Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have not experienced racism in this country. That should probably come as no surprise. As a white man in this country, you do not tend to experience racism—probably as a white man anywhere, you do not tend to experience it. But, during the course of the inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights into the legislation that we have that protects people against hate speech, the committee heard from many people who have experienced racism, and what they told us, to a person, as they came before the inquiry, was: 'Don't change the laws of this country to make it easier to say hateful, racist things that hurt people'—a pretty simple message.

The evidence before the inquiry—and it is reflected in the report—was pretty clear. In Australia we enjoy freedom of speech, and there are not that many legitimate arguments—in fact, there are probably no legitimate arguments—that you cannot make in this country. But we have laws that say that, when you are making those arguments—about changing the law or about changing our migration policy—you cannot make those arguments in ways that hurt people and you certainly cannot go out under the banner of free speech and say things that you know are going to have harmful effects on the population.

What we heard during the course of the inquiry—and you will find this in the Greens' dissenting report—is that we are talking about some pretty serious consequences on people from some of the hate speech that members of the Liberal and National parties and others, like Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, want to be able to say. In the words of one professor who gave evidence to the inquiry, this is not just a matter of 'sticks and stones'—that constant, regular experience of negative racialised interaction, whether that be through the media aimed at or speaking about your racial group or immediate interpersonal interactions—but it has huge impacts on health. It is shown to impact on asthma, diabetes and spiritual and mental wellbeing.

We heard that not only from academics with expertise in the area; we heard it from groups representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations who came to the parliament and said: 'We are already doing it pretty tough when it comes to our health. We are already substantially far behind the rest of the population. What we do not need is laws that make it easier to say racist things that are going to impact on our health even more.' That is a very serious request coming from a group of people in this country. But it was not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

We heard from groups representing various religions, across the board, groups representing various cultures and groups representing various nationalities, all saying, to a person, 'If you change the law to make it easier to say racist things, it's not only going to impact on our health and our wellbeing, it's not only going to make us feel that Australia isn't a place where we belong, but in fact if you do it—and especially if you do it now—you are going to give a green light to the kinds of racial attacks and abuse that can often cross the line and can lead people ultimately, sometimes, to breaking point, to as far as they can go.' What they said to us was: 'Not only is it going to harm us, but it will send a very bad signal to the Australian population that it is now okay to be racist'—and that is not the signal that this parliament should be sending to the Australian people. There has never been, in fact, a worse time to send that signal.

We are seeing the rise of right-wing populism. In Senator Pauline Hanson's second maiden speech, when she came back again, she came up to this parliament and said, 'Twenty years ago I said it was Asians who were swamping the country, and now I'm saying it's Muslims.' She does not care which particular group she picks on and vilifies. She does not care what it means for the women, men and children of that particular group living their particular life. For her, any group that she picks on for the purpose of advancing her agenda is fine, and if it means that their lives are ruined as a result she just does not care. To turn around and reward that kind of behaviour and say, 'Actually, now we want to give more licence to people to give more hate speech,' is the wrong thing for this parliament to do.

That is why the Greens issued a dissenting report, and the dissenting report said very clearly and very squarely that we should not change the current provisions of the act. We are disappointed that other members did not join with us in issuing a strong recommendation that the act stay as it is, but that is our view, and it really should be the view of the government as well.

The government have tried to cover all bases with their report, and you can see that they held together, with spit and sticky tape, this ship of all these various people from across the political spectrum in the government, some who would rather be in Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and others who would not. They held it together until this report was issued, and then, as soon as the report was issued, they were off again. Some people were using the report to claim that there need to be changes to 18C, and others on the government side were using it to claim that there should not be any changes.

The Prime Minister now needs to come out and make a very clear statement that in this parliament there will be no changes, no matter what the Trumps in his party like to say, because, until a very clear statement is made that the law will stay as it is, it gives succour to the Trumps in the Liberal-National coalition to continue advancing their agenda. If there is one thing that we have learnt from Brexit and from Trump, it is that when you have extremists who want to stand up and say that all of the problems in this country are caused by one particular religion or one particular racial group, unless you put that issue to bed very firmly early on, they end up running the joint. That is what we found in the UK, and it is what we have found in the US.

So the government have a very clear decision to make at this moment. Are they going to allow this kind of burbling away of subterranean discussion and racism from people who still say the report suggests that we need some changes to the legislation, or are they going to put it to bed once and for all? Are the government going to do what John Howard previously did and say there is no place for the views of One Nation on that side of the political fence, or are they just going to invite them in, embrace them and do preference deals, as we have seen in Western Australia? Disturbingly, that seems to be the way that they are going, and this report is a huge missed opportunity for the government to stand up to the Trumps on their backbench.

The Human Rights Commission itself came along and said: 'Well, look, there might be some sensible changes that could be made to the process. We accept that. If things have happened that mean that the process should change—that the protections still remain but we better enforce those protections through a better process—then let's do it.' That is why the Greens, in our dissenting report, backed in what the Human Rights Commission was saying and said: 'Look, if the Human Rights Commission want to change some of their internal procedures then we support that, because that will give people more confidence in the legislation and it will allow claims to be better processed. But what we are not prepared to do is back in the kinds of changes that the government, in their "every player wins a prize" report, covered in their recommendations, because many of those are actually about getting rid of the protections in this legislation itself.' So we back what the Human Rights Commission has said about tidying up some of its processes but not what is in the report.

In a nutshell, really what this report and the proposed changes to the bill come down to is: at this moment in Australia, are we really prepared to defend multiculturalism? The Greens are. The Greens are prepared to defend multiculturalism, and it is extraordinarily disappointing that the government and the Prime Minister are not prepared to make that same commitment and shout it from the rooftops. Until they do, people are going to rightly ask whether the Prime Minister actually stands for anything or whether he is beholden to the Trumps in his party on every issue, including racism.

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