Australia's Jewish community failed to prevent the screening of a film made by British historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving.
An application made last Thursday for an interim injunction preventing the July 10 screening of "The Search for the Truth in History" at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival was dismissed Monday by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria state said the film vilified Jewish people and incited others to hate Jews.
Two weeks ago it lodged a complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission, claiming the film breached Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.
The film is Irving's response to being banned from visiting Australia in 1993.
Judge Michael Higgins said while some parts of the film were offensive to Jewish people, he did not find any grounds that would justify a breach of the Act.
Festival director Richard Wolstencroft said the decision was a victory for the freedom to express unpopular beliefs.
"We don't support David Irving's ideas but we do support his right to freedom of speech," he told reporters.
"Australians do have the right to hear his perspective."
The Jewish Council also asked that a second filmed scheduled for screening at the festival, "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Palestinian Perspective," also be barred because it claims the Holocaust is unfairly used to justify support for Israel.
"There is no doubt there are people in our community and around the world who don't necessarily support the policies of the Israeli government," council president Michael Lipshutz said.
"We respect their rights to have that view, but when you put these films together in one festival when David Irving's film refers to the Holocaust in a derogatory sense, then we say that tends to vilify Jews," he said.
The film is generally available for sale or hire but Lipshutz said the issue concerned was its public display.
"We don't have unlimited and unfettered freedom of speech in any country," he said.
"I can no more go around saying 'Death to the Aborigines' or 'Death to Catholics' or 'Death to anybody else.' That's freedom of speech but you would say to me that's inappropriate in a society such as ours."
Renowned for denying that the Holocaust occurred, Irving has been denied a visa to enter Australia three times, in part due to his 1992 conviction in Germany for defaming the memory of the dead.
He was most recently banned from visiting Australia in January.
Irving has written numerous accounts denying the reality of the Holocaust -- Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of some six million Jews between 1933 and 1945.