Queensland judge says “nigger,” “sandnigger” not offensive to a reasonable person.
By ANITuesday, August 10, 2010
CANBERRA - The use of the words like “nigger” and “sandnigger” have been approved by a Queensland magistrate Michael O’Driscoll by saying that these terms “are not offensive to a reasonable person” as these are “everyday language.”
“I’m not a member of the cafe, chardonnay and socialist set … to me that is everyday language,” The Herald Sun quoted Mulheron, as saying.
The magistrate made the ruling on Monday when he dismissed a case against a Gold Coast retiree charged with sending an offensive facsimile to a local politician.
Sixty-two-year-old Denis Mulheron had sent the fax to the office of Queensland lawmaker Peta-Kaye Croft on June 30 last year.
It called on the Labor Party to tighten immigration laws against “niggers” and “sandnigger terrorists”, and Muslim women with circumcised genitals, the paper states.
The fax also made reference to indigenous Australians as ‘Abos’.
According to Mulheron, he believes that he was using ‘everyday English’ in the fax.e also said then that he had grown up with the slang terms for Arabs and black Africans and did not believe they were offensive.
Mulheron was charged with using a carriage service, a fax machine, to menace, harass or offend - an offence which carries a maximum penalty of three years in jail.
However, after lengthy consideration, Driscoll ruled that his words were not enough to invoke criminal sanctions.
“The words used were crude, unattractive and direct but were not offensive to a reasonable person,” he added. (ANI)