Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In December last year my parliamentary colleagues in the Joint Standing Committee on Human and Rights and I began a series of public hearings, visiting every capital city of the nation and tasked with two things: to examine the operation of part 2A of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and whether it imposes unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech and, secondly, to look at whether the complaints-handling procedures of the Australian Human Rights Commission should be reformed.

My colleague the member for Moreton has spoken to the report of the committee and, like him, I reiterate that this committee has not recommended any changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. That is because there was not overwhelming support for change demonstrated by the submissions to the inquiry, nor among the members of the committee.

The committee report has recommended adjustments to the AHRC Act, alongside an increased focus on education, with the intention that such efforts would prevent drawn-out conflicts that serve only to cause pain and injury to both complainants and respondents. I think this is sensible reform.

As a new parliamentarian, it was a revelation to witness the fortitude of people as they committed to speak before a federal parliamentary committee, as part of the formality and the unintentionally-intimidating atmosphere. People attending the hearings spoke about two things—being able to live free from discrimination and being able to live a life of free expression. Sadly, I could not read all of the thousands of submissions to what has been referred to as the 'parliamentary inquiry into freedom of speech'. But after reading hundreds of submissions and after hearing from and asking questions of many witnesses directly, it soon became clear that this inquiry was about more than freedom of speech.

It became apparent very quickly that people are concerned about the impact that possible changes to the Racial Discrimination Act will have on them, their families and the wider community. I know that I have enjoyed a privileged life compared with many of those who made submissions or who appeared in front of the committee. I have never felt the sting of racism; I have never felt restrained in my freedom of speech; I have never decided to keep quiet every day at work, or at school or university lest anyone make me a target of their hurtful words—words that might be unintentionally or, sadly, deliberately hurtful. Because of this, I have never needed the protections offered by the Racial Discrimination Act. But many people do.

The inquiry heard from both individuals and groups, and despite the impression one might get from reporting in The Australian, it was not a forum dominated by academic lawyers, barristers and solicitors, former judges, former and current Human Rights Commissioners, cartoonists and journalists—useful though their contributions were. I can honestly say that the process of the inquiry was better than the broadsheet's reporting, and it reached out widely to our brilliantly diverse Australian community. We heard from Indigenous groups, multicultural associations and representatives from older migrant groups, including from the Jewish, Greek and Chinese communities. Particularly admirable and inspiring was the strength of conviction of those representing the Jewish community of Australia. This community, one that has seen the worst of racism in this world, has actively sought to protect the rights of other minorities in the Australian community. All of these people and groups took the time to write to and speak with the committee. They took the time to defend the small yet important protections that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act provides, and others provided thoughtful and constructive contributions on how the act could be amended. I thank all those who participated in this inquiry.

I am of the firm opinion that it is not in anyone's interests, and certainly not in the national interest, to amend the Racial Discrimination Act. This is an act—and a protection against racial vilification, in the form of sections 18C and 18D—that has served this nation effectively and quietly since its enactment in 1996. It should be left to its efficient devices. Fewer than 100 disputes in the Federal Court in 25 years, and thousands of disputes resolved in private conciliation, speak for themselves. It is true that some people have suffered in the administration of the RDA. I acknowledge their hardships, just as I acknowledge the pain and hardships of the thousands of victims of racism across Australia who suffer every single day of their lives. We would all like the law to be perfect. We would like every law to be perfect. But seeking perfection at the price of diminishing protections provided to the vulnerable is not worth the price.

It is well and good to theorise about freedom of speech, but this must be done from a position that is inclusive of all members of society. Merely considering the views of the most privileged in society on how they feel they are oppressed in their freedom of speech is absurd. This is so when you consider their voices in the media, their access to the media, their ownership of the media. It is especially absurd when you meet and speak with committee witnesses representing multicultural and Indigenous groups from across the country and hear the lived experience of racism. I want to highlight something Dr Jackie Huggins, a co-convenor of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, said to the committee:

Particularly for Aboriginal people since the 1967 referendum right through to the Racial Discrimination Act, there have been some protections around the call out of racism. We have felt very much that section 18C should not be changed or tampered with, because it is very much speech and beliefs and opinions that are quite hateful and unfounded, and it does hurt very deeply. It can scar people for the rest of their lives, and sometimes Aboriginal people just wear it as a second skin because we are so used to it—so used to the call out and what we are being subjected to. Unfortunately, it is just one of those things we live with, like chronic diseases and dying 10 years earlier than other Australians et cetera. But, for a very small minority group, we still believe that we are here and we have survived, and we just live every day with racism.

Dr Huggins was not alone in expressing the sentiment that victims of racism wear a second skin, be they Indigenous or of ethnic origins. The words of Dr Huggins have affected me deeply, and I thank her for them.

As a white Australian who sits in this parliament and who participated in this committee and this inquiry, I have felt very sad at times that this parliament and the government of this country should require people to defend, in written submissions and before us in person, the protections offered to them under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Is this what we do now? If this is what we do, I think we should really review our priorities. As a witness in Darwin reflected, it is outrageous that this parliament is having this conversation about lessening protections against racism, when multiple studies show we have a serious race relations problems in this country. Ms Penelope Taylor commented:

There are thousands of incidents every day that could become a case but are not being reported because people are marginalised, disempowered or voiceless.

Why aren't we talking about these people? That is my question. Why aren't we talking about the voiceless in our society? I do not want to downplay the importance of freedom of speech in an open and democratic society, but I think some leaders in our community could do with getting out a little bit more and getting some kind of grip on the reality of racism in Australia.

As a country, we need to be a bit more generous of spirit to those in our community who take comfort knowing Australia has a law that protects them, even though they do not necessarily choose to enforce it and even though that law might not be perfect. The debate on freedom of speech in Australia is at best one-sided. At all times it seems to me to be a debate among elites with all the voice they could wish for and those who either fight to be heard or stay quiet for fear of being demonised because of their race or ethnicity. I hope we can work together to change this imbalance into the future.

My work on this inquiry has been both difficult and rewarding. It has been difficult to hear people's lived experiences of discrimination. It has been rewarding to hear witnesses tell their stories. The legal debate has also been enlightening. The committee worked together these past weeks, and I thank my parliamentary colleagues for their equal commitment to this inquiry. I acknowledge the member for Berowra, who is here today as well. I enjoyed our company and the conversations we had. I thank, in particular, the secretariat of the committee for their dedication and commitment to the complex task they managed with the utmost professionalism. The work you do—and, I must add, that of the colleagues who assist all other committees in this place—is essential to the operation of the parliament, and I thank you for it. I also thank the parliament for this opportunity.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too am a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I acknowledge my friend the member for Brand, thank her for her comments and say that I enjoyed working on the committee with her also.

I rise to speak today in support of the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The committee's report marks a historic breakthrough in what has been a long and difficult debate on section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18C has been an intractable political issue since 2011. Both sides of the debate have dug into their trenches around the principles of freedom of speech and the need for protection from serious abuse on the basis of race. For the first time, this report provides a path to fix the problems with section 18C, while maintaining its important role as a limited protection against serious racial abuse.

Since last November the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has been conducting an inquiry into the operation and administration of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act. The inquiry has received submissions and heard evidence from a full range of interested parties, including complainants, respondents, jurists, academics, administrators, news organisations and Indigenous and ethnic communities. In total the inquiry received more than 11,000 submissions and heard evidence from 100 witnesses. The great success of this inquiry is that it has revealed the underlying problem that has fuelled the debate on section 18C—that is, that the problem lies with the way the law has been administered, and on that point there is bipartisan consensus.

The process for handling section 18C complaints as it currently stands can be slow and onerous for respondents and is at odds with the case law. The threshold for making a complaint is so low it is virtually redundant. The problem with having such a poor administrative process is that it makes section 18C seem to nonexperts to be much broader than it actually is. The way the law has been administered, including the extremely low threshold for making a complaint—sometimes only one line dashed off in an email—has totally undermined the original intent of the provision. The ability to make complaints based on little information, almost a year after an action was taken—as in the QUT case—has understandably warped the public perception of 18C, which was always designed to be a very limited protection available for the most serious type of complaint.

Over the course of our inquiry, we have heard from scores of people who, despite having vastly different views on section 18C, have all agreed that the complaints-handling process needs to be fixed—or, as some put it to us, the process is the punishment. The QUT case illustrated the problems with the administration of the law. During the inquiry, we heard from some of the students, who shared with us the terrible story: not knowing a complaint had been laid against them for a year, being hauled before the commission and then taken to court. Over a period of years, they incurred significant cost in time, money and damage to reputation, only to have the complaint brought against them struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success.

We also heard from the cartoonist Bill Leak, who spoke of the stress and anxiety he suffered throughout the process, despite the clear artistic exemption that should have seen the complaint rejected instantly. The need for process reform has been raised by all comers in the debate. For instance, Ms Helen Kapalos, chair of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, made the following comments about focusing on process change:

I think you are absolutely right in endorsing a stronger process and looking at the complaint-handling mechanism …

The President of the Federation of Indian Associations of New South Wales, Dr Yadu Singh, appeared before the committee and noted that the QUT case highlighted problems with the process. He told the committee:

… I believe the Australian Human Rights Commission Act should be amended so that the complaint-handling process could be streamlined.

The Institute of Public Affairs has been a vocal supporter of repealing section 18C and has conceded that process changes would be an improvement in the law. Even the commission itself recognised the need for changes to the way the law is administered. The process changes recommended by the committee's report will address these problems identified by the hard cases like QUT and Bill Leak and make sure that they do not happen again.

On this point I would like to note the comments of Tony Morris QC in today's Australian. Tony Morris is the lawyer for the QUT students. He is a hero to many fair-minded Australians for offering his services pro bono to the students. Tony Morris is a supporter of the repeal of section 18C, but his contribution illustrates why the reforms to the complaint-handling process are so important. I want to draw the attention of the House to those comments because they are very, very significant. Mr Morris told The Australian:

When you analyse all the impediments that they—

And, in this, he means the committee—

are putting in the way of someone making an unjustified complaint, the reality is they are putting an end to the industry. The recommendations are not what some of us who oppose 18C wanted, but I suspect they will do the job.

The Australian noted:

Mr Morris said that if the recommendations were introduced, a complaint similar to those against the QUT students would go nowhere. "The best part is the combined effect of all the protections they are proposing to put in for respondents to complaints," he said.

"If the report’s recommendations are adopted, it will lead to a level playing field so that respondents enjoy rights similar to complainants."

Tony Morris's intervention in this debate is highly significant. We can all take a philosophical position on either side of this issue, but what this committee report does is address the practical concerns raised by the QUT and Bill Leak cases. Taking a practical approach provides us with a way forward for the first time in six years. I encourage all members to consider the report and reflect on it carefully.

Some commentators have suggested that the recommendations do not do anything. Might I suggest that they have a closer look at the report, as the recommendations dealing with complaints handling are highly significant. The recommendations will do a number of things. First, they raise the threshold for complaints so that less serious matters will not warrant consideration by the commission. Specifically, any complaint will be required to allege an act which, if true, could constitute unlawful discrimination. It will set out the need for sufficient details of the allegation, and a lodgement fee will be required to be lodged with the commission. This will set a deterrent for nuisance cases. Penalties will be introduced for legal practitioners who institute complaints that have no reasonable prospect of success and for legal practitioners or complainants who act unreasonably in the process. Second, the processes are designed to create a more level playing field by empowering the commission to give reasonable assistance to respondents to match its current powers for dealing with complaints and complainants, and by imposing time limits on the complaints-handling process—in particular, for notifying respondents. Third, the recommendations give the commission greater powers to terminate complaints, allowing the commission to terminate earlier and expanding the grounds so that a complaint can be terminated if it is assessed to be unwarranted or have no reasonable prospect of success. Fourth, the recommendations will also restrict access to the courts following a complaint's termination by the commission by requiring complainants to seek leave of the court and to provide security for costs before commencing proceedings. Finally, the recommendations will create greater accountability, providing parliamentary oversight for the Human Rights Commission, which has become a law unto itself in the minds of many.

The recommendations are groundbreaking for what they will achieve. First and foremost, they will get 18C off the front pages and allow it to perform its intended function as a limited but effective protection against racial hatred, they will place the onus on the Human Rights Commission and on lawyers operating in this area to get the process right, and they will help bolster freedom of speech by limiting the types of complaints that are deemed worthy of further consideration by the commission.

I know that this report was criticised yesterday for providing the government with options for dealing with 18C, reflecting the diversity of opinion on a bipartisan committee. To be clear, my own preferred option is to codify the test set out by Justice Kiefel in 2001 and repeatedly applied for the last 16 years: that 18C refers to discrimination which must have 'profound and serious effects, not to be likened to mere slights'. Such a codification will help the public understanding that the words in section 18C have not been given their natural and ordinary meaning but rather that they apply to a more limited range of complaints.

But I want to be crystal clear here: the root cause of the problem is that the legislation has not been administered properly. The way in which the legislation has been applied by the Human Rights Commission has allowed nuisance complaints to be treated with the same level of consideration as serious complaints. When you look at the problem forensically, try to uncover the root cause and try to properly diagnose so you can prescribe the required medicine, all the evidence indicates that the process is the problem. That is why we have recommended significant and serious process changes. Should these recommendations be adopted, they will go a very long way to bridging the gulf between the public perception of what the legislation does and the reality of its legal application.

It is important that we provide some protection against the worst types of hate speech. Though freedom of speech is fundamental to any democratic society, the Anglo-Australian tradition is not one of unrestrained free speech. The case law on section 18C is settled. It has provided a limited but important protection against Holocaust denial and serious racial abuse against Indigenous people and ethnic communities. At the same time, the defences in section 18D have been described by Professor Adrienne Stone as 'a set of defences which have no equal in their extensiveness in any law anywhere in the world', and they have allowed fair and reasonable public comment and artistic expression through cartoons and satire.

The real problem has been the process. For the first time in six years, we have bipartisan support in this parliament to fix it. Section 18C should go back to being a limited protection from the very worst kind of behaviour: an 'In case of emergency, break glass' provision, which is what it was always intended to be. I commend the report to this House.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that I have just had an experience that I never thought I would have. I did. I felt like I was standing in the coalition party room and hearing a speech on your side of the debate. I thank you for it, because I cannot really disagree with anything that was said by my friend and colleague the member for Berowra.

An honourable member: You are very generous.

I am very generous. But I think it is fair to say that there are some reasonable people opposite on this side of the debate. I read the report last night, because this is a matter in which I have great interest as an Australian and a legislator, and also as someone who represents in this parliament a community—a seat—where 53 per cent of people were born in another country. This is of great relevance to my electorate and in the daily lives of the people I represent. I read the report and I actually cracked up laughing last night. I read the recommendations and my staffer, hearing me shrieking with laughter on the couch, said, 'What on earth is wrong?' I said: 'After all this fanfare, all the forests felled by The Australian newspaper, the 500,000-plus words on this we have had—Crikey actually counted them for us—after all the drumbeats from the monkey pod that we were going to let the racists unleash and say whatever they wanted to say, the answer is "the process." Who knew there is nothing wrong with the law? We don't need to change the law. After six years of scaring the bejesus out of multicultural Australia and people who live in my electorate, it is the process. Fantastic!' When you strip it away, the report really says nothing. It is like the government. It goes on and on, and there is no point to it. It is a great disappointment.

It is fair to say that what the member for Berowra said about the process changes is reasonable. Sure, but it is like reading a report by a business process consultant that you hire—not one of the top-tier consulting firms, but those mid-tier ones when you want a lower daily rate for them to come in and do really bleedingly obvious stuff to re-engineer your processes and give them a bit of an overhaul. But that is the report. Now, of course, if the Attorney-General actually had a relationship with the Human Rights Commissioner and actually had some decency to sit down with Professor Triggs and listen like a normal minister—

A government member: She isn't the Human Rights Commissioner. Do your research.

Sure; thank you.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there were actually a conversation going in the normal business of government, many of these issues would have been fixed. They would not have needed a parliamentary inquiry with 420 submissions, nine days of public hearings over several months all over the country, and 200 pages. They could have just done it as the normal business of government, because many of these suggestions are exactly what they have been calling for. Fantastic—the parliament agrees. The only omission in the report in that sense is an apology to her for the way that many members opposite, particularly your senators, have spoken to her and treated her when she appears in this place to do her job.

With regard to 18C, there is no case for change. The report makes that clear. The best those opposite could come up with was to say, 'Well, on one hand, someone said this, and on the other hand, someone said that. But we don't need to do anything, because there is no problem with the law.' Section 18C is settled jurisprudence. The deputy secretary of the Attorney-General's Department said so. He quoted Justice Kiefel: only 'profound and serious effects', not 'mere slights', can be prosecuted under this law. The deputy secretary also said:

… any time you change a judicially well understood set of terms, you will create an incentive … to then relitigate …

So fiddling around with these words is a fantasy from the IPA: 'We will cross this word out and we will add this word in. Maybe we will write "harass" instead of "insult." That will be cute; we have done something.' All that would do is cause another decade of legal cases to try and figure out what the parliament meant by that word change. It is completely unnecessary.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:24 to 11:47

We have established that there is no case for change. Despite this, for years and years the government has been intent on scaring multicultural Australia. This is not an intellectual exercise, much as it may feel so to the IPA, writing their little essays on their whiteboards or wherever the collective brain cell resides. People are genuinely scared.

During this debate—in December, I think—I hosted a public meeting in Dandenong, along with the member for Isaacs. We had, at very short notice, about 250 people turn up. It was advertised publicly on Facebook, not stacked with supporters. We heard tale after tale of real-life racism that people in our communities experience. As the member for Brand was saying, that is something we could be talking about. We heard people complain that their community groups, which used to get support from the Human Rights Commission for antiracism campaigns, have no funding and support. Instead, the government's resources and the parliament's time are diverted to this intellectual frolic of thinking, 'How can we water down the race protection laws so that people can say more racist things?'

It is not just because stuff happens in society. We also heard from people who directly related the racist incidents that they had experienced on the street and on the bus to these inquiries. Leadership matters. People in society, human beings, take their signals as to what is acceptable behaviour from their leaders. It may not seem that way, given the way we behave here at times, but people in the community take cues from political leaders. People in schools take cues from leaders of schools. And this parliament spending year after year debating whether it is okay to say more racist things has real-world impacts in the community. Funnily enough, not one person at that public meeting—not one person—spoke up in favour of watering down 18C.

At a political level we have no resolution for the government. The government MPs , as you can see from this report, could not agree on a position. They are hopelessly divided. As Australia knows, they are out of touch. This is not a barbecue stopper. Even the Deputy Prime Minister admitted, yesterday, that when people in his electorate drag him into a shed—goodness only knows what happens then; the proverbial shed—they do not talk to him about this.

This is not a priority for people in the real world, outside the right wing of the Liberal Party. People on our side and in my community want to know where their jobs are coming from. They want to know how their kids are going to get a decent education when school funding is cut: $29 million my electorate will lose, when the Gonski money goes. They want to know how their kids can go to hospital. They want to know how we are going to compromise—like grown-ups—and put the budget back on a sustainable path. But no, the government is arguing over how to let people say more racist things.

What happens now with 18C? Unfortunately, people must still be concerned despite the fact this report paints no case for change. Given we are in a coalition party room meeting, it is up to the Prime Minister, apparently. And that atmosphere is febrile. The member for Berowra explained to us that the debate is finished. It is over. The report has killed it. I do not know whether he has talked to Senator Paterson who has said, 'We're going! The case has been made out. We're going to fight to the death.'

It's kind of like the zombie budget cuts, isn't it?—except you can kill a zombie. You have to cut their brains out. It is hard to get through the cranium but you can kill a zombie. Unfortunately, it appears there is no brain cell in the government, so you cannot kill these measures. We could go on with the other analogies: the Monty Python dead parrot and the knights who say, 'Nae, T'is but a flesh wound.' They might say, 'We've taken a bit off the right wing of the Liberal Party but still we go on.' This is red meat to the base.

When you sit on our side of the chamber and look across, you see behind the Prime Minister a reasonable balance of modern Australia. You have some women—and then you look around and there is this whole segment where you see the same bloke. Sometimes he is 30, sometimes he is 40 and sometimes he is 50, but it is the same white bloke in a blue suit having this intellectual debate about whether people should be allowed to say more racist things in our communities.

Perhaps this report will actually be good enough. Perhaps, for once, the chair of the committee will not be a misnomer. What else did we learn from the report? We learnt that the case for change its about what is unsaid, apparently. It is a chilling effect. Have you got the little emails that are coming in now? They are: 'The last desperate cry of the IPA'? 'Someone's pressed a button,' and 'There's a chilling effect.' But what did the inquiry hear? Multiple witnesses, when pressed, could not provide even one example of things that could not be published. Hundreds of thousands of cartoons. One complaint. One person said, 'Well, there were a few Andrew Bolt articles that we probably reconsidered.'

