Page 814 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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in the following three years. Dr Evelyn Barbee, writing in the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, said:
Regardless of social class, African Americans report experiencing racist events, including perceptions of racism presented in the media, so frequently that depression, tension and rage about racism are the most common problems they present in psychotherapy.
In New Zealand in 2009 researchers found that responses to the New Zealand health behaviour survey showed significant links between experiences of interpersonal and institutional racism and health disparities between Maori and non-Maori. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health in 2011 examined the racism experience of Aboriginal people living in Adelaide. The researcher said:
Racism was found to be a significant determinant of mental health, with its effects not diminished by social connections and support. Our findings support a growing body of literature that suggests that racism has a strong impact on mental health. This finding is important to the current Australian government’s policy goal of closing the gap between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a generation.
A study of young Aborigines in Melbourne also found that self-reported racism was significantly associated with poor overall mental health and with poor general health. Madam Deputy Speaker, racism—racial abuse—hurts. This motion calls on the ACT government to provide a submission to the current review of the commonwealth’s Racial Discrimination Act so it might continue to protect individuals from racial abuse in Canberra and Australia.
The review of the act is not prompted by any lesser need for protection from racial discrimination. It is because a group of Aboriginal people, attacked by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt over their race, used the act to defend themselves and correct the record.
I spoke about the much misrepresented Bolt case in one of my earliest speeches in the Assembly back in October 2011. I noted that Justice Bromberg ruled that these articles were likely to offend, insult, intimidate or humiliate fair-skinned Aboriginal people. Importantly though, this was not the point on which Mr Bolt’s case turned. Our society does not outlaw, nor should it, all conduct which might be offensive or insulting. It is crucial to the functioning of our democratic institutions that people are free to speak their minds in good conscience on matters of public interest.
The federal Racial Discrimination Act reflects this fundamental principle. It exempts from liability offensive conduct which is nonetheless considered fair comment, artistic expression, or genuine academic or scientific debate. Mr Bolt, however, did not speak his mind in good conscience.
Justice Bromberg conducted a fine-grain analysis and found that Mr Bolt distorted the truth towards his own ends. He was flat-out wrong in his description of the racial heritages of several of the Aboriginal people he smeared. Evidently Mr Bolt is not one to let the facts get in the way of a good slur.
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