Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You were laughing! The most important thing, the thing that unites us and those of the real mainstream of Australia is not the colour of our skin, where we came from, which boat our settler family came on or whatever but our commitment to our most beautiful values. We are committed now, and we will always be committed, to the fact that Australia is multicultural, is multiethnic and is a multiracial country, and we like it that way.

There is something disturbingly ironic about people who are all in support of freedom of speech when it allows them to spew racial hatred and bigoted invective yet want to silence those who call them out as racists and bigots. These people are on a special kind of power trip. They think that freedom of speech applies only to them—and not only that, they also want freedom from the consequences of their speech. I have been asked many times if I think Australia is a racist country, and I have always responded with a resounding no. I can say that because, despite the incidences of racism that I have experienced as a child and as an adult—and there have been many—the most profound sense I have of this country and her people is that we are not a nation that offends on the basis of race. We are not a nation that insults or humiliates other races. That is not who we are.

The other day I sat down with my little friend Noah, who has just turned six. I pulled up my sleeve and he did, too, and we compared the colours of our skin. It was very cute. I asked Noah if he thought that it was okay for him to tease me or say something nasty to me because my skin was darker than his, and he looked at me incredulously. 'No, Aunty,' he said, 'that would be wrong.' 'How do you know that, Noah?' I asked him. He smiled at me as if I was asking a very stupid question—which, in fact, I was—and a question to which I must have known the answer, and he simply said: 'Because it just is. Everyone knows it is.' Everyone, it seems, except for those on the other side of this House, who insist again and again that they have a right to offend, and that somehow offering protection and recourse for their fellow citizens—citizens that they are elected to represent—impinges on their own right to treat them as second-class because of their race. Perhaps they should take some time to talk to Noah. His mother describes him as six going on 60, and he does seem far wiser than some of the people in this chamber—people who claim some exclusivity to freedom of speech while they howl, 'How dare you!' when they are called out for their racism.

I would like to go back for a minute to the recommendations of the report and to specifically address recommendation 3 of the report that makes mention of the proposal to replace the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' with the word 'harass'. You see, there is a difference between harassment and humiliation or insult or offence. Harassment, by its definition, leaves it open to argue that the offending behaviour must constitute an ongoing and protracted campaign against a person because of a characteristic such as race. Over the 30 years that the Racial Discrimination Act has been in place the meanings of the words 'offend', 'insult' or 'humiliate' have been clarified and tested in court such that the implications of these words have been established. Harassment is not imported in these definitions, and it is not, as the member for Goldstein has argued, the correct test for 18C. So, in considering this particular component of recommendation 3, I will take on board the submission from the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, which rightly points out that 18C currently operates so as to capture some of the forms of racial harassment because it captures acts which humiliate and insult.

On a final note, this morning the Treasurer made what I think is an adroit observation when he said:

I know this issue doesn't create one job, doesn't open one business, doesn't give anyone one extra hour. It doesn't make housing more affordable or energy more affordable.

Indeed, indeed. Hatred, fear and division have never provided the impetus or facilitated job creation or answers to the economic woes that beset us. So why does this government continue to insist on raising the topic again and again, even after the previous Prime Minister ruled out any changes to 18C? Even the previous Prime Minister—arguably one of the most damaging leaders in history in terms of his rhetoric and impacts on social cohesion, with his consistent reference to the death cult—could see that one person's right to be a bigot is rejected by a large majority of Australians. Yet this Prime Minister is beholden to those on his backbench driven by their own biases and their own prejudices—people like those opposite me, who have never had to live with the damaging impacts of racism.

A government member interjecting—

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