Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I confess that, as a member of the 47th Parliament, I can't help but feel the incredible weight that comes with debating what is quite an extraordinary piece of legislation in our nation's history. That our society has reached a point where we must put in place laws to protect individuals and groups from hate speech is a very sad indictment on the direction in which we are headed. Yet here we are.

As the person the community of North Sydney sent to parliament to represent them during this term, I ask you to hear me when I say the people who surround me in my community every day share a common belief that all of us have the right to feel safe, to be treated with respect and to participate in our society without fear of vilification and discrimination based on our individual characteristics. If realising that ambition means we need to move laws like this, then we will support that legislation wholeheartedly.

At the end of the day, however, we will also ensure our day-to-day actions are driven by common values that are not just practised to ensure we stay within the boundaries of the law but are practically lived on a daily basis to ensure everyone feels included. We will also continue to work to bring those that are currently outliers to this ambition back into line, even as we are called 'woke'. Much to all our shame, there are people currently living in Australia who are subject to hate speech and vilification. To quote the Human Rights Law Centre:

Far right hate and extremism is on the rise. Women wearing the hijab have been assaulted by men in the street, while men wearing the kippah have been met with the white power salute. We have seen rallies held against trans rights, and neo-nazis intimidating refugee activists.

This cannot continue.

Most recently it has been heartbreaking to see so many disgusting instances of blatant antisemitism targeting Jewish businesses, individuals and places of worship. These acts are abhorrent, and there is absolutely no place for them in this country. In this context then, it's clear we need stronger measures to prevent and address hate crimes in Australia. While I can wish that it had not been necessary, I believe this legislation will certainly play a valuable role in our overall response to this challenge. But, as we've heard from human rights organisations and community groups, it cannot be our only response.

In addition to the changes to hate speech laws in the bill before us, there is also a clear need for measures that not only address actual violence but ultimately stop vilification of groups before it even begins. There's also a clear need for a long-term national antiracism framework in Australia, including a national hate crimes database and greater funding for the prevention of extremism, because, ultimately, if we can't name it and track it, we will never be able to adequately understand where it comes from or what is driving it. Informing all of these responses is a need for a national human rights framework that ensures hate speech and discrimination laws and policies are grounded in a common, irrefutable and legislated understanding of minimum human rights for all.

The bill before us broadens the offences for urging violence against either members of specific groups or entire groups themselves to include groups distinguished by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. It would also broaden this offence to capture recklessness, rather than just intent, and remove the availability of the good faith defence. The bill does this by creating a new offence for directly threatening force or violence towards a group or a group member. Finally the bill would expand the existing offences against the public display of Nazi or terrorist symbols used to humiliate or intimidate a group to include groups distinguished by sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. Many of these measures have been advocated for by a broad cross-section of our society for a very long time, including advocates for the LGBTQIA+ community and, more recently, the Jewish community. I thank the government for finally heeding that advocacy and bringing this reform into law.

At the same time, I'm concerned the bill doesn't do enough to adequately address the threats faced by a multitude of communities. Particular concern has been raised around the absence of an offence that specifically targets serious vilification of protected groups. As one North Sydney resident expressed to me: 'the current bill won't protect me, or other LGBTQIA+ people, against serious vilification—the promotion of hatred that can be the spark which leads to violence will not be stopped. We need stronger, broader protections that operate nationally to protect all of us, including other communities impacted by prejudice-motivated speech and violence.'

In this context, I will be supporting the amendments to be moved by the member for Wentworth that would create a new criminal offence for public acts performed with the intention and likely outcome of promoting hatred towards a targeted person or group. Her amendment would close a current potential loophole where a person hasn't explicitly urged violence but is nonetheless engaging in serious vilification. I recognise this as potentially quite an extraordinary inclusion in a piece of legislation. I think we're living in extraordinary times, in which extraordinary actions are required.

The amendment moved by the member for Wentworth has been advocated for strongly by Equality Australia and supported in principle by the Human Rights Commission. In considering all of these approaches to tackling hatred and discrimination, however, I share the caution of many human rights groups that legislation targeting hate crimes must be carefully calibrated to ensure we avoid over-policing and/or inadvertently capturing the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. In the case of this legislation, we have heard criticism from certain groups that the legislation doesn't take enough care in weighing up competing human rights. For instance, the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I'm a member, noted that it is currently unclear whether this bill's limitations on the rights to freedom of expression, religion and nondiscrimination would be proportionate in all circumstances. The committee further highlights the risk that in practice these offences could capture a range of conduct, the prohibition of which could constitute an unjustifiable limit on the rights to freedom of expression. These concerns extend to the removal of the good-faith defence, which would eliminate any legal recourse for individuals who fall foul of this law.