That probably shows the law is working fine, if it gets people to stop and think before firing off more racist rants. There is nothing of substance. Racism is always about—and Australia is no different—most people are good and some are racist. We forget the lessons of history at our peril. Racist hate speech drives racist violence, and these laws must stay.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is nothing better than the opportunity to speak about the importance of free speech and to follow the diatribe before, because the member there has a privileged right as a member of this place to get up and say whatever he likes. But he won't afford the same privilege to others. In fact, he uses the opportunity and the platform he has been given to judge people based on the colour of their skin and not the content of their character. Isn't that exactly what he claims—he claims—he is trying to stand up against? That is the problem. At the heart of the ALP they play identity politics. They focus on points of division rather than points of unity. They make a mockery of universal human rights and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I welcome this report and the recommendations that have come out of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. I do so because I am a Liberal. And we believe in free speech. We believe in free speech because it is the foundation of a free society, democracy and dignity of the individual. If you ever want to bring that into question, go and read the great Sir Robert Menzies, and particularly his second and third forgotten people speeches. He spoke explicitly about free speech and how it is not just at the core of liberalism because it focuses on individual dignity but also because it is central to the operations of a democracy. That is why we must preserve it and that is why we must protect it.

But, I acknowledge that a serious concern has been raised by people who support either the current version of this law or equally some form of reform law into the future, and that is that we must always protect people against harassment in society—we must. If we are to preserve people's dignity equally, people have to be able to live their life in freedom and free from intimidation and harassment. Frankly, I do not think it should be limited just to issues of race—I think exactly the same principle should apply to people based on their gender, their disability, their sexual orientation or any other irrelevant issue or attribute. People have to feel safe. That is what I said in my submission to this inquiry, and that is the liberal way.

The important thing about this report is that it provides a way forward. The previous speaker was such a hypocrite in the way that he indulged—

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Goldstein ought not reflect on a member, and he should withdraw.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the sake of brevity and expediency I will withdraw.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, the member should just withdraw.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask the member to withdraw.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I shall therefore withdraw, but I stress again that the previous speaker said that the report said that there was no issue with the law and it did not need to be changed. Then he talked extensively about how he supports the recommendations that recommend changing the process in the law. With all due respect, I think there is an inconsistency—I am sure I am allowed to say that. I think what we should be doing, as the member for Berowra said before the recent division, is look at how we can reform the law in a practical and sensible way, particularly around supporting recommendation (3) and its option of removing 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' for the term 'harassment'. I have just made the case why—because the law should treat everybody equally. I make no apology for standing up for that fundamental principle of liberalism. That is what I said in my submission to the inquiry—that we should set a standard that applies to people consistently.

I also support it because it was the foundation of the introduction of the law in the first place. People forget this. Often Labor and others outside this place remark that the introduction of 18C was preceded by three independent inquiries that recommended the current law. That is fundamentally untrue. Section 18C was introduced in 1994 by then Attorney-General Michael Lavarch. Lavarch said 18C was necessary because three major inquiries had found gaps—the National Inquiry into Racist Violence, the Australian Law Reform Commission's report into multiculturalism and the law, and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It is true, there were three inquiries—but before they are used as a justification people should actually read them.

The royal commission did not recommend the current law—it recommended a law prohibiting 'racial violence, discrimination or hostility.' The ALRC inquiry recommended 'making incitement to racist hatred and hostility unlawful.' Even then, though, one of the ALRC Commissioners dissented, saying:

… in a democratic and pluralist society freedom of expression is of special importance which may necessitate tolerance of obnoxious and hateful views which do not incite violence.'

Critically, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into racist violence recommended a civil offence against incitement of racial hostility, an express prohibition on racist harassment as well as a federal criminal offence against racial violence. The commission also recommended the creation of the offence of incitement to racial violence. None of the three inquiries—none—recommended making offensive, insulting or humiliating speech unlawful. That is not just my conclusion—that was the conclusion of the Parliamentary Library in its Bills Digest, where it identified:

… the Racial Hatred Bill 1994 is in some aspects completely contrary to the recommendations of these three reports.

The Bills Digest went on to say that the standards set by these inquiries 'involve a high threshold of serious conduct' yet 18C 'establishes a civil offence with the significantly lower threshold'. These three reports recommend the law rightly focused on harassment, hostility and violence, which is at the core of the recommendations that have just been handed down, in recommendation 3 as one of its options—to actually go back to what Labor thought they argued for in the first place but got wrong.

In arguing for the law at the time, the Attorney-General also said:

The bill places no new limits on genuine public debate. Australians must be free to speak their minds, to criticise actions and policies of others and to share a joke. The bill does not prohibit people from expressing ideas or having beliefs, no matter how unpopular the views may be to many other people.

An honourable member interjecting—

Respectfully to the member who has interjected, it was the former Labor Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, who said that—again, not me. Similar sentiments were echoed in a 1994 article in The Age newspaper arguing for the law. According to its advocates, 'Most Australians would sympathise with the aims of the bill,' as I do, 'namely, to control racist violence, threats and harassment.' We can be sure that that was true then, and it remains true today, including by all of the people who support a constructive change in the law. The article went on to say that the law will apply to:

… the skinhead on the street yelling racist names and other insults at an Asian man, or a woman in traditional Islamic dress, not newspaper articles or anti-immigration pamphlets.

Any objective assessment says that that test has now proven to be false, even if it has been unintentionally. It may appear that the insidious nature of the law has been revealed only in recent cases, but that is wrong. It was controversial when it was first introduced. There is a speech worth reading from the time. As the previous speaker said, sometimes you have one of those moments that you do not think you are ever going to have; I am going to recommend a speech by a member of the Australian Greens. Australian Greens senator Christabel Chamarette said at the time that the broad scope of the law would:

… create a crime of words. This will take the legislation across a certain threshold into the realm of thought police …

That is stronger than most criticism raised by 18C's critics today. How far the Greens have truly fallen.

It is in its present form that 18C has more in common with antiblasphemy laws in theocracies than it does, frankly, with other federal laws dealing specifically with public speech. When you put into context just how bad it is—and there are so many things I have yet to say—it becomes clear that it is a complete aberration, because there is no equivalent provision on the basis of people with a disability; there is no equivalent provision on the basis of people's gender or sexual orientation.

The reality is—I have used examples like this before, which are rooted in reality—if you establish a test around harassment, I am quite relaxed about that, because the reality is that there are times where people get attacked on the basis of people's culture in other minority groups. When that happens, 18C creates a legal shield for them to not be able to stand up and call out other people's bigotry. This, in the end, is the frustration I have. Let us have a law that applies to everybody. Let us have a law that respects everybody equally. Let us not create an environment where some people enjoy special legal privileges and other people do not. In the end, it is time to cut the cancer out of the middle of this law and replace 'offend, insult and humiliate' with 'harassment' so that we can have a racial discrimination act that enjoys the confidence of the whole Australian public.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those in this place and outside of it who call to water down Australia's protections against racial hate speech are much more concerned with privilege and entitlement than they are with freedom of speech. But do not take my word for it. That case was very clearly made out by the previous speaker, the former commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the member for Goldstein, in an extraordinary contribution that delved deep into his psyche and its parallel universe and did not explore the reality of Australian communities today—in particular, the realities experienced by many of the people I represent who are members of the culturally and linguistically diverse communities that make this country such a great country to live in. These are people who, all too often, are diminished by the actions of others—people who depend on leadership in this place, leadership by political leaders, but also on lawmaking that respects them and their culture and their background. For the whole time I have been in this place, this has been a hurtful and divisive, and often dishonest, debate in this parliament and in the Australian community.

It is interesting that we stand here debating this today, on 1 March, because this is a day which is supposed to be about zero tolerance for disharmony. I guess in one respect we see a marker there, in that, through three years of hurt and division—and indeed, for the government, distraction—we have seen two things emerge. One is that today, as back in 2013, we have Liberal and National party members hopelessly divided over this issue, as evidenced in the debate around the report and as evidenced in the conversation that continues around its reception and the steps that we may take beyond it. But, more substantively of course, we now see what we have said all along—that no case can be made fairly to change 18C and 18D. That is what we know.

We have had three years of division fostered by this government, whether led by the member for Warringah or kind of cobbled together by his successor, the member for Wentworth. Three years—and throughout that time, in the Scullin electorate there has been really deep concern around these proposals. I was so pleased that, in the last parliament, the member for Isaacs came and spent time with me and a range of communities in the suburb of Thomastown to work through concerns at public meetings. As the member for Bruce put it, in the meetings that he attended there was a unanimity of purpose, but also a concern—a concern that has been expressed by many people on this side of the House as we have had the interminable debates around these issues.

I am very pleased that the member for Watson, the shadow minister, is here, because he has made this point over and over again, and it has not been effectively responded to. I would submit it has not been effectively responded to because it cannot be. That is to pose this question: what exactly is it that these people want to be allowed to say that they cannot say now? How do they wish to be able to describe people who are different from them that they cannot do today, and why would they choose to do so? If I may go beyond the member for Watson's question of why they would choose to do so, why would they choose to treat some Australians as somehow less than others? Why would they choose to tear up more than 40 years of the Racial Discrimination Act and 25 years of very effective protections that have served Australia well?

When we talk about how they have served Australia well, it is important to think about the wider context within which we are conducting this debate. It is a context where there are divisive forces beyond this parliament that are seeking to turn Australians against each other. I am so proud of Australians' support for multiculturalism, but there are concerning signs. If you have regard to the work that the Scanlon Foundation and the Lowy Institute have been doing, we show that in communities across Australia there is strong support for multiculturalism, but the support is softening as licence has been given for people to treat people differently on the basis of their racial background. These are concerns that resonate deeply in the communities that I am so proud to represent. That is why I made a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry, as did the member for Goldstein—because standing up for the diverse communities of Melbourne's northern suburbs, and indeed the diverse communities that make up Australia today more generally, is something that is important to me and is something that is very important to my constituents.

I suspect the member for Goldstein may have spent some more time on his submission than I did; I did not make a very long submission, because there is not really a lot to say. If we believe that all Australians are equal, we also recognise that they should be treated equally. And anyone who has had any opportunity to represent any part of Australia in public life knows that there are forces—too often fuelled with their own privilege, with their own sense of entitlement—who seek to use the power that they have to push down others and to divide communities. That is the ill that these provisions recognise. Recognising that racism is something that is completely unacceptable, it sets a standard—a standard at law that should also be a standard that we all practice in this place. So in considering this report let us all be mindful to stand up for all Australians, regardless of how we treat the specifics of the report that is before us.

In turning to the report, it is a pretty weighty document, so I acknowledge that many members put a great deal of work into this. The recommendations, in significant part, are worthy of adoption, but there are a couple of things that need to be said. Firstly—of course, they are not novel. I will turn briefly to the remarks of the member for Berowra in this regard in a moment. They are process-driven changes that do not go to the substance. They do not go to any of the soaring rhetoric of the so-called freedom-of-speech lobbyists. Freedom-of-speech lobbyists are unconcerned about other restrictions on freedom of speech, such as those contained in employment arrangements, and they are certainly not worried about the tort of defamation. In fact the evidence is that they are pretty keen on that. They are pretty keen on those constraints but, again, this is a debate not about freedom of speech; it is a debate about privilege and power.

The member for Berowra talked about the recommendations being groundbreaking. Really? If they are so groundbreaking, why was he not paying attention to Commissioner Triggs when she was making the case for most of these changes? Let's reflect on how Commissioner Triggs has been treated by this government—in the most appalling manner. The member also talked about his aspiration—and there is no doubt that it is a genuine one—to end the division, but I cannot share his confidence. I do not think that this debate ends here, I really do not.

The member for Bruce touched on the weird experience we had, sitting in a coalition party room debate. I said 'experience'; I do not think I could call this a privilege! But the weirdest bit of the whole thing was not that we were witnesses to it, it was that we appeared to have greater insight into the operation of the coalition party room than the poor member for Berowra!

This is not over. Senator Paterson has made it clear and other speakers in this debate may also make it clear that this is not over. The fight to stand up for diversity and the fight to stand for reasonable and proven protections against racist hate speech does not end today, or add any such time that the government changes administrative or legislative arrangements around the operation of these provisions. I should be very clear—and I know that you will share this aspiration, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou—that on this side of the House we stand with a singular resolve: to stand with and for those communities, however long it takes.

This has been a disturbing experience in Australian public life. The hysteria with which some of the advocates for reform of 18C and 18D have carried on their aggressive agenda has been quite extraordinary. They refer to the 'chilling' effect. I cannot think of any public policy issue that has received a more disproportionately large coverage in relation to its practical, positive impact than this one. The Australian newspaper must have been licensed by the IPA, and I hope the IPA have done well out of the content they have provided.

But, in ending my remarks on this issue, this has been a debate about privilege and entitlement. It has also been a debate about power. We stand for power to be distributed equally in Australia, and never to be determined on the basis of someone's racial or cultural background.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today also to speak about the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and its report on the freedom of speech in Australia, particularly as it pertains to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

I note that this is a fraught issue, with many stakeholders and with many submissions, and I acknowledge the diversity of opinion. I think that is a very good thing; it reflects a healthy Australian society. The fact that we are having this debate here is also an indicator that we have a healthy, functioning democracy.

There are a number of things that I want to say up-front, because those opposite have misconstrued many of our positions with words like 'divisive' and 'hysteria'. I want to make it very clear where I stand, so I want to lift the bonnet a bit on my thinking before I get to 18C itself. I am not a libertarian, but I am a Liberal, which is to say that I am committed to freedom: freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of enterprise and a whole host of freedoms that we hold dear in this country. Of course, today we are talking about freedom of speech.

I am going to quote John Donne and, at risk of sounding terribly heteronormative, I am going to use the original words of his poem:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Freedom only makes sense in the context of community. We do not live in isolation from each other in this country. We have constant exchange with our neighbours. We have a mutual dependence upon each other, which is why we come together to form local, state and federal governments. That reflects our search for order and our desire to secure our collective freedoms. Government is especially important when we come together to do tasks that we cannot do ourselves, especially in emergencies. So I just want to make clear that I am not a libertarian; I am a Liberal, and I believe in limited government, in the separation of powers and in the diffusion of power. That is why our Westminster system, I think, is the best system of government in the world, and I am proud that Australia has that as our system of government.

But alongside those freedoms and rights come responsibilities. As I said, we have a mutual dependence upon each other. At the heart of our democracy is the volunteer spirit. In an ideal world, every Australian would self-regulate or self-govern, but of course that is not true. But it does raise the question: what role does government have in our lives? Is it the supporting act or is it the main protagonist? I am of the view that it is the supporting act, and my point about 18C is that it ultimately is symbolic of government overreach. It is government overreach interfering in the lives of individual Australians and regulating one of our most basic freedoms, which is freedom of speech.

I also want to be very clear on my anthropology, my view of humankind. I believe that all people are endowed with respect and inherent worth and dignity, whatever their race, ethnicity, colour, religion, sex or sexuality. It does not matter: everyone is deserving of respect, because we are all endowed with inherent worth. I want to state that upfront very clearly. I also believe that a healthy civic society means that government can step back out of our lives. We call these mediating institutions or prepolitical institutions, and every single electorate has them. We start with the family and we work outwards to clubs—sporting clubs, Rotary clubs, Surf Life Saving clubs—churches, temples, mosques, schools and charities—you name it. They are in every single electorate around this country, and I believe they should be the first line of defence against discriminatory speech. They should be the first line of defence. I would rather see them empowered than big government interfering in people's lives, which I think is what has been the case with the exercise of 18C. Of course, in my electorate, and I am sure around the country, people have disengaged from civic society, so this is a task that all Australians should be engaged in: to rebuild a strong civic society.

Back to the topic of the Racial Discrimination Act and 18C. This is part of the question: what sort of a society do we want? Do we want one regulated by the state, or do we want one regulated by the citizenry? Do we want the state as the main protagonist or the supporting act? I think we have seen with the QUT case and the Bill Leak case that 18C has allowed vexatious litigation to creep into our society, where people are being inhibited in the exercise of their freedom of speech. We are seeing creeping political correctness across the board. We are seeing it in universities and schools. Not every Australian fully understands what 18C means, but for a lot of people it is emblematic of that creeping state interference and political correctness.

George Orwell wrote a famous essay, 'Politics and the English language', and in that he argued that language and thought are intimately related, so if we are to truly exercise freedom of conscience we need to have the freedom to exercise our speech as well. Of course, 'If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,' as he famously made clear. If we have the state regulating our speech, you also have the state regulating our thought, and I think that looks a lot like 1984, another great book by George Orwell.

The cases that have been litigated under 18C have caused a lot of psychological stress and trauma to those involved and also significant financial cost. I think of Bill Leak. You may not like Bill Leak's cartoons, and that is fine. I find them funny. I have found some of his cartoons to be very risque and found that they push the boundaries, but that is who he is. I want to acknowledge that after the 'Je suis Charlie'attacks in January 2015 he had the courage to do a cartoon in which he illustrated the Prophet Mohammed. Whatever you may think of that, he showed significant courage. He had to relocate his home because of death threats to him on the internet. I find it rather ironic in a free society that when he published a cartoon—whatever you might think of that cartoon—he was then pursued under 18C for that cartoon. What the terrorists themselves could not achieve in a free society, we had a mechanism of government for, which was used to pursue him for another cartoon of his. I think that is just unacceptable.

I turn to the report itself and recommendation 1. I approve of recommendation 1, which recommends addressing racism in Australian society. Absolutely we need to address racism. We need to address racism in all the mediating institutions that I just mentioned. Recommendation 2 says:

Recognising the profound impacts of serious forms of racism, the committee recommends that leaders of the Australian community and politicians exercise their freedom of speech to identify and condemn racially hateful and discriminatory speech where it occurs in public.

I affirm that absolutely. In fact, I copped a flogging on Facebook a couple of weeks ago after Larry Pickering's comments at the Q Society. I condemned his remarks. I condemned him for what he said about gay people and I condemned him for what he said about Islamic State and their barbarous acts in Iraq and Syria. A lot of people said I overstepped the mark. Great! I am happy for that. I enjoyed the flogging, in a sense, because it was another healthy indicator that democracy is alive and well and everyone can have their point of view.

I now turn to recommendation 3, and specifically to where it says:

(c) removing the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' from section 18C and replacing them with 'harass'; I think we need to do that. My colleague Senator James Paterson last night said that in this parliament we have a unique opportunity, a pathway where we have consensus around some of these recommendations. I recognise that this parliament is a tough one. It is rather austere from a legislative point of view. It is difficult to get legislation through. But I think we can all agree, on the evidence, that the QUT case, the Bill Leak case and others are a step too far. We absolutely need to reform the legislation. Politics is the art of the possible. I would rather not have 18C at all. I know that is not going to be achieved, but I do think we need to make changes. We need to make the threshold much higher to avoid the vexatious litigation that we have seen.

Ultimately, as I said, I am a Liberal, so I am going to err on the side of individual liberty. I hope that my fellow Australians are committed to a united country that is not divisive; that can preserve freedom and also ensure that the responsibilities of individual citizens are enforced and met. Section 18C has a chilling effect and we need reform. That is why I endorse it.

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

I have to say I find aspects of this debate like entering an alternative universe. When people come to parliament they look at the different challenges that are happening across Australia and choose, in different ways, the victims whose causes they will champion. Different people on both sides of the House will find people genuinely in need. But to have a situation now where there is a core group of government MPs where the victims they most want to champion, look after and try to help from their plight are racist people who are not allowed to say enough is one of the most—possibly the most—bizarre thing I have ever seen in my time as a member of parliament.

Amending a law, any law, as this committee has considered, does not happen in a vacuum. It happens from whatever the starting point is already. Any amendment that involves changing the language of sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act is not an amendment that just says, 'Okay, let's just imagine something to be consistent with other pieces of legislation.' No, it changes where the threshold is now and allows to be said things that are currently not permitted to be said. That is why during this discussion I have repeatedly—not just today in this parliament but as this debate has dragged on for months and years—continued to pose the question: if you want to change the threshold, what is it that you want people to be allowed to say that they are not allowed to say already? Because in any amendment to this section the courts will give meaning to the amendment. If the intention is to allow more so-called freedom of speech then the courts will allow to be said things that are currently not being allowed to be said.

It is no good for those opposite to say, 'Oh well, it's a Bill Leak cartoon and the situation with the QUT students,' because it has already been determined that those cases were not an offence under the act. That has been agreed. Changing the threshold does nothing for things that are already not caught by the act—that has nothing to do with it. People can make as many speeches about Bill Leak and the QUT students as they want. All they are doing is defending the current legislation. That is an argument in favour of some of the recommendations that have come through this report about streamlining processes, and Labor will have a constructive approach to streamlining processes on any piece of legislation, on any tribunal, on any court. But to say that Bill Leak and the QUT case are the problem, when it has been explicitly agreed that sections 18C and 18D combined mean those examples are not caught by it, adds nothing to the debate.

