In what must be an answer to the right’s prayers, a complaint has been brought against the Australian under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The complaint concerns a cartoon by Bill Leak, which depicts an Aboriginal father, beer in hand, unable to remember the name of his child when confronted by the police.

Published just days after footage emerged of Aboriginal youths being tortured and brutalised in a Northern Territory detention facility, the implication is that when it comes to the wellbeing of Aboriginal youth, Aboriginal parents should be the focus of public criticism rather than the state. The cartoon invoked crude racist stereotypes in the making of this offensive point.

The Australian should be forever shamed by the publication of this racist trash, as it should by Leak’s equally offensive back catalogue.

But the invocation of 18C will only turn this disgraceful cartoon into a rallying point for the right, and give one of Australia’s most belligerent publications the opportunity to portray itself as a martyr for free speech and a victim of political correctness.

The idea of “traditional” values being under siege from a liberal establishment as authoritarian as it is quick to take offence is central to the right’s campaign to weaken the Racial Discrimination Act and galvanise the forces of conservatism around a self-righteous persecution complex.

Rather than defend racist bigotry on its own merits, the Australian and its friends in the Liberal Party and loony right prefer to advance their cause by making out that the freedom to dissent from some putative anti-racist consensus is what is really under attack. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, far from outlawing bigotry, the Racial Discrimination Act explicitly protects the right to espouse it.

Its opponents carry on about how 18C renders unlawful any act likely to “offend” or “insult” based on race. But section 18D of the act states that Section 18C “does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith” in the course of artistic expression, academic or scientific inquiry, or indeed any comment that “is an expression of a genuine belief”. This is why so few 18C complaints have succeeded, and why the latest against Leak is likely to fail.

But the liberal nature of the Racial Discrimination Act is a relatively minor aspect of why the right’s narrative about racists being a beleaguered minority is so fanciful. Far from being outlawed, racism informs government policy. From the brutalisation of refugees, to the vilification and persecution of Muslims and the continuing genocide and dispossession of Aboriginal people, the notion that racism struggles to find expression in Australia is ludicrous.

The Racial Discrimination Act has done virtually nothing to temper this. Indeed, when government policy falls foul of it, as with the Northern Territory Intervention legislation, parliament has simply voted to suspend the act.

That is why an 18C challenge to Leak and the Australian is exactly what the right want to strengthen and give credence to their narrative. It will only aid their campaign which, if successful, will embolden racists and spur on the right to raise ever more ambitious demands.

To challenge racism effectively what is needed is not punitive laws, but political movements prepared to take on the governments, media outlets and ideologues that promote and benefit from the racist ideas that dominate Australian politics.