Melbournistan

How interesting. Tony Abbott repents one of the decisions that cost him support of conservatives – and resumes a battle that many more Australians will now agree needs fighting:

Tony Abbott says his government should have pursued less ambitious reform of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, in comments that will re-open debate in the conservative wing of the Liberal Party about changing the Act and potentially create a new headache for Malcolm Turnbull.

UPDATE

Abbott’s speech last night set out the fights he plans to have and the biiger lessons he has so far learned of his time in office.

It seems to me he is determined now to be a voice for conservatives as he sometimes failed to be in office, and to fight for freedom. That said, he is tempering that with his first acknowledgement that he was at times too hyper-oppositional.

I am liking this transition.

First, on free speech:

My second task is to confront a regrettable truth: these are vexing times for conservatives…
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Take an issue that’s quite rightly exercised many here: section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act that prohibits what might “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” on racial grounds.
This is a troubling law. At its worst, it limits free speech merely to prevent hurt feelings….

After the successful prosecution of Andrew Bolt, I promised to “repeal it in its current form” but reneged after fierce criticism from Liberal premiers and a wall of opposition in the senate. ..

Perhaps the cause of free speech would have fared better if my government’s initial bid had been merely to drop “offend’ and “insult” while leaving prohibitions on the more serious harms.
Still, as things stand, there’s no real prospect of change – even though several young Queenslanders are now facing official persecution merely for questioning reverse discrimination on social media and the Race Discrimination Commissioner is now itching to prosecute our best-known cartoonist.
The decency and fair-mindedness of the Australian people will always be a better defence against hate speech than a law administered by ideological partisans – yet our parliament prefers to tolerate over-the-top prosecutions than to upset thin-skinned activists.

Which rational person could disagree?

Then, the mea culpa:

Interestingly, while less than 50 per cent of the current government’s legislation has passed the parliament, almost 90 per cent of the former Labor government’s legislation passed without a division.  

I think the Abbott opposition was right not-to-oppose means-testing family tax benefits and meanstesting the private health insurance rebate…. Unquestionably, we were right to oppose the carbon tax …

I wonder, though, about the former government’s people swap with Malaysia.  The 800 boat people that could have been sent to Malaysia was less than a months’ intake, even then.

I doubt it would have worked.  Still, letting it stand would have been an acknowledgment of the government-of-the-day’s mandate to do the best it could, by its own lights, to meet our nation’s challenges.  It would have been a step back from the hyper-partisanship that now poisons our public life.

A dig at George Brandis and Malcolm Turnbull?

In the last parliament, I could invariably count on Bill Shorten’s support on national security issues.  On deploying the armed forces or strengthening anti-terror laws, there were cabinet ministers harder-to-persuade than the Leader of the Opposition!  

The challenge for the new parliament will be to be as sensible about economic security as the old one was about national security; because we can’t keep pretending that economic growth on its own will take care of debt and deficit…

All of us need to dwell less on what divides us and more on what unites us, and to have an open mind for good ideas…

And the great war defined:

There wouldn’t be a person in this room tonight – not one of you – who would say that our civilisation is more secure today than five, ten or twenty years ago.
The new tribalism, the loss of civility, and reality TV politics is taking its toll across the Western world.  Yet for all our present discontents, there’d hardly be any one, here, unconvinced that Western civilisation, especially its English-speaking version, is mankind’s greatest achievement.

I believe adversity has made Abbott more articulate in explaining what is to be done.

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APEX GANGS

Border Force chief Roman Quaedvlieg told the Herald Sun that the same laws used to deport outlaw bikies could apply to members of Apex and other street gangs linked to a wave of disturbing aggravated burglaries and car-jackings.

Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre chief executive Anthony Kelly labelled the suggestion inherently racist, and akin to apartheid.

“These are our young people,” Mr Kelly said.

“They go to our schools, they are brought up in our Australian communities, they buy video games in our department stores, they learn from Australian society like everybody, so to call for a deportation or keep focusing on their backgrounds or ethnicity is disingenuous or cowardly.

“The Australian community is not taking responsibility.”

No. Imported criminal savages are not “our responsibility” -they need to be removed from civil society.

Apex – a gang of young people from multicultural backgrounds – rose to prominence after it was linked with the Moomba riots in the CBD in March.

It has also been blamed for a wave of violent home invasions and car-jackings

The gang was linked in the media with a violent car-jacking in Toorak on Monday morning where the stolen car was used for a home invasion in Cranbourne, though police have not said if the attackers were gang members.

The four men responsible were described as of African and Pacific Islander appearance.

It is unclear how many young people connected with Apex or other street gangs linked with recent crime were actually on visas. Many are also believed to be underage.

In an interview with Fairfax Media on Thursday, Mr Quaedvlieg said Border Force was not targeting Apex, and in fact, he had not heard of the gang until he was contacted by the Herald Sun on Wednesday.

“Any notion we would use this tool as a blanket weapon against a group of people is nonsense. That is never going to happen,” he said.

“The manifestation of youth crime and violence has many complex causal factors and therefore many complex … solutions

“The character test is only one tool that should be used in extraordinary circumstances.”

The character test was introduced to the Migration Act in 2014, giving Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton the power to cancel the visas of suspected or convicted criminals.

If the Minister reasonably suspects a person is, or has been, a member or associate of a group that is involved in crime, regardless of whether that person has been convicted, they can be deported under the tougher character test.

So far, the laws have been used to order foreign-born bikies and organised crime figures out of the country.

Mr Quaedvlieg said if Victoria Police presented a case of an individual linked to Apex or any street gang, Border Force could suggest to Mr Dutton that they be deported.

“It doesn’t need to be patched bikies, if can be gangs of any nature and certainly if there are street gangs with a large number of migrants … if the state and territory cops want to work with us in that regard, we’re up for it,” he said.

Mr Kelly said using the “overwhelming threat” of an excessive law that can only be applied to certain sections of the Australian community was akin to “apartheid politics”.

“It’s inherently racist because it implies that race or ethnic background is a causal factor in their offending when we know that not to be true,” he said.

Assistant Commissioner Bob Hill sits over Taskforce Tense, the police operation targeting street gangs linked to the recent home invasions and car-jackings.

Mr Hill told a press conference this week that out of the 70 young people arrested by the taskforce in six months, only 26 identified as belonging to Apex.

“We’re providing this group with oxygen, notoriety they do not deserve. We have clear evidence that the majority of people charged don’t have anything to do with Apex,” he said.

Apex was originally founded by a group of young people of South Sudanese descent from Dandenong, but has expanded to include young people from a variety of different backgrounds including Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and Caucasian.