What we have seen from a number of the speakers in this debate is something that is hard to describe in terms other than those of self-entitled, born-to-rule arrogance. That is what we have seen. Most of us who have spoken in this debate—not everybody but most of us who have spoken in this debate, and me included—will go through our entire lives in Australia without ever being the target of racial abuse. It was not the case for people of my heritage 100 years ago, but it has been the case for a while. We will go through life without experiencing racial hatred targeted at us. The main way we see it is when we are in a public space and we might witness it or, more often for many people, when something is happening on a train or in a shopping centre and someone thinks to video it. What we see and are horrified to see is something that for many Australians is their lived day-to-day experience. And that is under the current law! So to people who say, 'It's just words. We need freedom of speech. It is just words; words can't harm you,' I say, 'Tell that to the woman who goes home in tears after being abused on the train because of the way she is dressed. Tell that to the child who goes home trembling after they have witnessed that treatment that their parents receive in a shopping centre. Tell them it's just words.'

These issues are real, and those opposite who argue that it is just words—it is not everybody opposite who argues that case—do not argue the same when we are talking about defamation law. They do not argue the same when we are talking about whether or not a whistle blower should be allowed to state what has happened within a government department. They do not argue the same when we are talking about whether an employee should be able to tell their story if there is an employment contract that says they are not allowed to. They certainly do not apply the same principle of 'it's all about freedom of speech' when a non-government organisation reaches a contract with the Commonwealth government and part of the contract is to prevent it from speaking out. So why do they suddenly find freedom of speech when it involves multicultural communities, when the person who will be harmed will never be them?

That is why Labor will never support any amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act where the outcome of that amendment is more racial hatred. We will never support a lowering of the benchmark in the name of consistency with other acts, because the courts will have to give meaning to it and the only outcome will be more racial hatred in Australia. We keep hearing from the P   rime Minister and others—and we hear it from members of the opposition and we hear it from crossbenchers, and it is a good thing when people celebrate it—that we are the most successful multicultural country in the world, but it does not happen by accident. It happens when members of parliament prioritise the person who might be the target of racial discrimination over the bigot and when we prioritise the person who will receive the abuse over the person dishing out the abuse.

This entire debate has been brought to the parliament because we have a little ginger group within the Liberal Party party room who want to prioritise the abuser. How on earth does anyone look at the vision of someone being abused on the train and think, 'The person we need to help is the person dishing out the abuse, because they just weren't allowed to say enough'? When you have a society of people of many cultural backgrounds, there are three ways you can organise it. I use the image of how you organise food. If you separate your ingredients on the table, you have a segregation model, and no-one is proposing that. When you whack everything into the blender and expect it to come out with a puree or some sort of soup, you have an assimilation model, and we do have members of the parliament wanting that. When you create a salad where every ingredient is allowed to keep its own integrity and you get a national flavour out of it, you have a multicultural country, a multicultural Australia. And that is what used to be viewed—even under the years of the Howard government, the Fraser government before them, and certainly Labor governments—as a right and decent vision for Australia.

But now we have an Attorney-General saying there is a right to be a bigot. We have members of the Liberal Party party room seeing the key victims they want to defend in our society as being the people who just are not allowed to say enough racist things. Do not think the megaphone that people are offered in this parliament is not loud. It is really loud, and the people who need our help and protection hear what is being said. And the people who want to extol their bigotry and undermine people for their race, their cultural background and their heritage hear what is being said here as well, and they are armed by what is being said here as well. Our words matter, and the words that are said in the public square matter, and the words that are said on the train, bus or tram matter, and the words that are said in the shopping centre matter. We should never, as a parliament, look at the levels of racism that come from a small minority in this country and say, 'We want to let them say more.'

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to make some comments on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights' report Freedom of speech in Australia: inquiry into the operation of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act. It is a very good report. The committee failed to reach consensus on many issues but outlined the issues in great detail.

Everyone in this parliament, certainly on my side, is passionate about freedom of speech and passionate about freedom generally. Personally, I am a huge believer in very small government. The less government we have the better, the more freedom society has the better, and the less intrusion in our lives the better. I am passionately against the rise of a politically correct culture driven by identity and gender that we see growing around us that seeks to curb free speech, that seeks to define what people can say and indeed even what they can think. I am passionately against individuals and organisations that use political institutions as political weapons, and this is happening more and more and more.

My fear is that sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act are being used as a weapon. No-one here in this parliament wants to see greater racism. Everyone is aware of the horror of what racism involves and the impact upon those who are victims of it. Protections in law exist to assist people who may be subject to such racism, and they should remain. The wider question is not one of racism, is not one of bigotry and is not one of what hate speech parliament wants to allow to be heard. That is not what this is about. This is about whether the Racial Discrimination Act is working as it should and/or whether the Australian Human Rights Commission is working as it should. Recent cases point out that one or both are failing the nation. That is what this discussion is about.

The question is not so much what should be allowed, but I think we can reflect on what should not be allowed. The QUT case is a case in point. On 28 May 2013 Wood and two other students were using a QUT computer lab, where Ms Prior, an employee of QUT, asked them whether they were Indigenous. They replied that they were not. Ms Prior then asked them to leave. Later that day, on the QUT Stalker Space Facebook page, I am led to believe, Mr Wood posted:

Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation…?

That was it. Ms Prior complained to QUT about these and other comments, which were promptly removed, to the university's credit. However, Ms Prior was ultimately unhappy with QUT's handling of the matter and lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission. The commission conciliated Prior's complaint. However, it did not contact students directly about the complaint or the conciliation conference. Instead, it left this task to QUT. Powell did not know about Prior's complaint until after the conciliation conference. Conciliation failed. Ms Prior commenced proceedings in the Federal Circuit Court against QUT, certain QUT employees and a number of students—Wood, Thwaites and Powell—claiming $247,570 because one of them had put on the Facebook page:

Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation…?

One of the lawyers on the case ran as a Labor candidate against me at the last election, hence my interest in this particular case. This was all because of an online comment not directed at Ms Prior. If you asked the average member of the community, 'Is it appropriate that students could make a statement like that and suddenly face years of political process and costs?' the answer would clearly be no. It is the sort of comment I could well have made, as I personally think the idea of segregating resources for students based on gender or identity is wrong. Because your gender or identity is different to mine, it does not mean, at a university campus, you should have access to greater amounts or higher levels of publicly funded equipment. That is not multiculturalism. That is segregation. We are all made equal in the eyes of God and we should all have equal access to public resources. No one section of the community is more important than another. Every person, regardless of race, gender, colour, disability or otherwise is absolutely and utterly equal.

A number of students settled with Ms Prior. They did not want the harassment, so they settled quietly. Others said 'No; this is wrong.' The Federal Circuit Court agreed with them. It dismissed Ms Prior's case against Alex Wood, Calum Thwaites and Jackson Powell. Judge Michael Jarrett concluded that Prior's claim against them had no reasonable prospect of success. Judge Jarrett concluded that an ordinary and reasonable member of a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, either students or generally, who had the characteristics of a member of a fair and tolerant society, would not be reasonably likely to find these statements offensive, insulting, humiliating or intimidating. Wood's statements were against both QUT and racial discrimination generally. Powell's statements, when read in the context of other comments, were 'a poor attempt at humour'. In any event, both Wood's and Powell's statements amounted to 'mere slights', therefore not meeting the threshold 18C requires. Finally, neither Wood nor Powell made their statements because of Ms Prior's race or because of the race of the relevant groups. That is the finding lawfully. Those opposite say, 'Well, this shows the system works.' Really? After three years of reputations being besmirched and smashed publicly and enormous costs, this shows it is working? This shows that something is broken. This case should have been dismissed at the start. The process itself is wrong. Even to get a dismissal application through the Australian Human Rights Commission involves the numerous filings of pleadings, affidavits, submissions, appearances and other injunctions within a court. There are imposts in terms of time, substantial money is involved and stress involved. A dispute that arose in May 2013 took until November 2016 to resolve, and those opposite say the system is apparently working fine.

The problem is either the law or the Australian Human Rights Commission, because there is a problem. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights came out with no conclusive analysis or statements regarding the law but a range of recommendations that will assist with processes—a lot of those to deal with the Australian Human Rights Commission. Nick Cater, who did an analysis from 2001 to 2005, showed that the Australian Human Rights Commission rejected 30 per cent of complainants. He also writes that under its most recent presidents, Catherine Branson and Gillian Triggs, fewer than five per cent have been rejected. Could it be that the problem is actually the Human Rights Commission and its current leadership? I note the request by many elements of the community to maintain section 18C as it is, but something has to give: either the law is not functioning as intended or those administering the law—in this case its early adoption—the Human Rights Commission, are not administering it correctly. The question is: why?

Parliament reviewed this in August 2014. The Abbott government proposed a new section in the RDA that would make it unlawful for a person to do an act that was 'reasonably likely to vilify another person or group of persons, or intimidate another person or group of persons'. This ultimately failed from lack of support. The community did not support it and the parliament did not support it. At present there is no broad consensus on the way forward with respect to the act. But I do believe there is consensus—and the report brings it out—that there are a number of changes that can be made to the way the Human Rights Commission goes about its initial work: its initial conciliation and its initial processes. Perhaps the answer is reform of the commission itself as the first step. This is only one step in continued debate, but I certainly look forward to many of the recommendations being implemented and reform of the commission occurring.

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

For over 20 years, section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has protected our community against racial hate speech, making it unlawful for a person to insult, humiliate, intimidate or offend someone because of their race or ethnic background.

Section 18C's sister provision, section 18D, contains extensive provisions for freedom of speech. Labor has fought to keep section 18C on our statute books against continued assault by those who would, it seems, wish to give a green light to racist hate speech in our community. Labor is very proud that a Labor government—in particular, Attorney-General Michael Lavarch in the Keating government—legislated to fulfil international obligations that Australia has had for many years and to put this protection against racist hate speech on our statute books.

What we now have in the report tabled in this parliament yesterday by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is a very, very clear consensus reached that there should not be any change to sections 18C and 18D. The human rights committee of this parliament has made a number of recommendations that suggest changes to procedure, and they have made a number of recommendations suggesting ways in which there might be better education of the Australian community against the evils of racist speech, but they have not recommended changes to section 18C and section 18D. That is a victory for those of us in this community who value a tolerant, respectful and accepting society. It is a victory against those who think that the greatest priority for an Australian government should be legislating to give a green light to racist hate speech in our country.

Sadly, this Liberal government includes a number of members who are in that group of people who think that it should be a priority for the government to legislate to give a green light to racist hate speech in our country. For more than six years now, we have had right-wing groups and right-wing members of the Liberal Party of Australia agitating for repeal of section 18C, or at least for a substantial weakening of this protection against racist hate speech. It is hard to understand the devotion of the Right to the weakening of this protection. It would seem, at times, that they want to change the law to give effect to something that was put by the Attorney-General, George Brandis, in the Senate when he said sneeringly to former senator Nova Peris:

People do have a right to be bigots, you know.

Well, not in the Australia that we would wish Australia to be, not in the Australia that we would wish the legal system to reflect—not in our Australia. We want a legal system that draws a clear line, that turns the face of our community against racist hate speech, and that pays attention to the concerns of those who are affected by racist hate speech.

The only way in which these right-wing members of the Liberal Party can possibly stand up and make the kind of ridiculous assertions that they are making—clothing it under the guise of a defence of free speech, if you please—is to ignore the repeated evidence that has been given not just to this most recent inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights but to repeated inquiries and at repeated public rallies, at repeated public demonstrations of support and at public meetings designed to make sure that we resist this push from the right wing in the Liberal Party and the fringe right-wingers who are pushing this view—fringe right-wingers like the Institute of Public Affairs. The only way that these right-wingers can push their cause is by ignoring entirely the effect of racist hate speech on ethnic communities and individuals in our society. They are willing to turn a deaf ear to people I have heard in the Indigenous communities of Australia who say things like, 'Racist speech makes us sick.' That is the position: racist speech makes us sick. So listen up, you people in the Liberal Party who are still trying to repeal section 18C or still putting forward ridiculous suggestions as to how it should be changed.

To the rest of the community of Australia I say: do not listen to the suggestion that is still being trailed by some of these right-wingers that this committee report leaves open the possibility of amendment of section 18C. All this report did was to state some possibilities. Those possibilities were all well known before the committee embarked on its inquiry; they are not more known because they have been repeated in some text in a committee report from this parliament. No, the significance of this report—and I say it clearly—is that it does not recommend any change to section 18C or section 18D. Instead, what it does—and all of the recommendations of the committee concern this—is make suggestions for changes to the complaints process and for better educating the community about the dangers of bigotry. Not one of the recommendations recommends a change to the law itself.

The committee's proposals for change to the procedure for dealing with complaints—that is, the procedures used by the Australian Human Rights Commission—are all recommendations that the Labor Party will carefully consider. I note that many of the committee's recommendations for changes to process are, in fact, recommendations that were put forward by the Australian Human Rights Commission itself. It is to be noted that the member for Banks, a member of this government, supports the committee's recommendations to improve the commission's processes, but he is strongly opposed to moves to change the substantive law. The member for Banks, earlier today, said: 'It is not the case that simply because you have vexatious claims under a law you get rid of the entire law.' He went on to say, 'There are obviously many aspects of law where vexatious claims are made, and the appropriate way of dealing with that is to address those process issues.' I agree with the member for Banks.

The vast majority of complaints that are made under section 18C to the Human Rights Commission are handled efficiently and effectively. There are not very many of them, in any given year, in the more than 20 years in which the commission has been receiving complaints under section 18C. About 100 of the 2½ thousand formal complaints that are received by the Australian Human Rights Commission, under the other acts of parliament as well that it administers, are section 18C complaints. The overwhelming majority of them are dealt with according to evidence given to the committee by the President of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, in around four months. There have been a handful of problematic cases in the 20 years that this law has been in operation, and I am confident that the problems that have been identified in these cases can be appropriately addressed by the improvements to the commission's complaint-handling processes.

There is an absurdity about the way in which these right-wing attackers of section 18C seek to make their case by referring to complaints that were dismissed. It is a nonsense to suggest that by looking at a complaint about conduct that does not contravene section 18C, somehow, it warrants a repeal of the section itself. It is like saying that because someone had a defamation case dismissed—or someone had a personal injury case dismissed or someone had any other kind of litigation dismissed—as vexatious, in some way, the law under which they sought to bring that case should itself be changed. You only have to state it properly to see the absurdity of the position that has been adopted by these attackers of 18C.

Let us be clear again: the committee has not recommended any change to section 18C or to section 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, the existing protection of free speech. The committee has not come out in support of what Senator Brandis infamously declared as a 'right to be bigots'. Rather, this committee has made—very wisely—no recommendation to change 18C or 18D, and it is to be commended for arriving at that consensus position. I call on the Prime Minister to end this ridiculous debate now and make it clear that it is at an end. There will be no change to section 18C.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Regardless of the report before us, section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is nothing more than political correctness enshrined in the law limiting freedom of speech. The question for everyone in this parliament, in this institution of democracy, is this: do you support freedom of speech? Do you support the individual's right to say what they think when it causes or incites no physical or reputational harm to another individual? This is one of the bedrocks of democracy. If your answer is yes to that question then you must support the repeal of section 18C or, at least, the removal of the terms 'insult', 'humiliate' and 'offend' from section 18C.

How can those terms—insult, humiliate and offend— even be considered in a legal setting when they are so subjective? How do we judge this? What may offend you might not offend me. It comes back to the key question: do you support the individual's right to say what they think when it causes or incites no physical or reputational harm to another individual? If you do not support that statement, then just be honest and say you do not support freedom of speech, because that is what it comes down to.

We have just heard from the shadow Attorney-General. I will tell him why the process is a problem, because even the process itself limits freedom of speech. It scares people into not speaking out on issues that they otherwise would. Let's just look at what happened to the cartoonist Bill Leak who was hit with an 18C complaint about his, yes, confronting cartoon highlighting a very serious issue of the care of Aboriginal children. Even the fact that it was able to be put up in this kangaroo court process damaged his reputation and cost him money. That alone is enough to stop people from speaking out. In his own submission to the inquiry, Bill Leak shared these concerns. He said:

I think that that hypothetical person working for some magazine that might be online—goodness knows—or whatever but does not have the backing of an organisation like News Corp is going to look at what happened to me and say: 'That bloke really got into a lot of trouble for telling the truth. I better not tell it myself.' If that is not a dampener on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, I do not know what is. To me, I think it is extremely sinister.

This situation is broader than 18C. We have a problem across the nation where antidiscrimination laws in different states and antidiscrimination policies by government departments are silencing people. Look at the situation with Archbishop Julian Porteous in Hobart—he was hit with an antidiscrimination complaint because a marriage booklet was distributed by the Catholic Church outlining Catholic Church policy to the people of a Catholic faith. A Catholic priest or a Catholic bishop should have every right to discuss and explain matters of the Catholic faith to his flock—or to anyone else, for that matter. What is the intention of all this antidiscrimination stuff? Is it to shut up religious leaders?

Another example of an organisation's antidiscrimination policies being used against an employee is that of the Department of Defence against an Army major, Bernard Gaynor, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know Bernie Gaynor. He spoke out about the ADF having a float at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. He believed it was politicising the ADF, because the major focus of the mardi gras now is opposition to government policy on same-sex marriage. Gaynor was charged with offences. He was investigated for breaching Defence policy, and every investigation turned out in his favour. Despite that, his appointment with the ADF was terminated. He fought a court case on that dismissal, and the court found in his favour. In that ruling, Justice Buchanan said:

Freedom of political communication was burdened … [His] conduct involved the expression of political opinion …

As expressed in The Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece in this case, the judge found that being sacked for holding personal political views was too fundamental a right.

That is the point of this whole debate—freedom of political communication and expression is a fundamental right which is enshrined in the Constitution. It is a fundamental right, actually, for all Liberal and National Party members here. It is enshrined in both of our political parties, which make up the coalition government of which we are members. The National Party constitution states that one of the party's objectives is the maintenance of democracy and liberty, and the Liberal Party clearly expresses this belief when it states:

We believe in the most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy—the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.

There is absolutely and simply no way that a government made up of the Liberal and National parties, which uphold those values, can leave this law untouched. Section 18C needs to be repealed. The words 'humiliate', 'offend' and 'insult' need to be removed. We need to strike that blow for freedom of speech and against this nonsensical political correctness machine that is around Australia. Let's start by getting rid of 18C, and let's start working on all these antidiscrimination laws in states and in government departments as well.

Sitting suspended from 12 : 58 to 16 : 00

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not experienced racism in this country. That should probably come as no surprise. As a white man in this country, you do not tend to experience racism—probably as a white man anywhere, you do not tend to experience it. But, during the course of the inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights into the legislation that we have that protects people against hate speech, the committee heard from many people who have experienced racism, and what they told us, to a person, as they came before the inquiry, was: 'Don't change the laws of this country to make it easier to say hateful, racist things that hurt people'—a pretty simple message.

The evidence before the inquiry—and it is reflected in the report—was pretty clear. In Australia we enjoy freedom of speech, and there are not that many legitimate arguments—in fact, there are probably no legitimate arguments—that you cannot make in this country. But we have laws that say that, when you are making those arguments—about changing the law or about changing our migration policy—you cannot make those arguments in ways that hurt people and you certainly cannot go out under the banner of free speech and say things that you know are going to have harmful effects on the population.

What we heard during the course of the inquiry—and you will find this in the Greens' dissenting report—is that we are talking about some pretty serious consequences on people from some of the hate speech that members of the Liberal and National parties and others, like Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, want to be able to say. In the words of one professor who gave evidence to the inquiry, this is not just a matter of 'sticks and stones'—that constant, regular experience of negative racialised interaction, whether that be through the media aimed at or speaking about your racial group or immediate interpersonal interactions—but it has huge impacts on health. It is shown to impact on asthma, diabetes and spiritual and mental wellbeing.

We heard that not only from academics with expertise in the area; we heard it from groups representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations who came to the parliament and said: 'We are already doing it pretty tough when it comes to our health. We are already substantially far behind the rest of the population. What we do not need is laws that make it easier to say racist things that are going to impact on our health even more.' That is a very serious request coming from a group of people in this country. But it was not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

We heard from groups representing various religions, across the board, groups representing various cultures and groups representing various nationalities, all saying, to a person, 'If you change the law to make it easier to say racist things, it's not only going to impact on our health and our wellbeing, it's not only going to make us feel that Australia isn't a place where we belong, but in fact if you do it—and especially if you do it now—you are going to give a green light to the kinds of racial attacks and abuse that can often cross the line and can lead people ultimately, sometimes, to breaking point, to as far as they can go.' What they said to us was: 'Not only is it going to harm us, but it will send a very bad signal to the Australian population that it is now okay to be racist'—and that is not the signal that this parliament should be sending to the Australian people. There has never been, in fact, a worse time to send that signal.

