Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), was a leading French Enlightenment thinker, who was infamous in his day for his attacks upon the Catholic church, and for advocating free thought and free speech. If a law such as section 18 C had existed in his day, he would have been prosecuted. There is considerable debate about this, but Voltaire by today’s standards, and by the standards of section 18 C would be regarded as an anti-Semite: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/30/books/l-voltaire-and-the-jews-590990.html; D. Prager and J. Telushkin, Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, (Simona nd Schuster, 1983), pp. 128-129; L. Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism from Voltaire to Wagner, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 88-89. These authors quote quite shocking passages from Voltaire that would be in violation of section 18 C, even if this section was reasonably constructed.
Hence, Voltaire is a controversial figure, to say the least, but I agree that he was a keen free speech advocate. However, he was a destroyer of almost everything and he would be attacking the Australian establishment relentlessly – from a prison cell – if he was alive in Australia today.
