Jonathon Kay: The Moon Report Is A Smorgasbord, And We May Pick And Choose Among Its Recommendations As We Please

The other day I predicted that, once the Speechys got past the news release of The Moon Report, their enthusiasm for it would began to wane. Well, it looks like a few of them have found their way into the body of the document and, indeed, they don't like what they're seeing.

Jonathon's Kay's response has been typical. Lets, he suggests, just reject all those aspects of the report we don't like:

Final upshot: Moon's basic idea to get rid of Section 13 is admirable. But one wishes that he had stopped there, instead of adding in all sorts of unfortunate ands, buts and howevers.

Presumably Mr. Kay would have The Moon Report land in Parliament 95% redacted.

But this will not fly as a political solution. For while the report advocates a repeal of Section 13, these "ands, buts, and howevers" have been added so that there would, theoretically at least, be no net increase in extreme hateful speech because of that repeal. In other words, they were added so that the groups that might be targeted even more extensively by bigots and hatemongers in the wake of a straight repeal, would not be so targeted.

Of course the Speechys don't give a crap about that but the government of the day which, as Kinsella notes, needs at least some support among the targeted groups to craft its coveted majority, has to at least pretend to.