We are seeing the rise of right-wing populism. In Senator Pauline Hanson's second maiden speech, when she came back again, she came up to this parliament and said, 'Twenty years ago I said it was Asians who were swamping the country, and now I'm saying it's Muslims.' She does not care which particular group she picks on and vilifies. She does not care what it means for the women, men and children of that particular group living their particular life. For her, any group that she picks on for the purpose of advancing her agenda is fine, and if it means that their lives are ruined as a result she just does not care. To turn around and reward that kind of behaviour and say, 'Actually, now we want to give more licence to people to give more hate speech,' is the wrong thing for this parliament to do.

That is why the Greens issued a dissenting report, and the dissenting report said very clearly and very squarely that we should not change the current provisions of the act. We are disappointed that other members did not join with us in issuing a strong recommendation that the act stay as it is, but that is our view, and it really should be the view of the government as well.

The government have tried to cover all bases with their report, and you can see that they held together, with spit and sticky tape, this ship of all these various people from across the political spectrum in the government, some who would rather be in Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and others who would not. They held it together until this report was issued, and then, as soon as the report was issued, they were off again. Some people were using the report to claim that there need to be changes to 18C, and others on the government side were using it to claim that there should not be any changes.

The Prime Minister now needs to come out and make a very clear statement that in this parliament there will be no changes, no matter what the Trumps in his party like to say, because, until a very clear statement is made that the law will stay as it is, it gives succour to the Trumps in the Liberal-National coalition to continue advancing their agenda. If there is one thing that we have learnt from Brexit and from Trump, it is that when you have extremists who want to stand up and say that all of the problems in this country are caused by one particular religion or one particular racial group, unless you put that issue to bed very firmly early on, they end up running the joint. That is what we found in the UK, and it is what we have found in the US.

So the government have a very clear decision to make at this moment. Are they going to allow this kind of burbling away of subterranean discussion and racism from people who still say the report suggests that we need some changes to the legislation, or are they going to put it to bed once and for all? Are the government going to do what John Howard previously did and say there is no place for the views of One Nation on that side of the political fence, or are they just going to invite them in, embrace them and do preference deals, as we have seen in Western Australia? Disturbingly, that seems to be the way that they are going, and this report is a huge missed opportunity for the government to stand up to the Trumps on their backbench.

The Human Rights Commission itself came along and said: 'Well, look, there might be some sensible changes that could be made to the process. We accept that. If things have happened that mean that the process should change—that the protections still remain but we better enforce those protections through a better process—then let's do it.' That is why the Greens, in our dissenting report, backed in what the Human Rights Commission was saying and said: 'Look, if the Human Rights Commission want to change some of their internal procedures then we support that, because that will give people more confidence in the legislation and it will allow claims to be better processed. But what we are not prepared to do is back in the kinds of changes that the government, in their "every player wins a prize" report, covered in their recommendations, because many of those are actually about getting rid of the protections in this legislation itself.' So we back what the Human Rights Commission has said about tidying up some of its processes but not what is in the report.

In a nutshell, really what this report and the proposed changes to the bill come down to is: at this moment in Australia, are we really prepared to defend multiculturalism? The Greens are. The Greens are prepared to defend multiculturalism, and it is extraordinarily disappointing that the government and the Prime Minister are not prepared to make that same commitment and shout it from the rooftops. Until they do, people are going to rightly ask whether the Prime Minister actually stands for anything or whether he is beholden to the Trumps in his party on every issue, including racism.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Back in 1859 John Stuart Mill wrote in his work On Liberty:

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" … No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place … But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

That was back in 1859, and here I am, in 2017, discussing legislation which is a state-imposed restriction on the freedom of speech. The Leader of the Opposition before question time today asked what is it that those who propose there is some problem with 18C want to be able to say in future that they currently cannot say. The Facebook post by a young student from Queensland University of Technology provides an example of what people should be able to say but what 18C is try to prevent them from saying. He simply said:

Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation

For that Facebook post he was dragged through the courts for years and was faced with huge legal expenses. He was subject to ridicule in the media, in the press, simply for making what was nothing other than a statement of fact that he had been kicked out of an unsigned Indigenous computer room and an opinion on public policy—that the Queensland University of Technology was attempting to stop segregation with segregation. I say that is a topic that we should be able to openly debate in this country. Is it correct, in this 21st century, that a publicly funded university can decide who can walk in and out of a computer room depending on their race or the colour of their skin? I think that is a wrong principle.

There maybe some in here there who think the current policy is a good idea, but we have to be able to have the debate; we have to be able to freely debate those ideas as much as some of us might find those ideas offensive to each other—and I find it offensive that we could have in this country a computer room that someone is not allowed into because of their race. Others may find it offensive that I have that opinion, but that is what vigorous debate is all about—it is a contest of ideas to ensure that at the end of the day we get the best decision that we possibly can. That is what the history of Western civilisation has shown.

In discussing 18C and 18D it is very difficult to have a debate with opponents who want no change and who want to protect the legal fraternity who are earning very good money, taking money out of the pockets of students—like at QUT—in the form of legal extortion. Our opponents want to protect those people by saying that anyone who wants to change 18C wants to encourage racism.

I argue the exact opposite. The best way to combat racism in this country is not to sweep it under the carpet with government legislating what you can say. The best way to defeat it is to bring it out in the open and defeat it in the place of public opinion. I put to you the argument that 18C is doing exactly the opposite of what those who want to fight racism think it is doing. Having a section like 18C in legislation that prohibits discussion merely because someone takes an offence is more likely to incite racism and allow it to fester than if we remove that legislation.

This debate shows that some proponents of the current 18C have a very dark view of their fellow Australians. They think there is legislation in place that controls speech and that if this legislation is removed there will be racists running down the street yelling torrents of abuse. I have greater faith in my fellow Australians. I believe we can debate these issues in a sensitive way.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear the member over there. I hope he is not laughing at that. I hope he believes that his fellow Australians are better than some of the comments we have heard in this chamber today. I believe my fellow Australians want to tackle and defeat racism in this country, but the best way to do it is to give them free speech.

When we discussed changes to this legislation, I proposed a change to 18D. When we discussed 18C many people said to me, 'But there are provisions in 18D that are there to protect.' Those provisions protect:

(a) in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work; or

(b) in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest;

This includes clarification that such statements must be made 'reasonably' and 'in good faith'. Yet in the legislation there is no definition of what is 'reasonably' and what is 'in good faith'. These are very vague and subjective terms that turn the onus of proof on the person who has made the statement to prove before the court that what they did was reasonable.

What is the test for reasonable? What is the test for good faith? It simply should be, if it is an artistic work—as in the Bill Leak case—exempt from the act. The defence for Bill Leak's cartoon simply should be it is a bloody cartoon, therefore an artistic work and so exempt from the act. There should not be a requirement for the cartoonist to prove in court that what he has done is reasonable and in good faith.

We still need restrictions on freedom of speech but those restrictions should be limited to incitement of actual or threatened physical violence. Where they cross over into the threshold of what we saw in that Queensland university case we, clearly, have a problem with legislation in this country.

I hope that those on the other side, when they argue this backwards and forwards across the chamber, who wish to see changes to 18C and 18D do so with good hearts, do so wanting to eradicate racism from our nation. On this side, our belief is that the best way to eradicate it is to bring those people out into the open. Do not let it fester underground. Let's defeat them with open debate and free speech rather than with government sanctioned restrictions on freedom of speech.

With that, I thank the House and I hope that those who contribute to this debate will respect that there is goodwill on both sides of this parliament.

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to pick up where the honourable member for Hughes left off on a number of fronts.

Firstly, in relation to some technical aspects of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the honourable member pondered the complexity of the fact that terms such as 'reasonably likely' were as yet undefined in the act. Perhaps I can put the honourable member's concern to some rest, because the term 'reasonably likely' is a term—

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was 'reasonable'!

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, 'reasonable' is a term that has long existed in relation to a statutory interpretation as to a common sense and objective approach to properly reflect community standards.

We can take a lot of issue with some of the conclusions reached in the recent report from the very hardworking Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, but one does not doubt for one minute that they certainly put every ounce of diligence into producing the report in a relatively expeditious manner. What is very clear from that report is that the consensus of views is not that the courts are getting it wrong in relation to a reasonable person test, or even to a good faith test. There is no dispute within this report that hundreds of years of judicial interpretation of statute as to a reasonable person test and a test as to what constitutes in good faith requires any drastic revision.

What is really at the nub of how perplexing the opposition is to what is currently contained within 18C and 18D are the examples that those on the conservative side like to trot out as to how the current provisions are just so egregious. We constantly fall back to the QUT case and to the Bill Leak case. Let's unpack that. I think that once we actually unpack that in a sensible and objective manner we might find that the substance of those provisions are working precisely as they were intended, and that is to ensure that there is a standard level of decency upon which we can treat our fellow man with dignity and respect.

What happened in the QUT case? My friend, the member for Hughes, gave examples of some of the evidence tendered in the court case that was heard before the Federal Court and on which its determination was made. Guess what? They won. The result in the court was that they did not breach the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act. So what we really have here—and this is where the rubber hits the road—is a complaint about process, because the complaint here is that the students were treated unfairly as a result of the procedure. And guess what this report does?

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It enforces the—

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Guess what the balance of members on your side actually arrived at? A conclusion that picked up the recommendations of the discrimination commissioner to say that the process and procedure can be improved. They went to great lengths—I see that the honourable member for Moore is here, and I am sure he will know as well as anyone—to set out in 22 recommendations how this process can be improved. So what we see here are suggestions, backed in by the commission, about how the procedure can be improved. At no stage is there a suggestion here, amongst those procedural recommendations, that the provision of the act is not doing what is intended.

Let us move on to the other one that constantly gets a run as to why the rights of citizens in this country are so offended by the construction of sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act: the famous Bill Leak cartoon. Let us unpack that a little further as well. Guess what. That case did not get up either. Are you seeing a pattern here, Madam Deputy Speaker? The two most egregious examples of offence that the conservatives like to roll out time and time again were both found not to offend the relevant provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.

That then leads us to ask a further question, and that is: what is really behind what is going on here? I suspect what we see is mischief at a couple of levels. Time and time again, we see members on the other side, with furious frustration, vent about how the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act are too tightly wound to allow people just to speak their minds. It gets back to that phrase that can never be forgotten. It was uttered by, unbelievably, our current Attorney-General, who, quite frankly, should know a lot better than to express such a view:

People do have a right to be bigots, you know.

What I cannot work out about that approach is how it possibly does anything to complement or to back in what we like to think is an Australian way of treating our fellow community members. It reveals such a flawed analysis of what a common level of decency actually entails, that, if those on the far right and those who defend the right of someone to be a bigot had their way, we would lose that precious safety net that we have, that is working perfectly well and that we have proudly backed in for at least the last 20 years.

I cannot help but think that this approach, this analysis, by those on the other side is so fundamentally flawed it comes to this. According to my notes of what the member for Hughes said when he was postulating his own way for how this could be fixed, he said that the act should be amended in order to curtail any offences under the Racial Discrimination Act for any 'uttered incidents that might relate to physical violence'. That is what he said, and I made a very careful note of that, because it just underpins how badly they do not get it. They just do not get it.

An honourable member: It is about language.

Not only is it about language but it is about not having any real clue, any real sense of empathy, as to what it is actually like to walk on the other side of the street. And I will not stand here and pontificate or pretend to know what it is like.

Honourable members interjecting—

I delight in the laughter on the other side, because it just underpins how little you get it—how little you can even possibly claim to understand what life must be like to be treated, from the word go, as if you do not really match up or measure up to someone else in the community. We judge ourselves by the way in which we treat the most vulnerable members of our community, and if you have your way—which is not the way of this committee, because it did not go down this road, to its credit—you will release the chance of any real prospect of ensuring that we treat our most vulnerable members of the community with any sense of decency. The problem with the conservative far right is that every word that comes out of their mouths just confirms to me that they do not get what it is like to protect the most vulnerable members of their community, and I am seeing no sign of that improving.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There has been much debate regarding the Racial Discrimination Act in Australia, particularly section 18C, and we have all become increasingly familiar with 18C, which creates an offence of saying anything which is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

The commitment to repeal 18C was taken by Tony Abbott to the 2013 election, and for good reason: it is fundamental to a free and functioning democracy that we protect the rights of individuals to free expression of genuinely held belief. In the interim there have been some very high-profile cases that have generated a groundswell of support to repeal at least part of 18C, perhaps by removing the words 'offend' and 'insult' from the section rather than completely repealing it. The course of action that has been proposed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights is a possible option for reform of the act. It is a disappointment that they could not have been more deliberate in their recommendations in this area. However, to cut off the short history of the joint committee's report, it is worth noting that, when the newly elected Abbott government moved to deliver on its commitment to abolish 18C, a large antireform group coalesced, and it became increasingly obvious that there was no chance of passing the required legislation through the Senate. As such, Prime Minister Abbott determined that, with so much of the government's reform agenda being held up by an intransigent Senate, the government's efforts were better spent elsewhere, and the proposal was dropped.

We as a society have implemented laws to protect our freedoms and our way of life, and in Australia the law is one of the tools available to combat racial vilification. That is why the Racial Discrimination Act exists. Freedom of speech, however, is a fundamental right in our democratic society, and we are blessed to live in a country where we have basic freedoms. As with all these things, it is a matter of balance. If we have no law, we surrender our freedom. If we have laws that restrict too much and impinge on our ability to move and to speak on the issues that truly concern us, that too impinges on our freedom.

Some have called for the total abandonment of 18C and consider that other protections that sit within our law structures, such as those against libellous and defamatory statements, are sufficient, and a powerful case can be made for that. However, given the events surrounding the last attempt to abandon 18C, it is highly likely that another attempt would meet the same fate. In that case, serious consideration needs to be given to whether, in Australia, the giving of offence or insulting an individual should be subject to legal sanction. It is indeed a very low bar and a totally subjective judgement, and in my opinion laws that depend on subjective judgement should be avoided wherever possible.

It is a section of the legislation which silenced Andrew Bolt in 2011, stemming from the comments he made in a newspaper column that were deemed to have contravened section 18C. It is also these words which led to the outrageous attack on four Queensland university students in connection with the now infamous Indigenous-only computing room on campus, urged on by our Human Rights Commission, who seem to have lost the most important filter of all, common sense. Individuals were supported in laying charges against other individuals that common sense should have told them should never have been laid. Common sense would have precluded such support, but it seems that the Human Rights Commission was in their opinion motivated by law. If that is the case, it is surely time to reconsider the laws that generated that behaviour.

Let us consider the premise of offence and how broadly we construe the notion of offence. The frighteningly low harm threshold, through the use of the words 'offend' and 'insult' is problematic. Freedom of speech means people sometimes will be offended. What may not offend 99.9 per cent of the population may well offend just one person. This definition makes the statement of offending perhaps just one person an offence—in fact, people can choose to be offended. It is clearly preposterous and it should be rectified. This would not sanction speech that vilifies or insights racial hatred.

It is possible that section 18C was an appropriate piece of legislation for its time. However, it is the nature of our legal system that decisions are made on the basis of precedence. There are many areas of law where this results in incrementalism, or a reinterpretation of the original intent of the law. If this continues to occur then it becomes highly likely that the original laws will need to be amended to allow for this reinterpretation. This is what needs to be done in the case of section 18C. A law that once seemed to rest easily in Australia is now doing harm to interracial relationships by destroying social harmony and cohesion and increasing hostility and resentment towards ethic and racial minorities.

We may disagree with views that contradict our own, but it is surely a better mechanism for harmony to throw open discussion and encourage ideas rather than prohibit them. In fact, none other than the champion of the left-wing press, David Marr, said as much six years ago in The Sydney Morning Herald: 'In a free society, giving offence is necessary.' Australia is a robust society—certainly in the political field it is extremely robust—and it is an underlying strength of our democracy that we must be prepared to fight for. Political correctness is not only strangling the Australian vernacular, it is limiting the manner in which we can discuss the important issues of our time. Unbelievably, we have surrendered the right to call a spade a spade. Who would ever have believed that of Australia? Minorities find themselves, under section 18C, in a unique position as the wielders of an unfair weapon available only to them. How is it that a middle-aged white male in Australia would almost certainly not find 18C a protection for abuse or victimisation?

Bess Price, that remarkable young Indigenous Northern Territorian said:

If a non-Aboriginal attempts to address any of these issues—

she is referring to domestic violence in Indigenous communities—

and an Aboriginal person is offended by this they can simply call ‘racist’ and the debate is shut down.

The risk 18C imposes on public debate is compounded by requiring that the commentary is only reasonably likely to 'offend' or 'insult'. Freedom of speech is crucial to the quest for truth and honesty. Society will more effectively ascertain accurate facts and valuable opinions in an atmosphere of free and uninhibited discussion and criticism of a debate. Simon Breheny from the Institute of Public Affairs recently revealed that there are 18 complaints currently under consideration by the Australian Human Rights Commission and that over the last six years there have been 838 complaints lodged under 18C. Section 18C has restricted freedom of speech in our democracy without people even knowing it.

What compounds the issue is that section 18C has done nothing to eliminate racial discrimination but has had a truly detrimental impact on freedom of speech. If not for the high-profile case of Andrew Bolt and the Queensland University of Technology case public awareness of the implications of section 18C would be largely unknown. However, we should not make the mistake of believing that it only has an effect in those high-profile cases. It is seriously limiting the extent of discourse and honesty on a daily basis. If the Australian Human Rights Commission takes a selective rather than a rational position on cases and in their interpretation of cases brought before them, an ideological position stands to incur more harm than good for racial relations. 'Offend' and 'insult' are too open to interpretation. These words are subjective and rely on the emotions and the responses of the recipient. Australian law should not be based on subjectivity. Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has survived for more than 20 years without being challenged in the High Court of Australia, and the time has come to review and adapt the act. In Salman Rushdie's words:

Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other's positions. (But they don't shoot.)

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems to me that the occasion of us even having this debate demonstrates the clear necessity for the Racial Discrimination Act and for the continuation of sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act. It seems to me that some members opposite have confused the notion of argument with the notion of racial abuse. No-one believes the Racial Discrimination Act is going to stop democracy. The Racial Discrimination Act is not going to stop us having a robust argument about policy. The Racial Discrimination Act does not stop me disagreeing vehemently with those opposite. It does not stop me using colourful language in the corridors. It does not stop me engaging in the battle of the minds. What it does is it stops me using racist terms while I am doing so. God forbid I be stopped from having the freedom to abuse somebody for where they were born or who their parents are!

The Racial Discrimination Act in this country serves a really important purpose. We are having this debate because the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights had an inquiry into freedom of speech. The 'freedom boys' from the opposite benches have simply watched far too much American television. They want to wrap this argument in some kind of misplaced jingoism, harking for an Australia of some time that never existed. Freedom boys, it never existed. You could go back to the fifties, if you like. Racism was alive and well, as was sexism. I was born in a family that claim to be Roman Catholic of Irish heritage. In the fifties my family were discriminated against. This act protects people from that. This act makes us better people. This act has built a better country.

This act and section 18C, put in by Paul Keating, mean that, as a teacher in a school, I can say to children, 'We should confront racism wherever we find it, because it is enshrined in our laws that we do.' I can point to a piece of legislation, when I am working with two children who may have clashed and may have been at risk of breaching this act, and I can say, 'This is against the law.' I know not everybody here has dealt with adolescents for the same length of time as I have, but let me tell you: when two boys or two girls have been going at it in the yard and you bring them in and sit them down to try to undo the animosity between these two people, who may have stepped into areas that breach this law, the power of putting this document in front of those young people is extraordinary.

Conversely, the power of the senator in the other place saying, 'People have a right to be a bigot,' gave licence to people in classrooms, in playgrounds and in workplaces across this nation to cross a line that we as a country decided we did not want people to cross. That is what this debate is about. This debate is about winding things back. I ask the same question that all of my colleagues have asked: what is it that people want to say that this act stops them from saying? What is it? Put the words on the table. What words do you think you want to use in this robust democracy of ours? Why do we want to go to personal insult to debate the big ideas? Why do we need to?

The committee that ran this inquiry, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, heard from some really important people who had some really important things to say. Mr Iain Anderson, a deputy secretary in the Attorney-General's Department, Senator George Brandis's own department, said in his evidence to the committee:

We do have very clear jurisprudence on what they mean taken together as a package—

that is, 18C and 18D.

What we need here is an education process. We could start in parliament; we could start with the lawmakers of this country who continue to discuss 18C separately from 18D, who continue to take this debate down a road it does not need to go. One has to ask: what are the motivations for that? What could possibly be motivating lawmakers, legislators, in this country to actively misrepresent this piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that I am incredibly proud our country has enshrined. These are really important matters.

