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Last updated on May 20th, 2017 at 07:30 am
A counter-historical legal proposal:
Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma wants the burden of proof in cases of racial discrimination to fall on the alleged offender, instead of the person making the complaint …
Mr Calma said if people were forced to defend themselves, it might make them think twice before offending.
Not so. It would make me think about accusing Mr Calma of racial discrimination, just for the fun of it. Via the Age, which also reports:
92.5% of Victorian Government appointments to boards and authorities are of people who do not identify as being from a culturally or linguistically diverse background.
Difficult to think of a more diverse country than Australia. We’re not exactly Japan here.
(Via Nic)
UPDATE. Andrew Bolt: “OK, Calma – I’ll start your ball rolling to hell. I accuse you of being a damn racist. Which, under your new regime, means a racist you are until you can prove you are not. In the meantime you should stand down, because a racist can’t hold your job, surely?”
Are these people historically ignorant or purposefully imitating the mechanisms of totalitarian states?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2008 04 04 at 02:30 PM • permalink
They took out some of Tim’s guts but left some of the funny bits in…
“Not so. It would make me think about accusing Mr Calma of racial discrimination, just for the fun of it”.
Very good Mr.
Fancy how much money and time would be taken up with vexatious complaints from those with an axe to grind – a large % of whom are little more than raving loonies.
Come to think of it ……Is being a fruit loop a major selection criteria for the job as Racial Discrimination Commissioner ?
Hmmm . I’m looking for an extra quid….
It’s a pissing match, people. Each sanctimonious twit must pose as more “concerned” than his/her peers are.
And that means upping the ante, regardless of how stupid or foolish the proposal, cuz how else can you prove you care more than they do?
Posted by localharbor on 2008 04 04 at 02:54 PM • permalink
Bring it on, Leftards, and face an avalanche of complaints from activists to the right of you, enough to swamp your whole moronic idea.
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2008 04 04 at 03:05 PM • permalink
Tom Calma is the one who took a swipe at Mal Brough recently.
He was the Social Justice Commissioner with ATSIC and therefore has a lot to answer for, though along with the other Commissioners, he never has.
I would also suggest that he has a few unresolved problems. Being a racist is just one of them.
Poit: Mr Calma said if people were forced to defend themselves, it might make them think twice before offending. These kinds of complaints were usually a last resort. “A lot of people will tolerate behaviour, consider it a joke, until it comes to crunch point,” he said. “You don’t get vexatious complaints for the sake of complaints.”
Counterpoint: Someone with relevant experience.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2008 04 04 at 04:47 PM • permalink
Are these people historically ignorant or purposefully imitating the mechanisms of totalitarian states?
Oh, it’s very much intentional. Totalitarianism in the name of “social justice” is not only acceptable, but encouraged.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 04 04 at 04:47 PM • permalink
I’d say that pointing out that 92.5% of Victorian Government appointments to boards and authorities are of people who do not identify as being from a culturally or linguistically diverse background is clearly a racist attack on those board members, did anyone get the number for me to lodge a complaint?
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2008 04 04 at 05:49 PM • permalink
Like a health minister fosters health and an education director-general promotes education, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma sees his role as promoting and fostering racial discrimination.
Would be curious to know if he has ever achieved anything worthwhile to help his people. All I ever read is Calma trying to block everything that might help Aborigines. But I suppose if your inflated public service salary and bulging expense account depends on Aboriginal disadvantage, you would be no hurry to see it go away.
Sounds like a bureaucrat drumming up business.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 04 at 07:13 PM • permalink
I believe in legal terms Calma’s position is summed up as
“WIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 04 at 07:29 PM • permalink
So, guilty until proven innocent becomes the norm.
Calma doesn’t seem to have any issue whatever with mysogynist religions, Quite happy to have them segregate women:
“The participants were made up of Muslim youth, women, men, and police, not always as combined groups but sometimes segregated based on the wishes of the groups.”
Read “Women were kept in a different room so as to not distract the men who are incapable of restraining themselves in the presence of women they aren’t related to”
And I’ll bet the doors were LOCKED.
What the morons mean is that it’s baaaaaad that the 92.5% identify themselves as Australian rather than Italian Australian, Greek Australian, Lebanese Australian, etc, etc. What they also mean is that you can’t be CALD if you identify as Irish Australian, Scots Australian, Welsh Australian or English Australian, which is of course inherently discriminatory, but the crapheads can’t see that. As for the reverse onus of proof, it’s been creeping across our legal system for a while, but, as a Victorian, I reckon it’s about time we put the lid on it.
Tom should be Calma when he goes to the races.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 04 at 08:14 PM • permalink
By stating that non-whites cannot be held responsible when they act in a racist manner, regardless of what they do, Mr. Tom Calma has basically said that non-whites are incapable of acting as responsible adults. We, the undersign, hold that this is prima facie evidence of Mr. Calma’s racism and call for action to be taken regarding his odious and despicable behavior.
Feel free to use as appropriate when bringing charges against Tom Calma for racism and racist behavior in an Australian court of law. I would recommend using your own words of course, relying on the above only as a guideline. 🙂
Posted by mythusmage on 2008 04 04 at 11:54 PM • permalink
I just realized something, be Tom Calma a non-white he has basically said that he is not capable of behaving as a responsible adult, and so does not qualify as a Race Discrimination Commissioner. Which means that Tom Calma, by his own admission, holds his office illegally and must therefor be removed. Indeed, any legal agreement he has entered into is invalid because, by his own admission, Mr. Calma is incompetent to handle his own affairs and so cannot enter into any legal agreement under the law. (I’m assuming Australian law works much the same way in such matters as American law.)
