Letter to The Editor

to THE AGE
     Attempts to link criticism of Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Anzac Day post with opposition to section 18C (Daughn McGuinness, 28/4),  thus implying inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, in campaigners against that section, fail because they are based on a misleading comparison. Abdel-Magied has not been threatened with an unjust legal process that could lead to great financial loss. For the same reason Duncan Fine’s assertion (‘Right wants free speech, but only on its terms’, 27/4) that the whole conservative campaign against 18C was a ‘sham’ is incorrect. The ‘conservative right’ does not seek to ‘dictate to us the meaning of words’ (Margaret Maguire, 28/4), but to return to us - all of us - genuine free speech on important issues involving ethnicity.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic