darinsullivan.blogspot.com: Marr sticks boot in, as Bolt hits back at guilty race verdict #Ausunions

News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt has struck back against a court judgement which found him guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act, branding the finding an attack on free speech.

In a rebuke published on the front page of his hometown Herald Sun (the country's largest-selling newspaper), Bolt said there were now laws against anyone who publicly disagreed with the idea that people could freely express their identity.

"I am truly shocked. I cannot believe this is Australia, a land of free speech," he began.

In a 1611-word piece published in both the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph, Bolt said he had felt like an outsider as the son of Dutch immigrants before embracing his own identity.

He believed the case could further ensconce racial and ethnic divisions in Australia. Bolt recently was named the most powerful identity in The Power Index's Media Megaphones Top Ten.

"[I believe] that many people now increasingly do insist on asserting racial and ethnic identities, and that we increasingly spend money and pass laws to entrench them."

"I think that a terrible pity, even a danger, because surely in a multi-ethnic community like ours it's important to stress what unites us, not what divides."

On numerous occasions Bolt also alluded to the potential consequences of him referring to what he wrote in the two columns which were the subject of the action brought by the nine fair-skinned members of the Aboriginal community.

"Two years ago, I would cheerfully have argued that this acknowledgment of a multiple ethnicity was healthier, and truer, in such cases than insisting on only being Aboriginal. But not today. I no longer dare."

"For expressing such views, in such language, I have lost my freedom to put my argument as I did. And be warned: use such phrases as those yourself, and you too may lose your right to speak."

But in a column published by rival Fairfax newspapers, long-time Bolt sparring partner David Marr backed up the decision of Justice Mordecai Bromberg. He said the finding was not about free speech but "lousy journalism" and predicted there would be some "spectacular rhetoric" from the "now martyred Andrew Bolt".

"Denials are one of Bolt's great talents: with a smile on his face and his hand on his heart he is happy to claim the purest motives even in the unhappiest circumstances. Usually it works like a charm. Not with Judge Bromberg," Marr wrote.

But Bolt's column found issue with Justice Bromberg's insistence that he was not limiting free speech and questioned whether that ruling still applied if "your adjectives are too sharp, your wit too pointed, your views too blunt, your observations not quite to the point, your teasing too ticklish and your facts not in every case exactly correct."

"Despite Justice Bromberg's assurances, I feel that writing frankly about multiculturalism, and especially Aboriginal identity, yesterday became too dangerous for any conservative. It's simply safer to stay silent, or write about fluffy puppies instead."

Bolt also said the court case had made him depressed and referred to his "misery" at having spent "two years of worry, two weeks in court, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs".

"And so the multiculturalists win. They win, because no one now dares object for fear of what it will cost them in court."

"Hope they're satisfied, to win a debate not by argument but fear."

Pro-free spech editorials were also published in The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.