Tom Calma, where is your conservator?
Posted by mythusmage on 2008 04 05 at 12:02 AM • permalink
About time too- let’s do away with these legalistic niceties and go back to a proven method of establishing th guilt of these racist bastards, and let the punishment fit the crime.
Such methods would also ease the concerns of a large number of complainants, and give Uncle Tom much overdue peer recognition with his fellow defenders of the downtrodden, dispossessed and marginalised minorities.
SILLY supermodel Naomi Campbell has blamed her airport arrest on the colour of her skin, claiming she was collared simply because she was black.
The 37-year-old remains defiant after allegedly spitting into a police officer’s face and abusing air staff in a row over her luggage this week.
Witnesses said she was handcuffed on board the LA-bound British Airways plane, which was yet to take off from Heathrow.
Britain’s The Sun newspaper reports the furore began when Campbell was told her bag exceeded her weight allowance and would have to follow her to Los Angeles on a later jet.
She went ballistic – and was arrested and put in a jail cell.
After being released by police, she told a friend: “It just goes to show I have to fight for who I am. It’s because I’m black.”
Reminds me of the exchange reported between John Lennon and the waitress who threw him out of the Troubador Club for wearing a tampon.
Lennon: Do you know who I am?
Waitress: Yes, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head.Madam, whereever you are, I salute you.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 04 05 at 03:57 AM • permalink
Why is it that the purported upholders of Human Rights (including the UNHCR) are the leading protagonists when it comes to undermining the rights and protections the individual enshrined in modern liberal democracies, and in the judicial systems ed on the British one,since the times of Magna Charta?. And what greater protection in Law is there than that one is not guilty until one is proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt “in a Court of Law.?
Further to these issues refer to the current controversy involving the complaints that have been made to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Mark Styne, Lemire and others for merely expressing opinions and for actually quoting Islamic Imams verbatim in their writings. The procedures of the Canadian Commission/Tribunals provide that the complainant only has to lodge the complaint. There is no requirement on him/her to prove their claim. The claim is researched, investigated by officers of the Commission/tribunals, legally supported and represented at hearings by legal practitioners appointed by the Commission/Tribunal and then adjudicated by Commission/tribunal members who are not themselves necessarily legally qualified and without regard to long standing rules of evidence used in courts of law. All costs associated with the complaint from the time of lodgment of appeal to judgment and its enforcement is all at public expense. On the other hand the respondent has to meet all costs in his/her defense and there is no chance of recovery of costs if they were to win ( and incidentally in some jurisdictions in Canada no respondent has ever won) or the complaint is withdrawn. The implications of this on freedom generally are horrendous. Indeed a racket has developed where persons have become serial complainants on the basis that lodging appeals costs nothing but there is the prospect of being paid compensation by the respondent or silencing a political/social/religious opponents. Faced between accepting the complaint and “swallow” the punishment handed down by the tribunals ( a fine, compensation, cease and desist order which could mean closing your livelihood plus all costs associated with the processing of the complaint, yours and the tribunal’s) and bankruptcy, the ordinary man has very little choice. Its interesting to note that one of the purported abusers of these procedures is an ex officer of the Commission.
Why are we in Australia always a few years behind in imitating and adopting Canadian social experiments and usually at the very time that evidence based and pragmatic data becomes available of the severe shortcomings and counterproductive effects of such experiments. The best examples of of such an experiment is Multiculturalism, originally developed in Canada under the Trudeau regime as a way of dealing with the French/English cultural divisions in the Canadian body politic and the threat of secession by French Quebec from the the rest of Canada. How far have we traveled from a “policy” intended to maintain “national unity” into a realm replete with “unintended consequences” through “it seemed a good idea at the time” policies. Nations have have become under official government policies nations of “tribes” each with their own social theories and mores often in significant deadly conflict with each other and the emerging development of ethnic “no go” ghettos. An attempt at social engineering purportedly aimed at cohesion and unity has turned out to be the most potent instrument for disunity and harmony within nations. Instruments of liberal governments set up in good faith to uphold Human Rights have been hijacked (often with the connivance of governments of a particular shade) by the multiculturalists, such as Calma and the various Ethnic Community Councils, to undermine the very Human Rights those instruments were set up to uphold which have been hard fought with much loss of blood for over the centuries.
It is long past over due for all good man to draw the line. Remember the old saying!
Posted by LaVallette on 2008 04 05 at 07:24 AM • permalink
“Faced between accepting the complaint and “swallow” the punishment handed down by the tribunals ( a fine, compensation, cease and desist order which could mean closing your livelihood plus all costs associated with the processing of the complaint, yours and the tribunal’s)”
My post above: I am not sure if the “costs…. (of the) tribunal” are awarded against you. If I am wrong I withdraw that phrase.
Posted by LaVallette on 2008 04 05 at 07:38 AM • permalink
#33- I think it’s more because she’s a spoilt, petulant, over-indulged airhead clothes horse who’s well overdue for a slap.
One of the main reasons I hate the fashion industry so much is how it inflates the egos of bucketheads whose sole talent is to be able to walk along a walkway and back again without falling on their arse- most three year olds are capable of this mighty achievement.
What it would make me think is this: My actual guilt or innocence is irrelevant. I can be accused and condemned at any time with no evidence at all. Therefore, I may as well go ahead and do whatever the hell I want. The result will be the same.