I want to go to something that was written not too long ago, because there are people in this House and the other place who want continually to revisit this question around the Racial Discrimination Act. It has been going on for some time. There was a poll taken that found 49 per cent of people support a Trump style ban on Muslim immigration. You may remember it, Madam Deputy Speaker. The interesting thing about the poll was that only 24 per cent of young people felt that way. I believe this variation can be put down to young people growing up in multicultural classrooms. Their experience of Australia means that there is less fear. They have generally been exposed to an Australia where the discourse is more embracing of multiculturalism; where they have been asked to accept their friends, play sport with them and sit beside them; where they have had teachers of different races and ethnicities. Changing 18C would send a clear message to those young people that their teachers, communities and families were wrong. It would tell them that bigotry is okay. Anyone younger than 22 years of age has lived in an Australia where section 18C has facilitated the development of a diverse and vibrant nation. This section was put in with the specific objective of assisting us to create the multicultural, harmonious communities that we all want to live in.

This brings us back to the question of motive. My favourite line from the Leader of the Opposition is: 'We don't tolerate multiculturalism in this country; we embrace it.' It is such a powerful line, such a powerful thought. It makes you think about our communities, the way we work together, the way we are building them. I stand here as someone who spent many, many years in classrooms helping to create a harmonious multicultural community. I stand here as someone who taught children to challenge racism, to challenge sexism; who taught children that they should stand up and speak out. I know what the world will look like if this debate continues. I know that around the country those people who have smaller voices will be silenced if this debate continues. I know that they will think twice about standing up for their rights. I know that because, although privileged in my upbringing and privileged in being here as a member of parliament, I am still a woman and I have lived in a sexist world. I have had to challenge sexism in the workplace. I have had to challenge sexism in my classroom.

Privilege rarely recognises itself, and I challenge this parliament—those people who want to continue to have this debate—to look deeply inside themselves and ask themselves: am I privileged? I say to them: start to recognise the privilege that is in this place and what it means. Think about the people outside this place who have not had the same privilege. Think about those young children in classrooms. Think about teachers working hard with those young people. Think about families. Think about those people for whom this act and sections 18C and 18D were shaped to support, were shaped to embolden, were shaped to protect. We all, in this place, love the country that we serve. Let's not disagree on how that country should be.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, I would like to say that this is an issue where fair minds will differ. This is an issue that reasonable people will have different views on. I am a proud member of the Liberal National Party and a proud member of my local community on the Sunshine Coast. Like the people of Fisher and in many other parts of Australia, I believe in free speech and, as such, I welcome this report for the opportunity it provides to address this issue—hopefully, once and for all.

On the substance of the report's recommendations, for the most part I agree with them. On the whole, the report's recommendations represent rational and much-needed reforms, particularly to the complaints process. On the central issue of this report, we have heard a lot of claims from members opposite today. Contrary to almost every Labor speech we have heard today, this report does not say that no case has been made for change to section 18C itself. It does not recommend that the status quo is acceptable, and nor does it recommend that we do not act. The report demonstrates that opinion among the committee members was divided on the best way forward. The question remains to be decided in this House and in the parliament, and I hope to have the opportunity to speak on legislation for a review of section 18C soon.

This debate is about one of the most fundamental principles that underlie our parliamentary democracy, but it is also about people—ordinary Australians in all of our electorates. In our privileged situation in this place, protected by the conventions that support the vigour of our debates, we must always remember what our constituents are telling us. They do not enjoy the privileged protections that we do when sitting in this place. They face more than the howls and jeers of members opposite when they have something to say. I know that there are many people in my electorate of Fisher who feel like they cannot speak their minds. In our pubs and clubs, our RSLs, our cafes and even in people's homes, my constituents have told me that they do not feel able to express their opinions freely. Many have expressed their concerns to me. Others have written to me; letters and emails on section 18C come into my office in a wave of frustration and concern. On how many other issues can we say that our constituents always know exactly the act and the specific provision that we are talking about here? This is not a fringe issue for the people of Fisher. This law goes to the heart of what I consider to be a 'Canberra bubble' culture and a left-wing elite that seems to refuse to listen to ordinary Australians or take what they care about seriously.

These people in my electorate are not extremists. They do not want to hurt anyone, they have no intention of humiliating their fellow Australians and they do not mean to insult or offend them. We hear a lot from members opposite in this debate about protecting Australians who are not part of the privileged elite. Well, the people who come to me to tell me that they feel oppressed by this law come from every background and every walk of life. Many of them are older Australians, many live in regional areas and many are doing it tough. This law does nothing to protect them.

Around the country, and particularly in Queensland, we know that some of our people are feeling disenfranchised. Some of them are turning to so-called 'outside' groups who seem to be able to say what they feel prevented from saying themselves.

We are now reaping what we have sown in Australia. With the activist stance taken by some in the Human Rights Commission, by some members opposite and by overzealous campaigners in recent years, we are facing a fracturing in our society that comes from the left-wing elite enforcement of an extremist ideology. If you have a different view to me—I am not reflecting that on you, Madam Deputy Speaker!—a view that does not accord with the Green-Labor metropolitan so-called consensus, then you can expect to be howled down and condemned as a racist. You can expect to be the subject of ridicule, abuse and even threats of violence. This is not to mention the inordinate cost of mounting a legal defence.

Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act as it stands has not caused this attitude: I accept that, but it enables it. For a great many Australians it represents the legal force of a culture that is alien and hostile to their values. Australians expect, deserve and demand the freedom to express their opinions. People in my electorate believe that they cannot do so with this law in its current form. Their belief is entirely, in my view, understandable.

The highest-profile cases under section 18C represent only the most visible part of a growing tide of complaints. A recent right-to-information request made by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2016 showed that over the previous six years 832 separate complaints had been made under section 18C. Four hundred and forty had come in the previous financial year. It is a nonsense to suggest that there has been a dramatic explosion in the amount of criminal hate speech happening in Australia in those recent years. What has changed is the attitude of the people who are making and assessing these complaints. This tide needs to be turned. This law needs to be changed. Personally, I would favour the repeal of section 18C in its entirety.

However, I understand and respect the fact that there is a diversity of views in our own community. I know that we need to strike a balance that appreciates the strength of feeling on both sides of this debate and that upholds both the right of free speech and the necessity of protecting all Australians from genuine harm. In finding this compromise we should return to the first principles of the law. In any free country it must be clear and unambiguous; that is, we must know what is lawful and what is not. The liberties and livelihoods of our citizens cannot be at the mercy of subjective or debatable prohibitions. It cannot be the case that an individual's retrospective or personal feelings are the test by which a person is condemned. This, more than any other, is the principle that is undermined by section 18C as it currently stands, and this is the flaw that we must repair.

We should amend section 18C to remove the words, 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate'. These tests are fundamentally subjective. The suggestion to replace these words with 'harass' has some merit, particularly if it is expressly defined in the act. Amended in this way, the legislation would continue to provide protections for all Australians from the real harm that can come from speech. All Australians would enjoy protection from those who would seek to incite violence, from those who would harass and from those who would intimidate on the basis of ethnic origin. But under this amended legislation, all Australians would also be protected from being harassed, intimidated and prosecuted at the whim of another on the basis of their opinions.

We would have made it clear that this country upholds freedom of speech and that our people need never be afraid to raise an issue or to express a view. We would have sent an unambiguous signal to our constituents that we want to hear their voices and that we will listen to them speak.

The American abolitionist and civil rights campaigner Frederick Douglass said in 1860 that to suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of those who hear as well as the speaker. As Douglass knew, our political process can only succeed and deliver the best outcomes for all Australians of every race and ethnicity when we can express our views and contribute to the discussion.

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this place today to state unreservedly that I do not now nor will I in the future support the watering down of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Building respectful and vibrant communities that quest strong economies will not happen in an environment that enables racially fuelled hate speech.

Surely, in 2017, we as the human race are advanced enough to have direct and plain-speaking robust debate that does not need to resort to hate speech to make a point. However, history has shown that racism will regularly raise its ugly head, especially whenever there is a marginalised or oppressed minority. Even people who would otherwise lead decent lives can suddenly be caught up in racist hysteria, saying and doing atrocious things. At the same time, those in society who do not support racism can be silenced by the noise of racism, resulting in horror visited on peace, tolerance and security.

There are many recent examples, such as America in the fifties during the civil rights movement, and Germany in the thirties, where racism became official ideology and law. Wherever and whenever racism thrives, skin colour or religion are used to determine how people will be treated and, in some cases, even whether they will live or die.

Australians do not need to look too far afield to find racism. Sadly, there is ample evidence in our own backyard. The Australian Constitution still discriminates against Indigenous Australians. In 1967 our nation's birth certificate was amended to allow Indigenous Australians to be treated equally under Commonwealth laws but, even then, 10 per cent of Australians voted against this inclusion. The White Australia policy was not completely dismantled until 1973. The drafters of our Constitution and designers of the White Australia policy reflected the racist ideology of their times.

Laws help set up the standard of acceptable community behaviour. Once our Constitution was amended, once the White Australia policy was dismantled, Australians on the whole respected that Indigenous Australians would be treated equally and that immigrants from non-European countries would be welcomed and accepted. This powerful message has helped make Australia the most successful multicultural nation in the world. Labor members do not consider that any case has been successfully made to alter part 2 of the Racial Discrimination Act.

My electorate of Herbert has a very high Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander population as well as being a refugee resettlement city. My community, like other diverse communities, has work to do to strengthen its approach to valuing diversity and difference. Palm Island is in the Herbert electorate and is one of the largest discrete Aboriginal communities in Australia. I take my role as the member for Herbert very seriously in this place and I understand that there are many diverse backgrounds and cultural differences in my electorate.

Professor Gracelyn Smallwood, Bindal elder and longstanding local Aboriginal activist, has said, 'If we had a treaty and Bill of Rights there would be a balance. There is no balance or common sense by removing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.' The arrogance of conservative people wanting to abolish this section for freedom of speech is so racist and very uneducated. They have not even made the true colonial history of this country mandatory in schools—let alone speak of multiculturalism, which is already in Australia.

Do they want to go back in time where Italians, Aborigines and LGBTIQ people were regularly referred to in nothing short of demeaning terms? Stop wasting taxpayers' resources and put energy into unemployment, drug, alcohol and gambling addictions, family violence, abuse, homelessness, deaths and poverty. The world is watching us.

Associate Professor Clare Andersen represents the national Indigenous Education Consultative Bodies network. In relation to the harm that could be caused to Indigenous children by watering down 18C, she said:

Closing the Gap focuses on education outcomes and health outcomes. If kids are not happy, then they will not do well at school. We already have that going on. If you are not well educated, your health is generally poorer. Those two things are tied up together. If we water it down, it will only make things worse—it will not make things better.

I have also spoken to the Mayor of Palm Island, Councillor Alf Lacey, about what changes to the Racial Discrimination Act would mean for the Palm Island community, and he said:

People need to think about the impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Racism comes in many forms and should never be acceptable. We need to ensure that we are not creating environments where racism is acceptable.

The people on Palm Island need jobs, economic sustainability; health care programs that make a difference to the lives of the residents and opportunities for our children to access a TAFE or University education.

The Bwgcolman people of Palm Island deserve more than a Prime Minister who launched an inquiry to investigate whether it would be agreeable to remove sections of the Racial Discrimination Act to allow people to make a racist remarks. Legislating to enable racist comments in 2017 is outrageous. Some people were surprised by the fact that the Prime Minister launched this inquiry into section 18C, but I was not surprised at all. One only has to look at the history of this government—they have a great track record in picking on and attacking this nation's most vulnerable and marginalised citizens. The Turnbull government is cutting $48 million from Townsville schools and millions of dollars from the Townsville Health and Hospital Service, and the Turnbull government has overseen the Centrelink robo-debt debacle, where the government would rather chase and harass a grandmother for a few thousand dollars that she does not owe than chase big corporations for billions of dollars in avoided taxes. Added to this list is their latest diabolical support for cuts to penalty rates, where workers who give up time with their families on a Sunday to earn enough money to survive are being severely punished. In fact, they will have to work longer hours to earn the same pay packet. It was no surprise to me that this government would want to try to water down 18C in the Racial Discrimination Act to further disadvantage our first nation people and other marginalised citizens. I bet the Prime Minister's right arm is sore from the extreme right wing in his party constantly twisting it.

Diversity Council Australia gave evidence to the committee in Darwin. They represent 400 members, including all major Australian banks and many of the international global banks, major retail groups and many government departments. Their members' employees comprise about 10 per cent of the Australian labour market. Their evidence considered the economic cost of racism to their member organisations, and the chief executive officer, Ms Lisa Annese, said in her evidence to the committee:

… when we create inclusive workplaces, so when workplaces tap into and value the differences between people—and that could be differences based on race and culture but also other areas of diversity such as disability, LGBTI identity, Indigenous identity or gender … individuals feel more engaged in their workplace. They are more likely to be productive, and they are more likely to be present. There is less absenteeism. And then, if you follow the money on that one, it leads to greater profitability and productivity.

A plethora of evidence given to the committee asserted that any change to the wording of sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act will definitely cause uncertainty and would be likely to create even more litigation and confusion. The committee has heard witness after witness from communities spanning the length and breadth of Australia telling of the harm that racism causes to individuals who are targeted in their communities. Equal Opportunity Tasmania referred in their submission to a 2013 survey of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds conducted by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, and said this about the results:

Importantly, those surveyed exhibited poorer mental health and higher levels of psychological stress compared with those who had not experienced racism; and the levels of distress increased for those who had repeatedly been subjected to racist behaviour … levels of psychological distress were associated with the volume of racist experiences and not necessarily the type … experiences of everyday racism may be just as harmful to mental health as other more severe episodes.

Labor fought to protect 18C in 2014 when the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, tried to destroy it and we will fight to protect it again. Freedom of speech and freedom from hate speech are balanced in sections 18C and 18D, which have worked well for decades. Why is it that this government wants to change them now. I want to know what people like George Christensen and Senator Malcolm Roberts want to say that they cannot say right now.

The report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has made no recommendation to change section 18C of the act, and the Prime Minister should not look to proceed to any changes of law and should try to make this country a place where racism is not acceptable. As a nation, we should be proud to share this land with the oldest living culture and we should show respect for our first nation people and not enable a racist inquiry. Our nation should value the contribution of the many refugees and migrants who have made significant contributions to our community—for example, Associate Professor Munjed Al Muderis, orthopaedic surgeon and clinical lecturer at the Macquarie University and the Australian School of Advanced Medicine, a refugee from Iraq. (Time expired)

Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My home state of South Australia and my residents in Boothby face a range of pressing challenges. We have the most unreliable and most expensive electricity in the nation, one of the highest unemployment rates and the highest cost of doing business. We also have historic levels of state government debt. These issues go to the core of what we believe as the Liberal Party and as a government—the importance of keeping the power on, balancing budgets, letting business get on with employing people, providing health care and education and being able to afford to do so, and protecting the most vulnerable in our society. These are some of the obvious roles and responsibilities of our party and our government. Our party also has a great responsibility when it comes to the issue facing us today—that of the fight for freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental tenet of our core Australian values and beliefs. Overwhelmingly we are a tolerant, respectful and polite society. But we exist at a time when the culture of victimhood and taking offence has overrun common sense and people resolving their issues by themselves without the need for government interference. In a very real sense, I feel that we are witnessing a weakening of our social fabric. Wrongs or perceived wrongs are no longer remedied by talking it out or seeking support and assistance from your neighbours or your friends or your colleagues or your boss or your community but by lodging a complaint with a government agency or the courts. Far too often we are turning to government to fix all of our woes, and far too often government is responding with legislation and agencies, and in this case human rights commissioners who are so far removed from the reality of Australian life and society that their decisions are too often ridiculous or of very serious concern. We are no longer self-sufficient and we no longer harness the power of our communities to help us solve problems when they arise. I think this leads to some terrible social outcomes.

I do not believe there is anyone who can honestly say that the QUT case has resulted in good outcomes for any of the parties involved. When you get a body like the Human Rights Commission involved in a case like this, problems become amplified and lead to a breakdown of social and human relationships. Lives have been ruined. The evidence presented by Mr Alexander Wood to the committee is quite heartbreaking. What this student went through at the hands of an agency of the state is utterly and absolutely inexcusable. For a two-sentence Facebook post, Mr Wood's life was turned upside down for several years, and even though he was exonerated he was left with a $41,000 legal bill, and his legal team were left out of pocket.

Mr Wood's compelling evidence to the committee, on pages 77 and 78 of the report, is a must-read, and I encourage everybody in this place to do so. That the process occurred as it did—that students in addition to Mr Wood had years of their life and their reputations destroyed, that they faced significant financial penalties of between $5,000 and potentially $250,000, and, as it turned out for Mr Wood, a $40,000 legal bill—is an outrage. Leaving aside the appalling processes that Mr Wood and his fellow students were subjected to, there is a broader point here, to my mind.

If there is a section of society we expect to exercise their freedom of speech and to push its boundaries the most, it is our students. A society that silences its students is a society in a very dangerous place. For centuries students have been at the centre of new ideas, thoughts, student protests and even revolution, although I would refer any students contemplating revolution to the 19th century Russian Narodniks for a warning about the prospects of revolutionary success—or lack thereof.

A society that seeks to silence its cartoonists, I believe, is also in a very dangerous place. In my experience, our cartoonists are often also our artists and teachers. They are our thinkers and our philosophers. My year 9 high school art teacher was the late Michael Atchison OAM, who taught me the importance of the classics, art history and theory and the art of letter writing. He made us draw our art exams from still-life compositions in the appropriate gradients of lead pencil, and in his spare time he drew The Advertiser's editorial cartoon most days, in addition to his Word for Word cartoon, which explained the origin of a different word every day. He was, I think it is fair to say, deliberately provocative and one of the most inspiring teachers I had.

The magnificent Bill Leak is another stellar example of the cartoonist as a provocative thinker and artist. We are blessed to have a national cartoonist who pushes the boundaries and challenges us to reflect on society, on politics and on policy decisions. His work is informed by his brilliance as a portraitist, and he deserves national treasure status for having made a contribution in the press, to the Archibald Prize and to our National Portrait Gallery, which holds his portraits of Gavin Campbell, Sir Donald Bradman, Richard Woolcott and—one of my personal favourites—another national treasure, Robert Hughes, titled Nothing If Not Criticalwhich seems to be the problem of those opposite as well. In fact, Mr Leak's portraits of former Labor leaders Bob Hawke and Bill Hayden hang on the walls of this place, and I hope those opposite realise that. Perhaps they do not.

When we disrupt our cartoonists with threats of censorship or with court cases threatening censorship and possible financial ruin, their creative processes and confidence are disrupted too. Just look at what several cartoonists said to the committee, including Mr Leak. The committee report says:

2.32 Mr Bill Leak, an editorial cartoonist at The Australian newspaper who was subject to an 18C complaint, shared his concerns about the impact of his case on other cartoonists:

I think that that hypothetical person working for some magazine that might be online—goodness knows—or whatever but does not have the backing of an organisation like News Corp is going to look at what happened to me and say: 'That bloke really got into a lot of trouble for telling the truth. I better not tell it myself.' If that is not a dampener on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, I do not know what is. To me, I think it is extremely sinister.

2.33 Mr Paul Zanetti, also a cartoonist subject to an 18C complaint, shared this concern:

I am more exposed than Bill because I am an independent syndicator. It is a concern because it is designed to stifle freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of expression. It is a form of thought police, where if you dare to step outside certain boundaries we have this law where anybody is entitled to come after you and drag you in front of a government institution. It could send you broke. You could lose your house—the ramifications of the rest of it where you are held personally liable. There is no protection for anybody who wants to exercise real freedom of speech or expression.

When we silence those who tell uncomfortable truths or provoke us to reflect on ourselves and our actions, we are poorer as a society. We know from bitter past experience what happens to nations that silence their artists and critics: soon they silence large parts of their society too.

There is another sector of our society that we need to protect as well to enable them to continue to provoke debate, and that is our columnists. A society that seeks to silence its columnists and commentators is also in a very dangerous place. I worked as a columnist before entering this place. I worried about defamation. I worried about ending up in a section 18C style dispute or an Andrew Bolt like court case and, as such, determined not to write about certain topics, because they were just too dangerous. This is a common fear, as the committee heard:

A number of submitters, particularly journalists and lawyers employed to represent them, argued that section 18C had a 'chilling effect' in relation to freedom of speech.26 For example, Dr Augusto Zimmerman identified that, as an academic, he has come across people 'who are intimidated and afraid of expressing their opinions', and further:

… even on radio interviews that I have given I have asked the person conducting the interview if he feels comfortable to say certain things. People are getting really worried these days about making comments.

I have not yet had time to fully consider the recommendations of the committee's report and what our best course of action to fix this terrible problem is—this terrible problem that sees some 71 people currently subject to other section 18C claims and goodness knows how many before them who have settled claims and at what financial and personal cost to the alleged offenders. What I do know is that the freedom we take for granted must be protected. Where laws constrain our freedom of speech they must be fixed. We should aim to restore the role of community and civil society in addressing the problems of racism. We must take power back from the bureaucrats and encourage our citizens to assume responsibility for their actions and reactions.

