Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Later today a parliamentary committee will release a report into the future of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and we will wait for the government to respond. There should be no doubt that any changes to the Racial Discrimination Act which give permission for more racial hate speech are a bad outcome for Australia and should be resisted. I, like most members of this House, will go my whole life without being a target of racial hate speech, but I cannot say the same for my friends and my neighbours.

Most of us only see examples of racial hatred that happen in the public sphere when videos are released. When people see them they are repulsed by the level of hatred that some people experience on an everyday basis when simply commuting. What sort of an out-of-touch, born-to-rule, indulgent sense of entitlement leads someone to look at those videos of racial abuse and see the abusers as the victims because they should somehow have been allowed to hurl even more insults than they did? The hatred that shocks most Australians is seen as simply not enough by some in this chamber—by an elite, arrogant few. The voices of those who are the target of hate speech are not loud enough and are not heard. I urge all members to join with me for the Walk for Respect on 31 March to stand up for a multicultural Australia.