That's a whole bunch of wank.
We do things better down here:
Government stands by the E.S. Nigger Brown Stand
November 30 2002
By Greg Roberts
The Federal Government has told the United Nations that the pejorative "nigger" may be used publicly without necessarily being racially offensive.
The government made the assertion in a submission asking the UN to dismiss a complaint to its Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by Toowoomba Aboriginal leader Stephen Hagan.
Mr Hagan has objected to the refusal by the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust, trustee of the Toowoomba Athletic Oval, to drop the pejorative from the name of its grandstand, the E.S. Nigger Brown Stand.
His request for a ruling that Australia is in breach of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was referred by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Australia's UN mission for a response in August. The 47-page response was sent to the mission this week.
The stand was named in the 1960s after the late Edward Stanley Brown, an international rugby league player of Anglo-Saxon descent. It is believed he was given the nickname "Nigger" as a child because he was particularly fair-skinned.
Mr Hagan's approach to the UN followed a decision by the full bench of the Federal Court last February to uphold a decision by the court that the use of the name by the Toowoomba trustee did not breach the Racial Discrimination Act.
Mr Hagan said yesterday he hoped the UN would advise Canberra to amend the act to ensure that Australia's international obligations were met.
"The word nigger is simply so offensive that you just don't have people using it in any public context," Mr Hagan said.
"Signage of the kind at the oval would be illegal in countries such as Canada. We're talking about one of the most offensive words in the English language."
In its response to the UN, the government said Mr Hagan's complaint of racial discrimination was dismissed by the domestic courts, and that it was not the role of the committee to review decisions by domestic courts. The submission said the committee should note the context in which the word had been used.
It said that although the conferring of the nickname on Edward Stanley Brown may have been racially motivated at the time, the Federal Court had concluded that its use in connection with Mr Brown "has long been devoid of racial connotation".
The footballer had been universally known as Nigger Brown, the submission said. "Even his gravestone bears the name Edward Stanley Nigger Brown."
The trustees had sought the views of many indigenous people in Toowoomba before deciding not to remove the sign, it said.
Deputy chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Ray Robinson, the ATSIC commissioner for the region covering Toowoomba, said he had no objection to the stand's name.
I remember Starshark and I had a long, long argument on the boards about the offensiveness of the name of this stand.
7 Year-Old Discovers Racist Couch(Read 3574 times)