Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the 1970s and 1980s, great Labor figures like Gough Whitlam, Bill Hayden, Lionel Murphy, Don Dunstan and Susan Ryan led the charge for tolerance and acceptance of people of different genders, sexualities, races and ethnicities. We saw incredible pieces of legislation come in during the Whitlam era and the Hawke era. One of those pieces of legislation, which dates back to 1975, is the Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18C makes it unlawful for someone to do an act that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate someone because of their race or ethnicity. But, as previous speakers have talked about, there's always a balance, and we've got section 18D of that particular piece of legislation containing exemptions for the protection of freedom of speech. I thought that we'd gone through those kinds of debates in Australia in the last half a decade. There were a lot of debates about the right to be a bigot, so to speak, and I thought we had progressed as a country in a more tolerant, accepting and loving way.

In my faith tradition as a Christian, the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself, and that's a positive thing. It doesn't matter if you're a Catholic, a Protestant or a Pentecostal; it's to love your neighbour as yourself. That kind of provision in Scripture is found in all the major monotheistic religions and so many others. It is incumbent on those of us of faith and of no faith to think about the fact that we have a common humanity. Faith is expressed in many different ways. I'm reading a book at the moment by Peter Ackroyd called The English Soul. It's about the growth of the Christian church in the United Kingdom. But what really strikes me in the history is how, in that period of time, we had a greater understanding of tolerance. It wasn't always the case back in the days of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, the Reformation and the like, but I thought we had progressed in Australia. I thought we had got through a lot of this.

It is sad that we've got this legislation, the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024, before us. I applauded the Attorney-General in 2023, when the government introduced the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023, which passed after some amendments. I was pleased that we made amendments to the Criminal Code. We introduced offences related to displaying or trading in hate symbols such as Nazi symbols. I know the Attorney-General, when introducing this particular bill, talked about that tolerant society to which I referred. He talked about the new and expanded offences introduced in this bill as a response:

… to the increasing prevalence of hate speech and hateful conduct in our society—

particularly in light of recent global events.

In my home state of Queensland, the Jewish community has made an enormous contribution. It's a lot smaller in Brisbane than it is in Sydney and Melbourne, but its contribution to business, to law, to academia, to sport and to cultural life, to the arts and to community is immense. I'm so proud to have stood on numerous occasions with the Jewish community in Queensland to oppose intolerance and antisemitism.

The legislation that we have before the chamber today is an unfortunate necessity. There is always a balance between prescriptive conduct, proscribing conduct and freedom of speech. Before I talk specifically on this particular bill, I remember an unforgettable experience I had some years ago. My family came to Australia in the 1880s from Germany with the surname Neumann. They came here fleeing persecution. They were poor. They were religious. They were a minority. They came here and settled in Ipswich, in the Lockyer Valley. That's on my dad's side. My mother's side came from poor people who were virtually Levellers, as they used to call them, in England and from the McLeods in the Highlands of Scotland. They were persecuted people. I thought my generation would never see this sort of persecution of other people. I never thought we would. I never thought it would happen. My ancestors made lives for themselves, they did okay and they prospered. One of their descendants is even a federal MP!

But I remember being in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, in the Holocaust museum, some years ago. I happened to be in a party and I was separated from them. I was there with my German surname, there by myself really, when I wandered into a group of Israeli conscripts. All these people were young enough to be my children. There they were, being taught about the historical experience of the Holocaust and what they had gone through. For them it was a real life-living experience. For me it was a shock. And it's one of those experiences I'll never forget because I thought if my ancestors had not come from various parts of Prussia and Berlin and Hamburg and the like, where would I have been? What would have happened? Would I have been caught up in that conflict with my parents and my grandparents? It was a really pivotal moment in my personal and political and even spiritual experience.

We must never ever forget the Holocaust. We must never ever forget the six million Jewish people who were slaughtered by the Nazis. And there were other minority groups as well—Gypsies, homosexuals and so many other groups. And let's not forget all those people who bravely stood up against militarism, against fascism and, of course, against Nazism.

