The HREOC Is Not A Vehicle For Redressing Personal Insults

Why has the Equal Opportunity Commission been allowed to believe it has some role in assisting people seeking redress for insults delivered in a private context?

Speaking as a libertarian, that is the most concerning element of the handling of former Monash councillor Kathy Magee’s 2002 complaint against recently dumped 2013 federal candidate for Hotham, Geoff Lake.

By his own admission, Geoff Lake said to Kathy Magee, in private:

"I can't believe what you did you fucking bitch. You are a fuckwit for doing that."

There is a strong suggestion he actually called her a “fucking slut”. Reading the quotes from both parties:

“If I had used any word other than 'slut' this would not be an issue”

“When someone calls you a slut, it tends to be offensive”

One might reasonably draw the conclusion that Geoff Lake really did say “fucking slut”, but even if he did, so what?

It’s highly unlikely wheelchair bound Kathy Magee is actually a slut, but perhaps he meant she was whoring herself out politically. Then again, perhaps his insult was more base and he was just being aggressive toward a cripple.

What did Kathy Magee do that so aroused Geoff Lake’s ire? We’re not told, however I doubt it was nothing. Pretended to support an initiative or motion and then changed sides? Broke a confidence (explicit or tacit)? That tends to be the sort of behaviour which would elicit Geoff Lake’s angry words.

If someone is in a wheelchair, do they suddenly become a saint? Are they suddenly incapable of dishonesty? Are they immune from censure for dishonesty?

It looks very much to me like Geoff Lake was counting on fellow lefty Kathy Magee’s support on something important and she withdrew it without letting him know beforehand. I wasn’t there; that’s just my reading of the situation.

It’s the sort of behaviour which will get you called a “fuckwit” or a “fucking bitch”. Perhaps Kathy Magee really is both of those things. Being in a wheelchair doesn’t mean she can’t be. It also doesn’t exempt her from being told she is if that’s what someone thinks.

There are gender specific insults because there are gender specific behaviours. Women often do shitty things in different ways to men. A woman will be a stupid bitch, a man a stupid prick. Geoff Lake could hardly have called Kathy Magee a “fucking prick”, could he? But he would have said it to a man.

The important issue here is not whether what Geoff Lake said was “demeaning and degrading” or “offensive to women”. So what if it was?

I called someone a useless piece of shit the other day (because they are). That’s pretty degrading and offensive. Do they now get to run off to the Equal Opportunity Commission? Or do they only get to enlist its help if they are brown, because I must be racist for likening a brown person to a shit? If they are a brown woman, am I a double oppressor for being aggressive as well as racist?

It’s not even that “oppressed” people are playing the discrimination card to enlist the EOC’s aid in settling personal disputes at taxpayers' expense. If the EOC were properly governed, it would have a sufficiently strict ambit so as to immediately reject such complaints.

It’s that the unelected cabal which staffs the Equal Opportunity Commission has managed to gain sufficient power and influence so that not only do they believe it is their role to involve themselves in such matters, but instead of telling them to fuck off, people like Geoff Lake end up acquiescing to them, imbuing them with even more self righteousness.

What types of people want to work at the EOC? There wouldn’t be too many Liberal voters, would there? It’s full of left wing social engineers. Card carrying members of socialism’s great rule making enterprise. People trained to seek out all forms of privilege but their own and make regulations, policies and procedures to overturn it.

One of their chief tactics to increase their influence is to extend the specific to the general via non sequitur. This matter is a good case study.

It’s not merely a case of a bloke swearing at someone who pissed him off. Geoff Lake, being a privileged, white, university educated male has aggressively used “demeaning, degrading and offensive” language to a disabled woman, and probably a lesbian as well, if her picture is anything to go by. Therefore, his conduct is demeaning, degrading and offensive to any oppressed group in the Venn diagram represented by Kathy Magee.

Actually, you couldn’t concoct a better caricature of a left wing political “trophy candidate”. She even looks like Millie Tant from Viz.

Whether the ALP thinks swearing at disabled lesbians is sufficient to disqualify a candidate is their business. But that’s a completely distinct matter from it being the business of the unelected, left wing activists in the EOC. If you agree that these people and their agenda need to be curtailed, then vote Liberal or National, because Labor and (especially) the Greens are their facilitators.