The Administrative Decisions Tribunal rejected a submission from Jones that an on-air apology earlier this month for comments made in 2005 was adequate and told him to make a proper apology on his morning program one day next week.
The letter Jones read out was about a story which showed young men taunting police officers.
“If ever there was a clear example that Lebanese males in their vast numbers not only hate our country and our heritage, this was it,” Jones said.
“They have no connection to us: they simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that’s taken them in.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. What did we do as a nation to have this vermin infest our shores?”
Former Lebanese Muslim Association president Keysar Trad complained of racial vilification the next day, first to the Anti-Discrimination Board.
After two years of legal wrangling, the case was sent to the ADT, which in 2009 awarded $10,000 in damages to Trad and ordered Jones to make an on-air apology within two months.
The station paid up but two years of appeals an arguments have followed.
Jones made another apology on December 6, which he believed was “an adequate acknowledgment of wrongdoing” but on Wednesday the tribunal disagreed.
The tribunal’s finding was that Trad wasn’t “vilified personally”, so should not receive a personal apology.
Jones has been ordered to read this next week:
“On April 28, 2005, on my breakfast program on Radio 2GB, I broadcast comments about Lebanese males including Lebanese Muslims.
The comments were made following a Channel Nine television current affairs show about the conduct of young Lebanese men in Hickson Road at the Rocks.
The Administrative Decisions Tribunal has found that my comments incited serious contempt of Lebanese males including Lebanese Muslims.
Those comments were in breach of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.
I apologise for making those comments which I recognise were unlawful.
I also apologise on behalf of Radio 2GB.”
Trad has criticised the whole process as long, costly and not an effective way to achieve justice.
“The system is very slow, and the system is very convoluted, and the system is open to a variety of means to delay justice,” he told ABC Radio.
“I certainly hope the Government will reform the system to make it easier to get justice, especially for the ordinary person who may be vilified or the minorities in Australia who regularly get vilified through the various forms of media.”
Image via Getty