The Australian Human Rights Commission questions whether expressive speech during unpopular or divisive public protest could be viewed as incitement against protected groups. If so, legislation such as the disproportionally impact groups that engage in protest to have their voices heard, such as First Nations people. Given this concern, while I ultimately support this bill, I also believe it is imperative that we are able to answer these questions, as they are reflective of a recurring we have in Australian lawmaking as we struggle to weigh up freedom of expression against the right to safety, freedom from discrimination and other rights. While I acknowledge much of what is included here in the member for Wentworth's amendment is already in practice in WA, I would assert that applying this thinking from the federal level down warrants a degree of certainty for those whose primary concern is the protection of free speech.

Ultimately, I also can't help but take this opportunity to again assert that many of the concerns that have prompted the introduction of this legislation today would have been avoided if we had a federal human rights act. As one of the only developed nations in the world not to have a human rights act, we continue to be hamstrung by a piecemeal system that relies on applying bandaids to close gaps rather than being guided by a well-articulated framework that recognises our responsibilities and duties towards other people and our community as a whole. Ultimately, individuals bear the responsibility to ensure that they exercise their rights with due regard for the rights of others. For example, exercising freedom of speech should never infringe on somebody else's rights to privacy, nor should it infringe on their right to safety. Recognising and respecting fundamental human rights are a part of the context of people living together in societies. As part of this, there must be legal, social and international order for human rights to be realised effectively. As the Law Council of Australia notes in their submission:

… articulating … limitations on multiple rights could be navigated in a more coherent way through a federal Human Rights Act and Human Rights Framework. In the absence of a Human Rights Act … assessments for Bills … are being conducted in a legislative vacuum.

Another challenge we face is the lack of coherent national approach to tackling racism in Australia. Again, as the member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights I have recently had the privilege of being involved in public hearings looking at the prevalence and experience of antisemitism in our universities. This has involved listening directly to students as they've shared their experience of the rise in antisemitic sentiment on campuses and the fear and abuse they have experienced. In these hearings the committee has heard from many groups that there is an urgent need to address racism and religious discrimination more broadly in Australia.

The number of Australians reporting a negative attitude towards Jewish people rose by four per cent in the past year, and this is truly shocking. But further to that, negative attitudes towards Muslims have risen by seven per cent, leading the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute to report:

… while attitudes to Australia's Muslim and Jewish communities is a particular area of concern, relations towards and across all faiths appear to be under pressure.

We've also heard from the Australian Human Rights Commission's interim report on racism at Australian universities that Jewish students and staff cited a rise in antisemitism, including extremist propaganda and intimidation. At the same time First Nations students have reported enduring structural and interpersonal racism whilst Arab and African students reported frequently encountering severe racism, and Muslim students and staff described hostility, threats and discriminatory practices. Where are we going?

This message does not diminish the need to specifically call and address antisemitism, and nor should it, but it does add a sobering dynamic that makes it clear we need to tackle all forms of discrimination, racism and radicalisation in Australia. Ultimately the messages from the experts are clear: we need a holistic national approach to these challenges that tackles them from the ground up. In this vein the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia called on the government to provide additional specific long-term funding for a national antiracism framework. A federal framework like this would allow us to look beyond one-off projects and reactive legislation and provide monitoring, evaluation and strategic planning to tackle racism.

A key part of this framework needs to be the establishment of a national hate crimes database, as recommended by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Currently, state and federal police, and by consequence policymakers in the wider community, don't have a shared resource to track and monitor hate crimes across the country. Australia is one of the few countries without a national database, with the USA, Canada and the UK all collecting hate motivated crime data. Without a complete understanding of these crimes and their prevalence, our attempts to address them are in danger of being misinformed and misdirected and fundamentally informed by poor media commentary rather than the facts. The National Cabinet's recent announcement of a national antisemitism database is an important first step, but I do encourage the government to consider the expansion of this program to capture all hate crimes.

Finally, it's apparent that even though this bill's measures to address hate symbols and incitements to violence are important, we need systems of early intervention to prevent radicalisation and extremism before they even take seed. Criminalisation is one lever we can use to address extremist views and behaviours, but it shouldn't be either the only one or, in my own personal opinion, the primary one. It's not enough to put out fires; we need to stop them from ever being lit.

One proposal is the national delivery of community based prevention and rehabilitation programs. These programs could identify at-risk or radicalised individuals and provide them with an off-ramp from extremism. Again, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils suggests schools are critical for educating and inoculating our young people from racism, yet where are the resources for them? Students need to be educated on racism and its harms, as well as diversity as a positive feature of Australian life.

In closing, I've not met a single person in my community who does not believe that all Australians deserve to live in a country where they don't have to fear discrimination, hatred or violence because of their identity, and who is not shocked by the direction our country seems to have been sliding towards over the course of the three years since this parliament first sat. But for us to realise that ambition, we're going to need to go further than penalties for hate crimes. We need a long-term national antiracism framework informed by robust debates and supported regardless of which side of politics you stand on. We need early interventions to prevent the spread of racism and the invoking of extremism, and we need a federal human rights framework to allow for a coherent approach to fairly balance competing rights and freedoms.

My community welcomes this bill, but it needs to be the beginning of a much larger movement to create an Australia that lives up to its values of tolerance, equality and respect for all.

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