of speech means.”