A Gold Coast man has been ordered to pay his parents’ neighbour $3300 for calling him a “f****** German c***”.
However Jason Scott Murray denied using the xenophobic phrase, instead claiming he called Dirk Huenerberg a “vermin c***”.
Murray had targeted the 75-year-old Huenerberg while out the front of their respective Bunderoo Circuit, Pimpama, properties on July 2021, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) was told.
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Earlier that day, the German-born Australian citizen Huenerberg had spoken to 25-year-old Murray’s stepmother about her planting plants on his side of the boundary.
The situation escalated later when Huenerberg when went outside the front of his property to check how his son had parked his car.
Murray was standing out the front of his parents’ property with his father and half-brother when he yelled out to Huenerberg.
“What are you looking at, you f****** German c***?” he said.
Huenerberg’s grandsons were in the vicinity and heard the slur, QCAT found.
QCAT member Peter Roney KC found there was no evidence to support Murray’s claim Huenerberg was being a “pest”.
He also rejected the claim he called him a “vermin c****”.
‘Makes no sense’
“(It) makes no sense whatsoever in context,” Roney wrote in his decision.
“Nothing of any kind had occurred between them which would suggest that at any level the applicant could or should be described as ‘vermin’.”
Huenerberg submitted the “f****** German c***” phrase was racist and had caused him to feel hurt and humiliated in front of his family.
He submitted a vilification complaint to the tribunal under the Queensland Anti-Discrimation Act.
Roney accept the impact the comment caused to Huenerberg, finding “he felt intimidated and fearful for his safety”.
“In my view an appropriate award for a one-off remark of the present kind is $3300 inclusive of interest,” he wrote in his decision.
“I therefore order that the respondent pay to the applicant the sum of $3300 by way of compensation for racial vilification.”