As Sir Robert Menzies said, 'We are the custodians of great freedoms, whether they be in enterprise or speech. We are charged with protecting the freedom to do our best and to make that best better; a freedom that goes deep into the very dignity of man.'

We must protect freedom of speech.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the next speaker I would just like to gently remind all members present in the chamber that the heart of this particular debate is about the importance of respect. As such, I would remind members in the chamber that members who are speaking are entitled to be heard with respect.

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

I would like to start by commending the committee for limiting its recommendations to procedural matters and for not recommending any implicit changes to 18C and 18D. In particular, I commend the recommendation by the committee to support, strengthen and develop education programs to address racism in Australian society and to address the scope of the meaning of the Racial Discrimination Act, which was recommendation 1 of the report.

I also commend the second recommendation, that recognises the profound impacts of serious forms of racism, something which those on the other side seem to think are invisible, and calls for leaders and politicians—leaders and politicians!—to exercise their freedom of speech to identify and condemn racially hateful and discriminatory speech where it occurs in public. Again, that is something that is missed by those on the other side.

I take that responsibility very seriously, and I issue a challenge for those on the other side to also take it seriously, because apart from a very few shining examples on the backbench, the leadership of this government has remained silent, and that silence is dangerous. It is dangerous because it gives a tacit nod to racism. It gives a tacit nod to the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Australians in their electorates who every day come face to face with the scourge of racism in this country. It gives a tacit nod to people who misguidedly believe that their skin colour makes them superior. Or, in the words of the member for Moore yesterday, more 'mainstream' than somebody with my skin colour, for example.

And I must take the member for Moore to task for his assertion yesterday that mainstream Australians are affected by reverse racism on two points. First of all, that racism is racism is racism. 'Reverse' racism is often used to differentiate racism that is directed towards a dominant group in a society. But whether the offence comes from a radical Islamic preacher sprouting his hatred at people of other races or from a mediocre, has-been cartoonist who thinks it is amusing to express his agreement with ISIS—and I must note that Ms Flint did not mention him in her diatribe in defence of cartoonists—18C is there to protect everyone and 18D is there to protect free speech.

Secondly, when it comes to Australia, the 'mainstream' that the member for Moore alluded to is in fact a mainstream that is inherently multicultural and inherently multiracial, no matter what one may think. It was heartening to see the breadth of submissions to the joint committee inquiry, as much as it was saddening to see just how pervasive racism is in this country and the impact that it has had on diverse groups: the Greeks, the Italians, the Jewish community, Indigenous Australians and others. These people are not the minority to be relegated to some category of 'other', that is outside of the so-called 'mainstream'. They are the heart and the soul of this nation. And no matter how hard those on the other side like to imagine it, that dream that they have of white Australia never was and it never will be.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, you said to show a little more respect for the chamber!

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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—

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's true.

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

Oh, it is true.

The member for Dawson, in his speech this morning, sought to reduce this entire debate to a one-dimensional argument about freedom of speech, and in doing so he made the astounding claim that racism causes no individual harm. All he could muster was less than five minutes of demanding that 18C be repealed, as if somehow that constituted an argument. It is particularly astounding because people like him have never had to hold their child's hand in theirs and explain the tears they are shedding because of the hatred directed at them. They are people who have never had consistently to defend their very existence in this country, despite being productive and high-achieving citizens of Australia. It is a sad indictment of the ability of those members of parliament to represent all Australians if they cannot, or will not, attempt to step outside their own experiences and empathise with the people they represent here.

Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise today to speak about the inquiry into the operation of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act and related procedures under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act. May I say that this debate has been at a standstill since 2011, and it is the Turnbull government who initiated this inquiry through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. I applaud this bipartisan committee, who prepared a report which is balanced and solution focused in relation to section 18C and associated debate.

May I first address the comments of the member for Cowan, who makes the incredible assumption that no-one on the other side of the House has experienced racism or discrimination. As the member for Chisholm and of immigrant heritage myself, I have paid close and specific attention to this debate. I am so incredibly proud of the people of Chisholm, who I represent in this House. Chisholm is the third most culturally diverse electorate in Australia. It covers 65 square kilometres in Melbourne's urban east and represents a kind of microcosm of this great country. Indeed, we are the most successful multicultural nation on this earth, enjoying a non-discriminatory migration policy which is underpinned by the value of respect embraced by the Turnbull government.

In November 2016, leaders of 10 multicultural community groups made an important statement on the Racial Discrimination Act. The statement was made by peak bodies, including leaders from the Chinese, Jewish, Vietnamese, Greek and Arabic communities. The groups said:

We do not believe that any case has been made to alter sections 18C and 18D of the RDA …

Sections 18C and 18D of the RDA have been key components in the array of legislative and educative tools used by each of our communities in our efforts to counter-act racism. We are deeply concerned that a change to the substantive terms of sections 18C or 18D … would weaken those efforts …

Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, in my view, should not be changed. The case has not been made to do so. The case, however, has been made to make process changes to ensure that respondents are more fairly treated, and I support the recommendations of the committee.

I have over 20 years experience as a legal practitioner and have always regarded the principle of 'the spirit and intention of the law' to be paramount. I also know full well the inherent risk and burden of litigation. I have observed my fair share of vexatious or unmeritorious litigants in my time. Albeit that section 18C plays an important role in our multicultural society, it was always intended as a limited protection to be used only in the most serious cases. The way the law is currently being administered allows too many nuisance complaints or vexatious cases.

My view is that the pain is in the process. The pain of having to endure the burden of the prospect of lengthy and/or expensive litigation and dealing with the legal process should never have had to be endured by, for example, the Queensland university students or Bill Leak, the cartoonist. Most of the issues related to section 18C concern process matters rather than substantive outcomes under the law. They have caused distress and anxiety and gone too far. They have created, as I said, pain in the process.

The report highlights the clear process issues with administration of the act and makes a number of pragmatic and sensible recommendations in this area, with the unanimous support of the bipartisan committee—something which the member for Cowan could take note of. The report makes several recommendations to fix the complaints-handling process relating to the handling of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. These include providing greater assistance to respondents to match what is currently afforded to complainants; imposing time limits on notifying respondents and on the complaints-handling process more generally; ensuring section 18D defences are considered by the commission in assessing complaints; giving the commission greater powers to terminate complaints earlier in the process; restricting access to the courts following the commission's termination of a complaint; providing penalties for legal practitioners instituting complaints that have no reasonable prospect of success; and providing more parliamentary oversight to the commission.

I note the comments in The Australian today by Mr Tony Morris QC, who defended the Queensland university students in the case that was brought against them under section 18C. To paraphrase Mr Morris, he said that the recommendations are not what some of those who oppose 18C wanted but that they would do the job. He said:

The best part is the combined effect of all the protections they are proposing to put in for respondents to complaints … If the report's recommendations are adopted, it will lead to a level playing field so that respondents enjoy rights similar to complainants.

Addressing these process issues is unanimously accepted by multicultural communities around Australia.

The committee has unanimously recommended a range of changes which will support the spirit and intention of the law—that is, that only the most serious of cases should come under section 18C. If implemented, these changes will avoid unnecessary, unmeritorious or vexatious litigation claims proceeding. The committee has recommended these changes to improve the operation of the existing law. In my view, if implemented, they will make it very difficult for these unmeritorious or vexatious litigation matters to proceed, will put respondents on a much more equal footing, will give respondents the ease and comfort of knowing that they will not be caught up in a vexatious litigation process, and will ensure that the spirit and intention of the law in section 18C and 18D are properly implemented.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak on this issue, particularly because this morning I spent a short but reflective time thinking about the tradition of Ash Wednesday. I saw the member for Fisher in here earlier; I know he is a good Christian fellow. I started thinking about what the start of Lent means, and a little bit of the reading that I did talked about the injunction for people to 'weep with those who weep'. I have seen a lot of people in my life weeping because they have been humiliated, they have had their racial profile used to analyse them, and they have been the subject of quite vicious verbal and sometimes physical attacks. That is not usual for Caucasian, or European, people, but the member for Canning reminded me just before that you cannot always assume that there are certain types of people who are never subject to racial hate speech or worse. He also reminded me that when I was a young man I was the subject of a racial attack. It hurt me at the time, and I remember thinking, 'What did I do to deserve that?' So I know exactly how people feel who are on the receiving end, and it did not take me long, as I matured into a man, to realise that the people who had attacked me in that way were doing so after many decades, even centuries, of being on the receiving end of absolute prejudice almost to the point of genocide. So I kind of understood the psychological trauma, the intergenerational harm that is done, when race is used to attack people.

The fact that we have people in the parliament who are using this issue as a platform for internal issues to do with a political party, and because they are concerned about another political party, is, quite frankly, disgraceful. There may be a small part of our community who might agree that we need to change these parts of the Racial Discrimination Act, but my gut feeling is that it is very, very small. I think if they were to look a bit deeper into their hearts they would realise that we do not want to be that sort of country. How on earth are we going to lift up the horizons of the whole Australian people by championing causes that weaken protections of other Australians against race hate? How are we going to do that? How are we going to bring Australia together as a proud, confident and multicultural country when we have leaders who seek to use an issue like this for their own political ends?

I believe that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights have downplayed many of the opinions, as I have said, of the Australian people. I believe that. I believe they have downplayed the majority of community groups, professional organisations and legal experts they heard from. Nevertheless, the government members on that committee did not recommend any changes. They clearly preferred the retention of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act in its current form. I understand that that must have annoyed a lot of people on the other side who are seeking to use this issue, but the sense of social justice that I was brought up with, regardless of the racial attacks that were made against me, says to me, without a second of thought, that I would never favour any amendment of this act that weakened the protections of my fellow Australians against race attack. I just would not do it. Section 18C is already subject to the limitations of 18D. I do not think it restricts fair freedom of speech at all. But, as the member for Cowan rightly said before, repealing 18C, as the member for Fisher said he wanted to do, would send the wrong signal to our community. It is the wrong type of leadership for our country. It is wrong law—it is bad law. It would be wrong law to change that act and, as I have already said, the motives would be wrong.

I want to spend some time repeating what many in my electorate of the Northern Territory have said on this issue. I think the comments of Ms Penelope Taylor, the former head researcher at the Larrakeyah National Aboriginal Corporation, are worth mentioning here. Penelope said:

… the reality is that groups such as Aboriginal people do not have the same level of freedom of speech as the groups that we seem to be advocating for by talking about amending this provision.

They do not have the same life experience.    Her evidence is based on the results of a three-year project which interviewed over 500 Aboriginal people residing in Darwin about their views on race relations. I am just sending this message very clearly from old Darwin, in my electorate—from those old families, generations of old families, that have accepted people from all over the world onto their country: they have deep concerns about any weakening of these provisions, and they wonder why anyone on earth would want to do it. I share their frustration—why would anyone want to weaken these protections?

Penny's concern is shared by Sally Sievers, the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner of the Northern Territory and whose organisation has been unable to discuss this inquiry in-depth with all the stakeholders they wanted to because of the short timeframe. I was also a bit sceptical about why the inquiry was conducted in such a hurried manner. Many people were not aware of the inquiry, but it is with strong conviction and strong confidence that I speak for the overwhelming majority of my electorate when I say that repealing the RDA is not a good idea. I am glad that the committee in their report did not recommend that, and I am glad that they have recommended that more education is needed on the issue.

We have had so many reports on this matter—we have had the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the National Inquiry into Racist Violence and the Australian Law Reform Commission report into multiculturalism and the law. All of those reports go towards making an RDA that works for our country, that enables a fair balance between the freedom of speech and the freedom of people to be protected from race hate. That is why it should continue in its current form, and I hope we can move on quickly from this low point in the life of this parliament and be a better Australia.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In November of last year leaders of 10 cultural community groups in Australia made an important statement on the Racial Discrimination Act. That statement was made by a range of peak bodies, including leaders from the Chinese, Jewish, Vietnamese, Greek and Arabic communities. Those communities all came together to make a statement about their views on the Racial Discrimination Act, and I think it is worth quoting that statement in part. The group said:

We do not believe that any case has been made to alter sections 18C and 18D of the RDA.

They went on to say:

Sections 18C and 18D of the RDA have been key components in the array of legislative and educative tools used by each of our communities in our efforts to counter-act racism. We are deeply concerned that a change to the substantive terms of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act would weaken those efforts.

I note that the committee report does not make any such recommendation to change sections 18C or 18D. This is appropriate—the sections should not be changed.

The report does highlight the clear process issues with the administration of the act and makes a number of compelling recommendations in this area. I note that these recommendations were made with the unanimous support of the committee. It is very important to note that the vast majority of the issues raised in relation to section 18C concern process matters rather than substantive outcomes under the law; in particular, it is clear that claims with very limited or no merit have been allowed to proceed much too far. This has caused a great deal of distress to respondents and has often required them to spend substantial amounts of money defending baseless claims. That is wrong, and it needs to be fixed.

I note in an article in The Australian today that Mr Tony Morris QC, who was the legal counsel for the QUT students in the recent case under the 18C legislation, made some comments in relation to the committee's report. In that article, Mr Morris said:

The recommendations are not what some of us who oppose 18C wanted, but I suspect they will do the job. The best part is the combined effect of all the protections they are proposing to put in for respondents to complaints. If the report's recommendations are adopted, it will lead to a level playing field so that respondents enjoy rights similar to complainants.

Again, it is clear that there have been significant process issues in the administration of this act, but the way to deal with process issues is to deal with process issues—not to change the substantive act itself.

The need to address those process issues is also accepted by multicultural communities. In their submission to the inquiry, the Multicultural Communities Council of New South Wales, the National Sikh Council of Australia, the Chinese Community Council of Australia, the Vietnamese Community in Australia and the Macedonian Orthodox Church at Rockdale all came together and made the following observation:

We support the ‘filtering’ of complaints that can easily be identified as frivolous, vexatious or clearly having no reasonable chance of success through the application of a standard that should be met before proceeding further with the complaint.

There is very wide agreement here that the process needs to be addressed to ensure that vexatious and unmeritorious claims do not proceed for months or years, tying up the legal process and requiring respondents who have clearly not breached the act to be tied up in endless litigation. I do not think there is anyone who thinks that that is appropriate, and the committee makes some very thoughtful recommendations about how to fix that problem. If you fix the process problems, it seems to me that the vast majority of the issues that are debated publicly about the provisions of this act will be addressed. Indeed, Mr Morris, who was the advocate for the QUT students, has acknowledged precisely that.

The committee has unanimously recommended a range of changes to improve the operation of existing law and, if they are implemented, these changes will make it much harder for unmeritorious or vexatious claims to proceed and will put respondents on a much more equal footing with complainants. There are a range of recommendations and they are quite comprehensive, but I would like to touch on a few of them, starting with recommendation 6 in the report. The committee recommends changes to the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 to make it clear that dispute resolution should be provided as early as possible; that the type of dispute resolution should be appropriate to the dispute; and that the dispute resolution process should be fair to all parties, among a number of other points that have been made there. The committee also recommends that the act be amended to empower the commission to offer reasonable assistance to respondents consistent with the assistance offered to complainants. That does not happen at the moment and that has led to some of the justifiable concerns about the administration of the act.

In recommendation 8, the committee makes some important recommendations in relation to time limits because so much of this issue comes back to lengthy delays. The committee recommends that the commission be required to put in place time limits for the initial assessment of the complaint, so that it cannot go on for ever and ever, and for notification to the respondents of the complaint in regard to investigation and conciliation—so putting in place clear time lines for dealing with these things in a much more expeditious manner. The committee also recommends that a greater onus be put on the complainant: that they be required to allege that the act, if true, would constitute unlawful discrimination; that they be required to set out the details of the alleged contravention; that they put in place a refundable complaint lodgement fee—which is an important initiative; and, importantly, that legal practitioners representing complainants be required to certify that in their view the complaint has reasonable prospects of success. The committee also recommends that, where the conduct of the complainant or practitioner has been unreasonable, the commission be empowered to make orders about reasonable costs being issued against practitioners and complainants in order to prevent frivolous claims. These are all very sensible recommendations. It is good to see that the committee was able to come together with commonsense recommendations, and I would certainly support them.

Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act should not be changed. The case has not been made to do so. The case has most definitely been made that changes to process are required to ensure that respondents are more fairly treated, and I support the recommendations of the committee in this regard.

I would like to thank the many groups who made submissions and contributions to the inquiry process. Many of the community groups in my electorate, and indeed right across Australia, feel strongly about this issue and made important submissions to the committee process. I thank them for their diligence in doing so. I would like to particularly highlight the efforts of the Chinese Australian Services Society—CASS—which, under the leadership of Tony Pang, has made a number of very pertinent points in relation to these matters. I would also like to thank the members of the committee for their work. It is a comprehensive report. There were literally hundreds of submissions and, in a timely manner, the committee has come forward with some very sensible recommendations in relation to process. I would like to thank in particular the member for Berowra, who has applied himself to these very important issues with his customary intellect and sincerity. I thank the committee for their report.

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights into freedom of speech in Australia and the operation of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act is a reasonable one, the tale that brings the chamber to consideration of this report is, however, a sorry one. The coalition's obsession with section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act reflects nothing more than their obsession with themselves. The debate about section 18C inside the Liberal Party and inside the coalition is not a debate about the concerns of everyday Australians. There are no barbecues being stopped across our nation by people demanding the 'right to be bigots', as the Attorney-General famously phrased it. As the member for Bennelong put it, as he told ABC's AM, the campaign to change section 18C is a 'fringe issue'. He said:

If you did a ranking of the top 10 … it wouldn't be in the top 100.

He is certainly right. I live in one of the most multicultural electorates in Australia and I have received barely a handful of letters from constituents seeking changes to these provisions in the nearly four years that I have been in this place. We are comfortable living in the most successful multicultural nation on earth, and Australians understand that some minor restraints on the more extreme expressions of racial abuse have helped strengthen community cohesion. Only a government that is as out of touch as the Turnbull-Abbott-Turnbull government could think that the public are clamouring for a years-long debate on section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, when penalty rates are being cut for 700,000 Australians, when wages growth is at an all-time low, when underemployment is at an all-time high and when they are worried about the future of Medicare. These are the barbecue stoppers across the suburbs of Australia.

Nor, however, is the debate around section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act—in the Liberal Party, at least—a debate around Australian national identity or the kind of society that we want to build in this country. We are not talking here about how to protect one of the most successful multicultural societies on earth or how to strengthen it as we become increasingly diverse in the future. Instead, this debate is about two things and two things only. Firstly, it is an ideological plaything for the 'glibertarians' who have entrenched themselves in the state branches of the Liberal Party. Secondly, it is a tool for leadership game playing inside the Liberal Party, a cat's paw for promoting instability and leadership jockeying.

This is exactly what we saw in the first week of this parliament. In the first week of parliament after the election win by the new leader of the coalition, Malcolm Turnbull, and before the Governor-General's speech had even been delivered, all but one of the coalition Senate backbench joined with One Nation to sign a notice of motion to gut 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It was an intervention designed deliberately to humiliate their supposed leader, the Prime Minister, in his first week in parliament after the election campaign. Since then, the issue has been continuously exploited by the member for Warringah, suspiciously, in the lead-up to Newspoll, entering the field with his band of 'deplorables'—and I acknowledge 'deplorables' who are with us here today; you are adorable to me!—the drongos who yearn for the return of the king and, presumably, knighthoods. As a result, the mere mention of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in coalition circles is like adding a drop of blood into shark-infested waters—it produces a frothing and a churning beneath the water's surface, particularly in the bowels of the coalition party room.

It is like this issue brings those opposite back into the fray of student politics, arguing more and more passionately about issues further and further away from what matters to the vast majority of the Australian population. Why is it that this issue, the issue of protections against hate speech in the Racial Discrimination Act, is the freedom-of-speech issue that winds up conservatives in Australia so much? Why weren't the party room dissidents barking when Malcolm Turnbull's former chief of staff launched defamation proceedings over an insulting televised comedy act? They lay doggo when the member for Warringah and Peter Costello sued an Australian author for writing offensive falsehoods about their wives. The guard dogs of free speech were silent when former Treasurer Joe Hockey sued TheSydney Morning Herald for its reporting on fundraising activities in his electorate. Where were the full-page newspaper ads from the IPA during any of these restraints on free speech? No-one has suggested dismantling the law of defamation every time a defamation plaintiff loses a case or every time there is an unhelpful proceeding—not even when a bloke sues a newspaper over the depiction of his mullet, as we saw before the courts last year, or when the father of a chief executive of Swisse vitamins sues over his depiction by a comedian on ABC consumer show The Checkout. No, the free-speech claxon of the 'glibertarians' who have taken over the right of Australian politics today remains silent.

Why aren't they up in arms about restraints on free speech imposed by defamation law? When asked about this cognitive dissonance, they will give you tortured philosophical justifications about individuals having a property right to their reputation, while the impact of a group's vilification is unable to be quantified and as such is worthless of protection by the law. The reality is, however, that they care about this because this one is the only constraint that they will be subject to. The other is a constraint that they are likely to transcend. A free-speech equation for these glibertarians in the coalition party room is simple: rights constraints that protect powerful people—good; rights constraints that protect vulnerable groups—bad.