I remember being in Trafalgar Square as part of a parliamentary delegation to London last year. There were huge demonstrations outside of where we were staying. I remember seeing Nazi symbols amongst so many of the demonstrators. I remember seeing them and being shocked that antisemitism was there on display—shocked! We have seen those types of Nazi symbols and that type of antisemitism expressed not just overseas in the United Kingdom and other countries like ours but also in our universities, schools and workplaces, on the sporting field and elsewhere. These are places where people, because of their Jewish faith, background and belief system, have been persecuted, abused and the recipients of violence—all because of their faith and ethnicity. It is a disgrace and abhorrence that Australia in the 21st century should have this occurring.

It is just terrible—and I use the word terrible in inverted commas—that we must do this legislation, but we need to set very firm guidelines. Legislative changes are not just to be implemented; they have a moral force and efficacy like that legislation I talked about—the Racial Discrimination Act—and those giants of the Labor movement I referred to before. This legislation is a statement about what we believe and what we will not accept in this country against any group, Jewish or otherwise. So I want to express my fulsome support for the legislation and go on record to say exactly what this legislation will do in the remaining five minutes of my speech.

The bill creates a new criminal offence or offences, strengthening the Criminal Code—which already has some things in there—and extending specific protections to persons who are targeted due to their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinion. These are called protective attributes in the legislation. The bill also goes on to strengthen existing offences for urging the use of force, and it takes away that, can I say, intentionality, and brings in an offence of recklessness with respect to the criminal activity. What I mean by that is it provides for an offence that is committed where a person is reckless as to whether the violence urged will occur, lowered from the existing requirement that the person intended for the violence urged to occur. It removes the application of the defence of good faith—how can defence of good faith be there when you're actually urging violence? It extends protections to persons distinguished by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status or disability, and this is in addition to those protected attributes I referred to before. It creates a new criminal offence for threatening the use of force or violence against a group or a member of a group distinguished by protected attributes. It also amends the existing offences for the public display of prohibited hate symbols in the Criminal Code, which I referred to earlier, and the provisions make it an offence to publicly display prohibitive hate symbols or make the Nazi gesture in public, including where the display of the symbol or use of the gesture is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a member of a group distinguished by protected attributes.

I say that members of the Jewish community and, indeed, members of other communities living in the Middle East including people who are Palestinian and people of an Arab background should not be discriminated against and have violence inflicted on them on the basis of their faith, whether they're Christian or Islamic or Jewish or any faith whatsoever. That is intolerable and unacceptable.

The legislation here makes a difference. It shows what we believe as parliamentarians and as a parliament. I hope it is passed in a bipartisan way and the crossbench fully support it. I hope it gets through, because it will say something. It's not just a legislative change; it will have that moral force behind it. We cannot allow people to claim not just that they're bigots—the so-called right to be a bigot—but that they have a right to perpetrate and perpetuate hate in our community and express that in a violent way on schools and synagogues, on mosques and temples or on churches and other places of faith just because they disagree with those persons.

One of the greatest men in history is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood up against Nazism. He went back to America, then from America back to Germany. He could have stayed in academia and pastoral care but he went back to Germany to stand up for his faith, and he died near the end of World War II as a symbol of what it means to be a true Christian: a man of peace, a man of tolerance, a man of charity, a man of love. Dietrich Bonhoffer stood against this kind of intolerance because, as he said on numerous occasions: 'If they come first for the Jewish community, they'll come for then the Christians. And they'll come then for the trade unions and the politicians.'

If you go to the German parliament, you will see in the German parliament a book. If you open that book—and on the wall are bullet holes from the Russian bullets—there are the names of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats—politicians—all who died at the hands of the Nazis. They were either killed or put in gulags—concentration camps—and killed within the first few years of Hitler's abolishment of their parliament. The Christian Democrats are the equivalent of the LNP. The Social Democrats are the equivalent of the Labor Party.

This is not some academic exercise. This is about standing against extremism in any form of all, and a demonstration that legislation can be passed not just to say, 'We're going to protect our community,' but to show that the opposite of hate is love, and that we should love one another as our faith demands—whether we're Christians, Jewish, or Islamic. I commend this legislation to the chamber.

The Federation Chamber transcript was published up to 19:32. The remainder of the transcript will be published on Thursday 6 February 2025.

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