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That's simplification to the point of inaccuracy, in Australia's case at least. For a start the illegality is only when race is involved, you can quite freely come to Australia and say that the prime minister, the Queen, the Governor General (the Queen's representative in Oz) or any other politician is a fuckwit or something like that, and you'll find plenty of people who agree with you completely.

Secondly, and more importantly, it only becomes a criminal matter if you threaten violence or physically confront someone and harass them:
"To establish racial vilification of a criminal nature, it is usually necessary to establish a high level of harassment or potential threat. While the distribution of offensive material may form one end of the continuum of behaviours prohibited under state criminal law, generally, incitement to violence, threats to person or property, and so on, are required in order for state or federal criminal provisions to apply."
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/racial_discrimination/cyberracism/vilification.html

Just posting what GP did would at worst land you in a conciliation process with the above mentioned commission or if that fails a civil court case. And as the link above mentions they handle very few cases about alleged internet discrimination.

I generally would support having US style free-speech laws in Australia, but the current situation is not as repressive as some Americans on /. seem to imagine.

".. the site .. is operated by evangelical Christians .."

Which site, the only ones referenced to are hreoc.gov.au which states "are an independent statutory organisation and report to the federal Parliament through the Attorney-General".

"Since January 2008, the Church of Scientology has been subjected to a continuing campaign of violence and abuse from a hate group calling themselves 'Anonymous'. This entity has been described as a group of "cyber terrorists" as its actions have previously focused on Internet harassment and other crimes. However, in the last 13 months they have also (i.e. as well as their internet based assaults) committed acts of harassment and criminal offences "in real life" against the Church, its members and Church property.

Anonymous members have made numerous bomb threats, arson threats and committed acts of vandalism against Scientology churches. They have made harassing phone calls, sent vulgar and threatening faxes and e-mails, painted graffiti, posted threats on the Internet and publicly threatened to kill Scientologists engaged in religious services. They have also targeted the children of Scientologists in a local school where they have taunted children whilst wearing masks.

Your papers please.

This does not surprise me, as an Australian I can say that I've definitely noticed a slide into a very right wing agenda here. The current government is right wing and has an absolute majority in our parliament, meaning they can pretty much pass any law or any bill they want without the chance it might be vetoed by opposition parties.

I've been out of Australia for quite some time, I've found there to be quite a contrast to the Australia I left more than a year ago. I arrived back here just a couple of days before the Cronulla Race Riots. Since then our leaders have been spouting racist generalisations. There has been a large police crack down, the muslim community have made many claims that they are being unfairly targeted, I can personally verify this as on two occasions I've personally witnessed police unfairly targeting muslim men. I've also noticed since the riots (where our flag was used as a symbol of racial hatred), many police cars have had Australian flags mounted to their cars. I can't help thinking this is a sign of solidarity with the rascist mob.

I really don't even know how these riots could have occurred without police complicity. We have Racial Villification Laws here in Australia, that if they were applied that day could have been used to arrest most of the mob that day before any violence even began.

And with all this, in the background we have our detention camps in which whole families including children have been kept in detention. There have been cases where children have basically grown up in detention.

Unless there's a big turn around here I think the future for Australia could be something straight out of Huxely's Brave New World or 1984.

SOCOG was successfully sued by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (on behalf of a blind complainant). There was coverage in Slashdot. The ruling can be read here.

In my experience (working for a large Australian telco) this has left other businesses wary, but not entirely proactive in addressing accessibility issues. I think (and hope) more successful suits are the only way to get companies to be good citizens (website accessibility-wise). I do know that all Government sites address accessibility seriously, thanks to mandates and directives from the top.

• Rural Australians for Refugees
• Refugees Australia
• Children Out Of Detention
• Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
• SievX National Memorial Project
• We Are All Boat People
• Refugee Claimants Support Centre
• Australians for Just Refugee Programs
• Refugee Council of Australia
• Edmund Rice Centre
• Refugee Action Collective Australia
• Nauru Wire
• Amnesty International (Australia)
• Project Safe
• Australian Catholic Migrant & Refugee Office
• Jesuit Refugee Services
• Australian Catholic Social Justice Council
• Australian Human Rights Centre
• Asylum Support Service
• Centre for Refugee Research, University of NSW
• Coalition for Justice for Refugees
• Fair Go for Refugees
• Refugees Online Queensland
• Mercy Refugee Service

Then there are those who are working for refugees, but don't set up websites about it.

There are hosts of similar sites, set up by those working to do good (unlike our government) on the issues of Aborigines, invading other countries and being a good global citizen.

Australia is a diverse community, about which generalisations cannot be made. I agree Australia's image is tarnished, but I also point out that a lack of shine does not sit well with many Australians.

Is keeping children in concentration camps enough for you?

Here's a submission to the government on the issue from the Australian Human Rights Centre.

• Australia Taps More Phones Than Entire U.S.
• Australia's Censored URL List Remains Hidden
• Australia Plans More Spying on Citizens
• Oz Government Seizes Games For "Full Classification"
• A Social Health Atlas of Australia
• Racism in Australia
• Statistics: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Asylum Seekers in Australia

Now you may not be aware of this, but in many countries, sites must be accessible.

• In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act means that all federal services (and many state ones) must be accessible.
• In the UK, any site which offers a public service (nb this includes all online stores) must be accessible, thanks to the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.
• In Australia, the Sydney Olympic Games Organising Committee were successfully sued for being inaccessible to the blind

With this going on, an IE-only web is going to get further away, not closer. The only way to be accessible is to ensure that basic HTML standards-compliant pages will allow users to access the basic functionality of their sites.

More info:

• Accessibility - more than the right thing to do
• Accessibility, the politics of design
• W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative
• Joe Clark (Web Accessibility advocate)'s blog
• UK government's position on web accessibility