As I intimated earlier, the Australian community takes a very different view. When, in the first term, the Abbott-Turnbull government the coalition sought to dismantle section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act there was a mass uprising against this move in multicultural communities across Australia, many of them in my electorate. They campaigned against the 18C changes, under the member for Warringah, and Labor was proud to campaign with them. We were pleased when the previous Prime Minister backed down on this foolish and unnecessary change. The current Prime Minister still refuses to close the door on making the same mistake.

In the report that we are considering the debate here today, the parliamentary committee—set up to water down race-hate speech—has found no basis to recommend any changes to the substance of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Those opposite often like to say, 'Forget about substance; it's the process that's the punishment under section 18C.' They act like any unsuspecting member of the public engaging in good faith political debate could be caught by the provision, ignoring utterly section 18D of the act that contains exemptions designed to protect, exactly, this behaviour and limiting and protecting from the reach of the act artistic works, scientific debate and fair comment on matters of public interest.

Still, they say the process is the punishment—as though a complaint to the Human Rights Commission under section 18C triggers some kind of modern Star Chamber. The reality is far from it. The Human Rights Commission's focus is on resolving disputes so parties can avoid court proceedings. Of complaints where conciliation was attempted, 76 per cent were successfully resolved in 2015-16. In 2015-16, in the reporting year, the average time it took the commission to finalise a complaint was 3.8 months. In that same reporting year 94 per cent of surveyed parties were satisfied with the commission's service. To be blunt, the process under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is far better than what a respondent would confront in any defamation proceeding.

Those opposite advocating change have built the biggest straw man since burning man. They dance around their creations in fervours of ideological rupture. As the saying goes: you should dance like no-one is watching. And coalition members of parliament dance around their section 18C burning man without a care for what anyone in Australia watching might think.

If Prime Minister Turnbull proceeds with changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, in light of all of this, it will be entirely his choice to do so. If the Prime Minister has any backbone at all he should use the publication of this report to kill off any attempts to water down and reform section 18C and the vital protections it provides for social cohesion in our community once and for all. This is a problem that exists only in the fevered dreams of conservative ideologues within the coalition party room. It is not a problem that exists in the suburbs, in the backyards, at the barbecues of Australians around our nation.

The protections of the Racial Discrimination Act were important when they were introduced. There are even more important today. I am proud to be a member of a Labor Party that has fought those who have sought to gut this provision over the last four years of the Abbott-Turnbull government.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The parliament has spent too much time on this. When I move through the country and my own electorate I can honestly say that I am not bowled over by people who are saying to me we need change on 18C. I can honestly say that it has never happened to me. It is a boutique issue that is more controversial in the coalition party room than it is in the community.

That should not always be the marker for what we spend time on in this place, but it is relevant. Quite often we speak about things that are not a heated exchange within the community but are important to the fabric of our nation or to the future of our democracy. This is not one of them. I note that in the last 12 months only 77 complaints were made under 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and fewer than four of those complaints ever proceeded to court.

I want to contrast that with complaints that were made to the Fair work Ombudsman. Last year alone, over 400,000 calls were made to the Fair Work Ombudsman, over 340 infringement notices and 118 compliance notices were issued and over 50 court proceedings were initiated. I stand with those who say these are things that we probably should spend more time debating in this chamber, and as you make your way around the community I am sure you will find the treatment of people in the workplace, particularly our young people, to be an issue of greater concern than something that most people have never heard of, section 18C of a piece of legislation.

The member for Warringah joined the debate again last week. He is a political bull in the coalition china shop. In opposition he promised that he was going to be the champion of free speech in this country. As Prime Minister he did consider amending this part of the law. He back-flipped on that, for good reason. Presumably, he was advised and accepted the advice, not only of security agencies but of the rest of his cabinet and of the rest of his backbench, and of all the government agencies who know something about this. He learned that repealing 18C—in fact, even raising this matter in the way it was being raised—was going to take Australia down a self-defeating path. It was going to be against our national security interests. He learned that to maintain our personal safety and national security it is necessary to work with the community, and particularly community leaders, to ensure that Australian values prevail, to ensure that the freedom of speech that we cherish is not compromised. Law does have a place in protecting us, in helping us to meet the existential challenge of national security threats, but we win the battle with our enemies when we win the battle of ideas. Laws are good but culture is much more pervasive. Freedom from hate speech, I argue, is better done by example, and we have a place in this House in setting the example.

There are some people who want to duplicate the politics of the newly installed President in the United States and see that as a pathway to political success. They must be resisted. What we say, what we tolerate, what we amplify, what we condone, what we condemn in this place sets a powerful example to the rest of the community. The hate speech that has been directed recently against the CEO of Australia Post is a case in point. For mine it was a sad day when in the Australian parliament a man who has led the recovery of an organisation that employs around 30,000 Australians in just about every town in the country, including jobs in regional and rural areas, had to address the personalised denigration of himself and his religion. It should be irrelevant. Mr Fahour told a Senate estimates hearing this week that he was proud to be an immigrant who came to Australia, who has worked hard, who has worked his way up to some of the highest positions in the finance industry and now in a government business enterprise. He is proud, and we should be proud of him as well. His success is an answer to the ugly bigotry against those of the Muslim faith or any other faith for that matter. He said:

The law of this country is the most important thing for me - through the law it allows us to practice privately our beliefs and to live peacefully and contribute and that’s what it’s all about, contributing.

What more could we ask of those who come from another country or who have another faith from those we share than to contribute in that way?

Australia's successful multicultural nation is the shining testament that makes a mockery of those from ISIL and their fellow travellers, in this community and elsewhere. The Racial Discrimination Act helps to maintain the sensible boundaries of freedom of speech within our multicultural society.

Freedom of speech has never been unrestrained in this country, from the time of the first convicts. It was restrained at first by lash, then by law, but more forcefully by social norms—by social norms about the things that we find it acceptable to say and not say in this country. We are a nation that celebrates our egalitarian nature, but we have to understand and acknowledge, particularly as representatives of our electorates in this place, that everybody has an equal right to say things within the boundaries of the law, but we also have to acknowledge that not every voice has the same force. So, when we stand up in this place or in our electorates or somewhere else and say things—in fact, whether it is said at the pulpit or the mosque or the synagogue or the dispatch box—we have a responsibility for the things that we say and the social forces that they unleash.

I want to say a few things to my friends on the Left of Australian politics, because the comments that I have made so far might fairly be directed at those on the political Right, to the extent that those terms mean anything. I say to those on the political Left that we cannot condemn the attacks on the free speech of publications like Charlie Hebdo while demanding at the same time that a cartoonist like Bill Leak be sacked or vilified because he has published a cartoon that we do not agree with. As much as I might find that cartoon nasty or tasteless, we cannot be doing both of those things at once. So my answer, if you find that cartoon or that publication offensive, is: don't buy it, don't read it—or, better still, do a better cartoon, a funnier cartoon, a more pertinent cartoon that responds to those sorts of things.

We have to find the balance, and I think our current laws find that balance between freedom of speech and freedom from hate speech. I think we have spent enough time already in this parliament debating these things when there are so many other things that should be occupying our consciousness, our time and our efforts in this place. I happen to think that the fight against racism and intolerance is something that we should do every day; we should do it by example. We should do it by the things that we condemn and the things that we condone, the things that we amplify, the things that we praise. But let us not waste the valuable time and the valuable resources of this important institution by occupying ourselves with something that is going nowhere. The majority of Australians will shake their heads and say: 'We elect you to deal with more important things and things that are directly relevant to our day-to-day lives. We want to see you fighting for a better education system, for jobs and job security, for the future of our industries, for the future of our health system.' These are the things that we should be focusing on, not this.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the beginning of my remarks, I send a big shout out to the people in my electorate who I know will be listening to this speech and will be commenting on my speech on social media. We do have a small element in Bendigo who say they believe in free speech but are caught up in a movement that tries to deny free speech and freedom of religion to a group of people in our community. Unfortunately, my town became well known throughout the world for some very ugly protests about the building of our first mosque. It is both a sad story and at the same time a happy story for our community. I say it was happy because the City of Greater Bendigo council made a planning decision and approved the development, the planning application, of the city's first mosque.

We at the time had a relatively small Bendigo Muslim community of about 200 people. They are our doctors. They are our engineers and academics. They are people who are well regarded and respected in our community. They are also some refugees from Afghanistan working at Hazeldene's in the chicken-processing facility. They are people who volunteer a lot of their time. Many of them love their soccer. Women enjoy swimming, swimming with their children and teaching their children to swim. They are a big part of our community. So it was quite a shock to many in Bendigo that a small group, predominantly people from outside, opposed the development of the mosque.

Most of you know what happened next. There were some ugly protests in Bendigo. A lot of people from outside our town came in, whipped up a lot of fear and whipped up a lot of anger, opposing the building and the development of the mosque. They said that they had the freedom to do that under freedom of speech, but what they were doing in its defence was denying other values. Those other values are so strongly held in belief in this country: freedom of religion, freedom of culture—the ability in this country to share our values and to share our beliefs as long as we do not hurt or hinder others.

There was an incident in particular—and this matter is still before the courts—on 4 October that just demonstrates the difference between this group saying that they should be able to do this because it is free speech and how outraged the community were, saying: 'No, that's not free speech. You've overstepped the mark.' This particular group, members of an anti-Islamic group, the United Patriots Front, gathered out the front of the Bendigo council building. They cut off the head off a small dummy with a black mask, spilling fake blood on the ground, just metres away from the council entrance. The United Patriots Front describe themselves as a national movement opposing the spread of 'left-wing treason' and the spread of Islam. The group said that this was an act of free speech. It is not.

The group has since been charged. A 34-year-old man from Frankston, a 45-year-old man from Wallan and a 31-year-old man from South Morang—noting that none of them are actually from Bendigo; all are from outside—have been charged with making a video with the intent of inciting serious contempt for, or revulsion of, a person or a class of people, a charge brought under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 of Victoria. They have also been charged with defacing the footpath in front of the council building as well as wilful damage to the footpath, wall and garden.

This is not free speech, and I support the actions of the police and the Victorian government in bringing charges against these three men. This was, in my opinion, an act of violence. This was an act that was about inciting fear, about provoking fear, about dividing our community, by outsiders who came in to hold the most disgraceful of protests, a mock beheading. Yet they try to hide behind the term 'free speech'.

We all get the opportunity to participate in citizenship and Australia Day activities. With freedom of speech comes great responsibility. I, like lots of people, have received emails that say, 'The simple truth is that my mind and my mouth are my own,' but, the moment you speak in a public forum like this and people hear you, it is what you say, so that you are not then impinging on somebody else's democratic rights and values. We have to take responsibility for our actions. We have to take responsibility for what we say. That is because it is about the community that we live in. The email goes on to say, 'What you do with them does not amount to violence. Only physical actions do.' That is such an outdated view. Say that to the victims of family violence. Before there is physical violence, there is verbal abuse. Say that to people in the workplace who are harassed, who face discrimination. In Australian society, we now pull people up when they harass, when they intimidate, when they use words in a violent way. The idea that you can verbally abuse somebody but, because it is not physical, it is still freedom of speech is wrong.

Labor has been and will always be a staunch supporter of free speech. However, free speech does come with responsibilities. Freedom of speech is a value and, like many values, must always be counterbalanced with competing values. In Australia, as in all Western democracies, there are a number of ways in which freedom of speech has always been constrained to benefit our community. I have mentioned a few. Others which are quite common are our defamation laws—allowing an individual to pursue protection of their reputation—and our consumer protection laws. Even here in our own parliament there are restrictions on what MPs can say, even when we have parliamentary privilege. We always pull people up if we believe they are impinging on somebody else's other rights. That is the responsibility that we take on board.

For over 20 years, since the Racial Discrimination Act was enacted by the Keating government, section 18C has embodied our nation's commitment to stopping racial vilification—a protection for our citizens and our society from the poisonous effects of hate speech. Over that the time, its sister provision, section 18D, has operated to protect freedom of speech. I live in a part of the world that, when you look at the ABS statistics, may not reflect multicultural Australia. That is because a lot of the people who live in greater Bendigo have lived there for many generations. Our Bendigo Chinese community has lived in Bendigo for five or six generations. When these debates come up, they are always the first to speak up about their experiences in Australia. Whilst they embrace and celebrate multicultural Australia, they know that, without the protection of freedom of religion, without the protection of laws like 18C, they would continue to face ongoing racism. When the movie Romper Stomper came out, the Chinese museum, the Golden Dragon Museum, was defaced with a swastika and 'White Power' was sprayed across the fences. This is unacceptable, and the community rallied behind the Chinese community and the Golden Dragon Museum.

You can imagine, with all of this in the mix, how our community gets frustrated by these debates. These debates, which the Liberals continue to bring on, are purely about an ideological agenda. Weakening safeguards against hate speech will not create a single job. It will not help pensioners pay their bills or put money into the pockets of workers desperate for extra hours or to see a lift in their wages. All this government is doing is continuing to drive a wedge into our community, continuing to say to people like the United Patriots Front that what they are doing is okay, when it is not.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since entering parliament, I have spoken quite a bit about my experience as an Australian of Egyptian heritage and as one of the first ever African Australians elected to this parliament, alongside my colleague here, the member for Cowan. As Australians, we are part of a wonderful, diverse multicultural society—the best one in the world, actually. The benefits of a multicultural society are something I have promoted with pride throughout my working life. Before coming a member of parliament, I was briefly a Victorian Multicultural Commissioner and an executive director of SBS, both jobs where the remit was really to promote understanding and acceptance of the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Australian people. But, more than that, it was about arguing that our multicultural model works so well because we do not just tolerate but embrace diversity. That is the strength of our diversity as a nation. So obviously multiculturalism is dear to my heart.

While this report is notionally on the matter of freedom of speech in Australia, the substance of the report refers to and makes recommendations on the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act, an important legislative function of a multicultural society. I turn to the debate around section 18C of the RDA and, most specifically, to address the suggestion by some that it should be repealed or severely limited. As many in this place will know, this section of the RDA renders unlawful conduct which is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people on the basis of their race. This is a civil prohibition only. Section 18C does not create an offence or a crime. No-one can be charged or prosecuted. No criminal punishments can be imposed on those who breach it. Lawsuits under 18C are brought privately by victims, not by the government. It is not enough that a given person subjectively feels offended. In the suggestion that someone has breached 18C, the court must consider whether the relevant conduct is likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate an ordinary and reasonable member of a racial group.

The Prime Minister has said changing the RDA is not on his agenda. We have heard this before. He has had an inclusive rhetoric and has talked about the importance of mutual respect—fine words. But, despite this, dismantling the RDA has remained an absolute obsession of the right wing of both the Liberal Party and the National Party—of the coalition. Meanwhile, Labor has consistently fought to protect the RDA from this ideological assault. The radical right-wing agenda displayed by some members of first the Abbott government and then the Turnbull government not only contradicts some of the rhetoric of the current Prime Minister but goes, I think, against the outcomes of this report, which has found no basis to recommend any changes to section 18C or 18D of the RDA. The recommendation of the committee's report that there be no change reflects the overwhelming weight of submissions from the public to this inquiry, which were strongly opposed to altering our longstanding protections against racial hate speech.

For over 20 years, section 18C has protected our community against racial hate speech, making it unlawful for a person to insult, humiliate, intimidate or offend someone because of their race or ethnic background. It was introduced as an amendment to the RDA of 1975 in 1994-95 under the Keating government, after several reports and long consultations, including some recommendations arising out of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. I note that section 18C survived 11 years of the Howard coalition government without any proposal for amendment or repeal.

Despite this, the current Prime Minister continues to face a serious split in his own party on the subject of section 18C and those who want—to use the words of Senator Brandis, the Attorney-General—'a right to be bigots'. How remarkable that the first law officer of this country could make such a statement. He is supposed to understand the law. Let me just explain: there is no positive right to be a bigot or a racist. It does not exist. There is a right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but with that comes responsibility—a responsibility not to exercise that freedom in a hateful and discriminatory way. He should know better. It is clear that Malcolm Turnbull is not in control of this agenda anymore.

I acknowledge that there are some opponents of 18C who have well intentioned motivations. The protection of freedom of expression is a legitimate consideration, as free speech is essential to our democracy. But I note that, as many other speakers have said, there are protections for members of the media and those truly acting in the public interest, provided by a subsequent section of the act, section 18D. Everyone forgets section 18D in this debate—or at least those on that side forget section 18D. Freedom of speech and freedom from hate speech are balanced in sections 18C and 18D, which have worked well, frankly, for decades. This balance has worked effectively. That is a fact which is rarely spoken about by those right-wingers who remain obsessed with watering down the RDA.

I spoke in my first speech in parliament about what it was like for a kid of a migrant family from Egypt growing up in Australia during the seventies and eighties. Racism was much more overt in those days and was considered acceptable—probably the norm by some. I experienced my fair share directly, as I am sure my colleague would have as well. Some of the things I was called are probably best left unsaid in this chamber; they were that bad. So the catalyst for the RDA and section 18C carries some emotional weight for me, as I know it does for many other Australians. Nobody deserves to endure abuse based on their race or ethnicity, and those who use racial slurs as a weapon in debate deserve to be—must be—held to account. That is what the RDA does; that is what section 18C does. And it has done it so well for decades.

Recommendations 4 to 22 in the report are a variety of proposals for adjustments in the complaints process, improvements to the processes for dealing with complaints, designed to ensure it continues to operate in a streamlined manner. They also promote education of the community around the evils of racism. These are sensible recommendations, so I commend the committee for its recommendations on those matters. I wholeheartedly support the recommendations, because whatever issues and inconsistencies have occurred in the complaints process—and there have been a few of them—have been the fuel that those seeking to unwind 18C have poured on the fire of this concocted debate. It has been, frankly, a concocted debate, and an ideological one.

It is important to note that the RDA is not designed to create litigation; indeed, only a tiny fraction of RDA complaints end up in court. RDA complaints are conciliated with the assistance of the Australian Human Rights Commission, and that conciliation allows victims of racism to work with perpetrators to resolve their dispute in a mutually agreeable manner. The process is confidential and need not involve lawyers. The conciliator does not 'decide' anything; the parties are guided towards resolution of the issue themselves. Outcomes can include an apology, change of policy, or compensation as worked out by the parties. The conciliation process works very well, but of course it can be improved, and the committee has made a number of sensible suggestions there.

I ask those in favour of winding back section 18C, or removing it in its entirety, exactly what form of racial hate speech they wish they could use now that section 18C currently prevents them from using. What is it that they want to say that is so important? I have seen racism and hate speech on display up close and personal. It is ugly, it is hateful, it is disturbing and it goes to the core of one's being as a human being. It brings individuals who use it down and brings the entire society down, and of course it affects the victims. It goes against the basic decency and fairness that should be the foremost factor in our relations with each other. While I have seen the worst of people in this respect, I have also seen the best. Australia is a successful multicultural nation, and most Australians embrace all the wonderful things that come from living in such a diverse population. If you do not believe me, I have to mention my electorate of Wills. It is a very diverse electorate. Sixty per cent of the population come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Prejudice and bigotry are things that Australians en masse abhor and reject. Section 18C of the RDA captures those values very effectively, and on that basis it is important that we maintain 18C in its current form. I welcome this report, as it represents a part victory against those who still think the greatest priority for the Australian government should be legislating to give a green light to racist hate speech in our country. This government is an abject failure in prioritising what is actually important to Australians. I know I speak for my Labor colleagues when I say that our party values multiculturalism and believes that protections against racial hate speech are worth keeping. I hope—it may be a forlorn hope—that the findings of this report will be used by the Prime Minister to kill off attempts to water down 18C and the vital protections it provides. I might say that the Prime Minister should probably heed the advice provided in recommendation 2 of the report, which says:

Recognising the profound impacts of serious forms of racism, the committee recommends that leaders of the Australian community and politicians exercise their freedom of speech to identify and condemn racially hateful and discriminatory speech where it occurs in public.

I hope he will also refer his Attorney-General to that recommendation.

We see no evidence that the Prime Minister will stand up for ethnic communities. If he does not, we will do what we have always done: we will stand up together. We will oppose hate speech and join our voices in a loud chorus to oppose these unnecessary and ideological changes, and we will do so because it makes Australia a better country.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How blessed are we to have these two people, the member for Wills and the member for Cowan, in the chamber? They are incredibly learned and, I would argue, a couple of Egypt's best exports to Australia. They are living evidence of how great a multicultural country can be.

I want to speak on the inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights into freedom of speech in Australia, specifically the operation of part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and related procedures under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986. I strongly support the committee's findings that there should be no change to the substantive law, no change to section 18C, and I urge the Turnbull government to drop this hateful nod to past behaviours that no longer serve our community.

