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AMAC take fight to human rights commission

AMAC took their fight to the Victorian Human Rights Commissioner this week over a decision made by VCAT that they believed prohibited racial vilification

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20 Aug 2012

The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) took their fight to the Victorian Human Rights Commissioner this week over a decision made by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) that they believed prohibited racial vilification. This followed a VCAT decision in September to dismiss their complaint against newspaper entitled Australian Macedonian Weekly in September 2011.
The case was taken to VCAT by AMAC following an article published on 19 May 2009 with the headline, ‘Who in this celestial world gave the Greeks the right to take away the Macedonian language?’. The article included descriptions of Greece as “a thieving nation” and Greeks as “deranged bastardly monsters” and “freaks of nature”.
Representatives of the Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) meet with Karen Toohey, Acting Commissioner of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) to discuss the implications of this decision and the basis that it went against the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic).
In the meeting, the Commissioner expressed her belief that there were significant problems in the way that the legislation has been interpreted.
The Commissioner also noted that the threshold for the test of racial vilification in Victoria was too high and that greater alignment with the Federal legislation (Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth)) was needed.
In a media statement, AMAC expressed that they were pleased with the talks with the VEOHRC and the outcome “has had positive results in terms of exposing the racist behaviour” of a few extreme elements of Australian citizens originating from FYROM.

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