Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning the Senate again considered a bill, already supported by two Liberal senators, Senators Smith and Bernardi, that seeks to water down Australia's protections against racist hate speech. This morning two further Liberal senators, Senators Back and Seselja, spoke in favour of the bill.

As the Leader of the Opposition has made clear, this is a time for national unity. It is a time for social cohesion and for harmony between Australians of all backgrounds. This bill would undermine that sense of national unity. Weakening section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is an ideologically driven and deeply divisive proposal, and it is a proposal the Australian people resoundingly rejected last year, before it was finally dropped by the government.

Just like the Leader of the Opposition, the new Prime Minister has said some admirable things about tolerance and community harmony at this difficult time. But the Prime Minister needs to match those words with action. In May this year the Prime Minister told Andrew Bolt that he supported precisely the same weakening of the Racial Discrimination Act proposed in the bill that is now in the Senate. It is time for the Prime Minister to publicly abandon that view. It is time for him to accept that there is no good reason to abandon a protection that has served Australians well for 20 years. It is time for him to show some leadership and pull his senators into line, to direct them to abandon their attack on race hate protections that have served Australians well.