CERD/C/62/D/26/2002 page 3 2.2 On 23 June 1999, the petitioner requested the trustees of the sports ground to remove the offending term, which he found objectionable and offensive. After considering the views of numerous members of the community who had no objection to the use of the offending term on the stand, the trustees advised the petitioner by letter of 10 July 1999 that no further action would be taken. On 29 July 1999, a public meeting chaired by a prominent member of the local indigenous community, and attended by a cross-section of the local Aboriginal community, the mayor and the chair of the sports ground trust, passed a resolution “That the name ‘E.S. Nigger Brown’ remain on the stand in honour of a great sportsman and that in the interest of the spirit of reconciliation, racially derogative or offensive terms will not be used or displayed in future”.1 2.3 On 11 May 2000, the petitioner brought a federal court action, on the basis that the trustees’ failure to remove the offending term violated sections 9 (1)2 and 18 C (1)3 of the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (“the Act”). He sought removal of the offending term from the grandstand and an apology from the trustees. On 10 November 2000, the Federal Court dismissed the petitioner’s application. The Court considered that the petitioner had not demonstrated that the decision was an act “reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate an indigenous Australian or indigenous Australians generally”. Nor was the decision an act, in the words of the statutory language, “done because of the race ... of the people of the group”. Finally, the Court considered that the Act did not protect the “personal sensitivities of individuals”, as it considered to be the case here, but rather “render[ed] acts against individuals unlawful only where those acts involve treating the individual differently and less advantageously than other persons who do not share the membership of the complainant’s racial, national or ethnic group”. On 23 February 2002, the Full Court of the Federal Court rejected the petitioner’s appeal. On 19 March 2002, the High Court of Australia refused the petitioner’s application for special leave to appeal. 2.4 The petitioner also pursued a complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC), which could not be pursued further because of a subsequent restriction by law of the Commission’s jurisdiction to investigate certain individual complaints. The complaint 3.1 The petitioner contends that the use of the offending term on the grandstand and orally in connection therewith violates articles 2, in particular, paragraph 1 (c); 4; 5, paragraphs d (i) and (ix), e (vi) and f; 6 and 7 of the Convention. He contends that the term is “the most racially offensive, or one of the most racially offensive, words in the English language”. Accordingly, he and his family are offended by its use at the ground and are unable to attend functions at what is the area’s most important football venue. He argues that whatever may have been the position in 1960, contemporary display and use of the offending term is “extremely offensive, especially to the Aboriginal people, and falls within the definition of racial discrimination in Article 1” of the Convention. 3.2 He clarifies that he has no objection to honouring Mr. Brown or naming a football stand in his honour, but that at the time the nickname “Nigger” was applied to Mr. Brown, non-Aboriginal Australians “either were not aware of or were insensitive to the hurt and offence