Banning Wicked Campers on the basis of their offensive slogans would require a significant change to Australia’s sex discrimination law, a discrimination law expert has said.  Related: Wicked Campers' repulsive slogans are nothing more than real life click bait | Jane Caro  Two local governments on the New South Wales north coast have moved to ban the rental vans from driving on their roads, saying their trademark outlandish paint-jobs and offensive slogans, which say things like “I wouldn’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die” and “to all virgins, thanks for nothing!” are not welcome in their community.  The Byron Shire council is considering banning the vans from council-owned caravan parks after shire staff said it did not have the jurisdiction to ban them from the road.  About 30km down the coast, the Ballina Shire council on Thursday night voted on a motion to write to both the NSW and federal governments to ask them to support any measure “to remove or ban the inappropriate messages that are printed on Wicked camper vans”.  “I want it to be clear that I see these messages as being coarse, disgusting and simply quite offensive,” the author of the motion, Ballina deputy mayor, Robyn Hordern, told the ABC. “They’re not appropriate to have parading up and down our highways.”  The Splendour in the Grass music festival, held at the North Byron Parklands in July, has already asked festivalgoers to avoid Wicked vans, saying in its 2016 lineup announcement: “If you’re booking a camper van, please steer clear of sexist slogans! You know who you are. It’s 2016, get with the program!!”  NSW senator David Leyonhjelm weighed into the debate on Thursday, calling those opposed to the slogans “authoritarians disguised as hippies or feminists” saying “you need to be a particularly wowserish type of person not to find them funny”.  Professor Beth Gaze, an anti-discrimination law expert from the University of Melbourne, said that even the most offensive slogan was highly unlikely to fall foul of current sex discrimination laws, and broadening those laws would “require quite a big campaign”.  “It would be hard to argue that it’s actually sex discrimination because you can only argue sex discrimination in particular direct circumstances,” Gaze told Guardian Australia. “I think it’s a long shot to argue that what’s painted on the side of a van is discrimination against women.”  That people were happy to drive a van that proclaimed “I’m straight … so don’t rear end me” could be considered a societal problem, Gaze said, but it wasn’t against the law.  “My view is that this indicates how clearly gender roles are accepted in Australia and not really argued here,” she said. “Because we would not accept something like this with race, we would say that’s racist and you can’t do it, but when it’s about sex it just goes under the radar.”  Gaze said an attempt to ban explicit content on the basis that it was damaging to women or another sexually or gender diverse group would have to be weighed against the right to freedom of expression.  “We accept that there’s limitations on that in the context of race so perhaps there’s an argument for limitations on that in the context of sex,” she said.  In 2014, one particular slogan – “In every princess is a little slut who wants to try it just once” – prompted the Senate to unanimously pass a motion calling for it to be removed.  The Brisbane-based company complied but the general tone of the messages remained unchanged, prompting a campaign in Queensland to change the law to prevent the offensive slogans.
Two councils in northern NSW want the vans’ ‘disgusting’ messages banned and one wants to bar them from camp grounds