No change to 18C is a victory for multicultural Australia. It is a victory for ethnic communities across our country. It is a victory for holding our laws and ourselves to a higher standard. No change to 18C is a victory for decency. The debate is being driven, and it has always been driven, by the far Right of the Liberal Party, who cannot actually tell us what racial hate speech they want to be able to free to speak. As the Leader of the Opposition said today: 'What humiliating vitriol do they think the Australian government should encourage?' If anything, we should be strengthening protections against hate speech, not weakening them.

Like many in this place, I received many form letters from campaigns, from individuals, both for and against 18C, and I also received a number of heartfelt letters that had been penned personally. I would like to read one of these, which was sent from a constituent of mine from the town of East Maitland in my electorate of Paterson. She wrote:

Ms Swanson, please ask your Labor colleagues to block the changes to 18C. Freedom of speech blanketed across the board has its responsibilities, just like any other kind of freedom. The changes are being called for to give licence to anyone who feels like exercising their right to vilify anyone they like. Haven't Aborigines, Muslims, people with a disability and women of this country had enough of that already? Can our laws give some protection to 'underdogs', or do the intellectuals who have never been discriminated against get away with their nastiness because it is legal? Why would a decent country legalise the right to exercise hatred against minorities? We are not allowed to exercise the 'freedom' to hit people with a baseball bat because we don't like them, so we must also not be allowed to damage people psychologically by demeaning them with words. The Labor Party is better than this.

I wrote back to my constituent that, yes indeed, the Labor Party is much better than this. I wrote that Labor is a staunch supporter of free speech, has always been and will always be, but we recognise that free speech is not, and never could be, absolute. Freedom of speech is a value and, like many democratic values, it must always be counterbalanced against competing values. Australia is a multicultural society, and section 18C was introduced to help ensure that the dignity of all our citizens is respected. Section 18C upholds the dignity of the individual, including the most disadvantaged in our society, and section 18D provides a very broad exemption from liability for reasonable and good-faith artistic expression, academic work, debate or public commentary. Section 18D ensures that freedom of speech is protected.

I agree with many, many people and groups in our community who have voiced their objection to this narrow-minded campaign. Racism has no place in modern Australia. The Turnbull government should be setting an example by standing up to bigotry, not placating the far Right of the Liberal Party. How will political debate—or any debate, for that matter—be improved by changing our laws to permit public statements that are likely to offend or insult people on the basis of their race? This is something from a bygone era that has no place here.

I speak in favour of the comments made by the Labor members of the committee—the member for Moreton, the member for Brand, Senator Carol Brown and Senator Claire Moore—and I thank them for their diligence. They make the point strongly in their conclusions:

The current well established and well supported provisions strike the appropriate balance between freedom of speech and freedom from racial abuse and should be retained and strongly supported by all Australians.

As we are seeing with the Brexit vote in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the US and the renewed popularity of Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Australia, racism will regularly raise its ugly head, especially whenever there is a marginalised or repressed minority. Even people who would otherwise lead decent lives can suddenly be caught up in racist hysteria, saying and doing atrocious things. I have worked in talkback radio; I can tell you that people have said the most atrocious things on the radio about other people. How can that ever be condoned? Social media has made it easier for hate speech to be instantly communicated and widely distributed, regardless of its accuracy or relevance.

As the Labor committee members wrote in this report:

Everyday Australians take their cues from the laws set by their Parliament.

People are not stupid, but they are persuadable, at times. Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act was introduced by the Racial Hatred Bill in 1995 by the Keating Labor government. It followed the handing down of three landmark reports by the Australian Law Reform Commission, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It also reinforced Australia's international obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The law is most definitely settled on this, both here—or it should be—and internationally.

The vast majority of people who gave evidence to the committee agreed that the law is settled. Only the most serious offending is captured by the provision. Complaints to the Australian Human Rights Commission under Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act make up only 3.8 per cent of the commission's work—just 3.8 per cent.

There were only 77 complaints last year, and fewer than four complaints every year proceed to court. We have seen a few high-profile cases being hijacked for personal or political agendas, and they have been presented as though they are evidence that the law does not work. It is just bunkum.

On the contrary, there is evidence that the law does work. A vast array of evidence put forward to the committee agreed that any change to 18C and 18D would cause uncertainty and would likely create even more litigation and confusion. More importantly, changing 18C would send a dangerous message. It would send a message that it is acceptable to offend and insult another person on the basis of their race. Surely, in Australia, that is not an acceptable message for a government to send its people. The executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Mr Hugh de Kretser, told the committee:

… the debate around section 18C over the past few years is so highly charged and politicised that any perceived weakening … of the law will also be seen by those who are against 18C as enabling the kind of racial vilification that we try to prohibit through this law.

That is such an important statement. What message does it send to everyday Australians if we give a tick to this? What message does it send to those who have to deal with the issue of racism regularly and persistently? That it is acceptable? That they just have to wear it for the sake of free speech? I think not. Racism causes harm. It causes isolation. There is no doubt about that. We heard it from witnesses and we have heard it from our own parliamentarians. We see it in our communities. It causes poor mental health and high levels of psychological stress, and that stress compounds when the behaviour is repeated. What kind of a message are we sending to Australians who experience persistent racism? That you must wear it? I think not.

The ninth annual Closing the gap report has been a stark reminder of just how badly we are failing our Indigenous Australians. We are nowhere near closing the gap in life expectancy or in any other measure of health and wellbeing, for that matter. Do we want to compound these very real problems faced by our first peoples by saying they must endure racism for the sake of free speech? I know we do not. Racism has an economic cost as well. The committee heard from the Diversity Council of Australia. They said that, when we create workplaces that are inclusive and that tap into diversity, they are more productive. That is so important.

I want to leave you with one thought. As a girl, I was taught that civility costs nothing. My father taught me that lesson. But I say to you that a change in this law may be very costly to our country in so many ways that we have really no idea what the impact would be. Section 18C is there for a reason, and we should keep it, for good reason.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spent many years thinking that I was not racist. I live in the most extraordinary community. I quite often do not notice anymore if a person is wearing a hijab or not. For many years, I really thought that I was not racist. Then about five years ago I was driving along, really tired, and a woman crossed the road in front of me and caused me to slow down. My visceral response was based on some appalling stereotypes that I did not think I held and I thought, 'Where did that come from? I don't even believe that. I don't even believe the response I just had to that person. Where did that come from?' Then I realised that this stuff gets in. It gets in when you walk past and you hear it, when it is on television or when you are raised in a country town where people talk about the 'yellow hordes', as they did where I was raised. It gets in. The great challenge and the great joy of living in a community like mine is that you actually get to unpack it. You get to see these strange assumptions that you have made and you begin to enjoy the great complexity of diversity in front of you. It is hard, but it is a real challenge and it actually brings me joy.

But I only have to do that when I look at someone else; I do not have to do that when I look in the mirror. I know that there are kids in my area who are told every day that they are less valuable. I have had fathers in my office, worried. After 10 minutes of demonstrating their Australianness—I have never had to demonstrate mine, but they felt this need to demonstrate their Australianness in spite of my claims that they did not need to—they would then get to the point. They were worried about their five- and six-year-old sons and what poison was getting in because of this debate, and about how they would manage to raise those sons without that poison affecting their capacity to live the lives they should live. We in this place have an obligation to set laws that protect people from the poison that pours on them through racism and bigotry and that affects their capacity to live the life that they should live. That is our job in this place. It is quite clear that I do not believe that we have rights to be bigots. I clearly do not believe the attacks on the Racial Discrimination Act from the other side—in fact, quite the opposite. I think we have an obligation to make the laws that protect people from that poison as strong as we possibly can.

I want to explain this to people. There are very few people in my electorate who are concerned about the Racial Discrimination Act. I have had three people write to me, asking for us to support radical change to the Racial Discrimination Act, and many, many others who want it to stay as it is have written to me. But I am going to address the concerns of those who are worried about freedom of speech and how 18C might impact on that. I am going to start by explaining where it actually came from. The Racial Discrimination Act is actually about 40 years old, but 18C, and 18D, was introduced 20 years ago in response to a number of reports on racial violence—that was what was going on, racial violence—including the National Inquiry into Racial Violence, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Law Reform Commission's report called Multiculturalism and the law and international treaty obligations, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Those of us who were younger in those days, who were in schools and universities, will remember some of the racial language that was used to describe people who looked different or came from a different part of the world. We remember that. So that is when it was introduced.

Since it was introduced, there have been 2,000 complaints—that is about 100 each year. Over that 20 years, 100 of those have ended up in court—that is about five a year. This is not something that has caused a massive attack on people's ability to speak freely; these are actually really small numbers. I would like to find another law where the number of cases that actually ended up in court was that small—100, that is five per year over 20 years. In 2013-14 there was a bit of a spike, with 116 cases. There were still only five that went to court, but there were 116 cases, and it dropped last year down to 77 cases, with three of those ending up in court. So this is not a massive landslide. For the people who think this is new, that it is growing and that it is escalating and becoming a massive problem, the numbers are actually very small and they are fairly consistent. There is actually good reason for that. The people who want us to be able to say whatever we like, whenever we like, when it comes to race—but not when it comes to business, older people or gender; just when it comes to race—only ever talk about 18C. And 18C says what you cannot say. But 18D is the one that protects freedom of speech.

18D is quite cleverly drafted. It says section 18C 'does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith' in the course of what might be summarised as public debate or fair comment, including artistic expressions. This means that one is free to give expression to racist ideas, including those that offend, if it falls within 18D's fairly broad definitions of reasonable speech. So in a public debate, if you make a point about policy or if you are just ignorant but say it in good faith, you are off the hook. This is why the vast majority of cases that are brought to the Human Rights Commission are resolved without going to court.

I want to read to you one that was resolved. It did not go to court. I want people to think about whether or not this is okay. This is a complaint under 18C. It says:

The complainant who is Hindu, of Indian ethnic origin and over 50 years of age was employed by the respondent mining company as an engineer. He claimed managers and supervisors:

- referred to him as an 'Indian bastard' and told him ‘Indians are fools and useless’, ‘you’re the next curry muncher on the list’ and ‘Indian c**ts can’t work for sh*t’;

- called him a ‘bloody Hindu’, asked him why Hindus 'pray to cows instead of eating them', said Hindus are ‘idiots’ and ‘rogues’ and told him to ‘go and eat beef’;

- told him ‘culturally we are a young organisation of an average age of 28 years old, except you old man’, called him a ‘bloody old fellow’;

- did not issue him with required work-related equipment such as a computer, a mobile phone and a licence to drive

And it goes on.

That was one case. Is that what we are saying is okay? Do the people who think we should wipe out 18C and 18D think that is okay? This man was in a workplace. There are probably other forms—bullying. Somehow bullying is not okay, but it is if it is about race. Bullying is not okay but if it is racial then go for it. This man was in a workplace. If this man is your neighbour and when you walk out in your backyard with your six-year-old child this is what you get, is that okay? If you walk down to the shops and this is what you get, is that okay? Is this what they mean by, 'You have a right to be a bigot'?

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me. I am sure you will have your chance. There are many other cases that are just like that. And you can read them all. You can read the cases, the summaries of them, that have gone before the Human Rights Commission. So when someone says you have a right to be a bigot I assume what they are saying is that this is okay, that it is okay for a person to be subject to that when they go shopping, when they go out in their backyard or when they get on a train. I can assure you it happens in our communities. We all know people who tell us of abuse they have received because they look different, they come from another part of the world, they have an accent that makes them stand out and they deal with this kind of abuse on a regular basis. It affects lives. And we in this place have an obligation to protect people from this kind of abuse.

The recommendations the committee has put forward are quite good. We could argue the detail of some of them but, essentially, what the committee has said is that there are not the grounds for changes to 18C and 18D but there are grounds to change the process, even though the number that end up in court are quite small.

Mr Morris, the lawyer who represented the QUT students, said these changes would do the job. They would level the playing field between both sides of the argument and they would reduce vexatious complaints. I would point out too that the Human Rights Commission has been asking for changes in the process for quite some time, so they are quite comfortable as well with improving the process to remove vexatious claims.

I will state it again: 2,000 complaints. That is about 100 a year. Five per year end up in court and there were three last year. This is not a massive landslide and we should protect people's rights to be protected from poison.

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report presented yesterday makes zero recommendations to change section 18C. It throws the ball back into the Prime Minister's court, probably because the ultraconservatives opposite want to make his life as difficult as possible. There is a very strong political element to this.

I was born at a time in the shadows of the Menzies government—I know that sounds like a long time ago—and I remember very much the sayings around at that time, which were presented as very okay: 'reds under the beds' and 'the yellow peril coming down from the north'. That was the sort of language that was used back then. Malcolm Turnbull said changes to section 18C were not on the agenda. I guess this means that he does not have any control of that anymore. The collective determination and the will of those opposite were hell bent on watering down the Racial Discrimination Act, but they could not even create a report that made a recommendation about it—that is how baseless their argument is.

In Barton, nearly 50 per cent of the community were born overseas or have a parent who was. The view in Barton is clear: hate speech should not be tolerated. In Hurstville, the Chinese community just want to live free of harassment, as do the Arab community in Bexley, the Macedonian community and the Greek community—and the list goes on. They all just want to get on with their lives. But they do want to know one thing: what exactly is it that those opposite think they cannot say now that they would want to say if 18C and 18D were removed? What is it that you think you will need to say then that you cannot say now? I think that is absolutely the question. We all have parliamentary privilege in this place, and I am urging you to say exactly what it is that offends, intimidates or insults on the basis of race. Say it in this place, and let the community decide for itself whether your concerns are valid.

Section 18C does not need to be changed. Those opposite are happy to completely ignore section 18D of the act, which is incredibly convenient, but previous speakers have made it very clear that that is the fail-safe in the act. Section 18D provides protections for cartoonists and for speech which is made in good faith. It protects free speech, which makes even more ludicrous the argument about 18C.

I want to ask all of the supposed free speech advocates on the other side: where are their voices on moves by their government to silence the free speech of critics of their own government on Centrelink robo-debt? And what about the surveillance of journalists and their sources? What about the refusal to comment on on-water matters? The fact is this is hypocrisy of the worst sort. They believe in the right to free speech when it suits them and on their terms. I have been the subject of racial abuse before; it was not pleasant. I see no reason to open the floodgates to that kind of talk. There simply is not any justification for it.

The whole debate is a distraction created by the incredibly out-of-touch ultraconservatives opposite. Let me come to those ultraconservatives: the ideologues, the malcontents. The same group arguing about 18C are the same group who do not want equality in marriage and the same group who will run—and they have told me this already—a no case for constitutional recognition of First Peoples. Why is it that same group of people seem to coalesce around these issues? This is why I am saying it is political. It is about destabilising the present Prime Minister and it is about running a right-wing agenda that is a complete distraction to the real issues and the real matters that affect the daily lives of people. What is it—as I said—that people cannot say now that they think they will be able to say if those protections are removed? It is division and it is politically motivated.

A complaint has been made about me to the commission under section 18C by several people. The complaint was made by several men. They took offence and said that I was racially motivated in saying that it seemed to me that most of the people—I think I was quite accurate, actually—who seemed to be running the case for changes to the Racial Discrimination Act are white males of a certain age. That, apparently, was enough for a number of those offended to take that complaint to the commission. Of course, it was vexatious and it was thrown out very quickly.

No-one should think that racism is not a real issue in this country. I will go to two issues to say that the spectre of racism rises up in a spectacular way. And as previous speakers have said, quite often I think people probably wonder what it was all about when the furore settles.

I will take people back to 2005 in Cronulla. That was an issue that got international attention . Essentially, it was an issue about people of the Muslim faith and people from the area that I represented at the time, Canterbury, wanting to swim at Cronulla Beach. The three days of ugliness that we saw in Sydney was something that I hope we never see again in this country. There was the usurping of the Australian flag and, in particular, of the Southern Cross symbol, which I think is a very important symbol for all of us in Australia. It has somehow been taken by those who committed those terrible acts in those days of the Cronulla riots.

Then we can think about the Australian Football League and the racism that Adam Goodes was subjected to in 2015. I know Adam personally; I am involved in his foundation as a supporter. Adam is a good man. It was not only what we saw and the reaction that we saw—and not only by the media—but also the lack of response by certain institutions that was just a reflection of just how deeply ingrained racism is in some parts of this country.

But the Racial Discrimination Act has served us well over a very long period of time. As the member for Parramatta said, 18C, and I think 18D—but certainly 18C—has been there for 20 years. I must point out to those on the other side—the malcontents—that it came in when John Howard was the Prime Minister.

We are an amazing country, and this debate belittles us all as Australians. It belittles us and it is an embarrassing discussion. I know very well, as do other people—particularly the member for Lingiari, who is sitting here beside me, and also the members for Hunter and for Longman—that the ebb of politics is very much that: it goes in and it comes out. It moves to the right, it moves to the left and it sits in the centre. This race to the right is ugly, it is demeaning and it is also lacking in any transparency. It lacks any transparency at all. What decency does is trumps all of those values. I suppose that 'values' is the word!

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Actually, it is probably the correct word to use in this debate!

Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the real way! It overcomes all of those ebbs and flows. That is what this side of the House will stand for very firmly. It was made clear by our leader in the House of Representatives today, it has been made clear by our shadow Attorney-General and by many other speakers who have been involved in this for a very long time. It has been made clear by all the speakers from the Labor Party on this side of the House.

Do not dress this up for anything other than a cynical, political grab for the right—a destabilisation and an ideological push from the malcontents and a small part of the Liberal Party.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I commend the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights for its report. Whilst I note that it was effectively silent on sections 18C and 18D of the act, not making a recommendation was a smart thing. I do not believe there is really any appetite in this parliament for us to take on that issue, and we should not.

I was first elected to this place 30 years ago in July. Immediately prior to becoming a member of parliament I was employed to work for the now senator Patrick Dodson at the Central Land Council in Alice Springs. Prior to that, I worked with a great Australian, Dr HC (Nugget) Coombs, in the Central Desert. I am a bloke from Narrabundah. I was brought up here in Canberra. These jobs took me into the Northern Territory. With Nugget, I was employed to work with Pitjantjatjara people in the Central Desert in a very small community which in those days was roughly 12 hours on a dirt road southwest of Alice Springs in South Australia—in the corner of South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Because of the nature of communications in the bush in those days, there no smart phones—no phones to speak of at all. You would probably remember those days. The Royal Flying Doctor's sked was the only way you could communicate. You had to travel to see people. Almost always when I was travelling around the bush, although I had learnt Pitjantjatjara as a precursor to starting this work, I used to travel with an Aboriginal person.

This particular week we left Alice Springs together, drove out into the bush and were away for three or four days. Neither of us showered and we slept rough in the swag under the stars. It was just fantastic, with great company, many laughs and a lot of stories. On driving back we called into a roadhouse—I will not mention the roadhouse—to get breakfast. The two of us walked in—both as scruffy as one another, both unclean—and the people in this particular roadhouse refused to serve my Aboriginal friend. There was no difference between us, just the colour of our skin. So of course we immediately left.

A little while later, when I was working for the Central Land Council, I had a rather odd situation emerge. We went to the land council meeting at Kalkarindji, as I recall. It was a large meeting. I was driving back with a good friend of mine, a land council lawyer, and we stopped at a roadhouse to get a feed. The roadhouse operator refused to feed us, refused to serve us, because we worked for the land council—perverse, really perverse. That tells a story really about the nature of racism that has existed in parts of our country for far too long.

In the early eighties there was a land claim, with Nitmiluk National Park being talked about. I was working as a schoolteacher. In Katherine there was a claim over the Katherine Gorge, a Nitmiluk claim. There was a campaign of 'rights for whites'. I do not know whether you remember those days, but I remember them vividly, with all sorts of pejorative, insulting terms being used about Aboriginal people and their rights to land. You will recall the discussions in the mid-eighties—'83 to '84—around national land rights and the maps which were shown in Western Australia by, of all people, Brian Burke about blackfellas 'claiming your land'—pure racism. And then—

An honourable member: Bucketloads of extinguishment.

'Bucketloads of extinguishment' by the then Deputy Prime Minister of this country, Tim Fischer, after the Native Title Act was passed and after the Wik claim. That was language which was replete in this parliament. We have come a long way since, thankfully. Those days are past us. But it is little wonder people want the protections of 18C and 18D. Why should they not want those protections? This still exists. People with hate in their hearts are prepared to insult and demean because of race. It is not only Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islander people; it could be a Chinese person, someone from South-East Asia or someone from Africa. We know it happens, and somehow or other the rights of those people to say what they like to whom they like about what they like need to be protected. I do not think so.

We live in a wonderful country. We are proud of our multiculturalism. There have been many struggles over the years to combat the differences that have been perpetrated and swelled up as a result of people getting rights—in the first instance, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We should applaud that. It was less than a century ago that we had the Coniston massacre. We cannot justify these things, just as we cannot justify hate speech.

It is true that I think that the committee picks up in a very good way recommendations to change the way in which complaints are dealt with by the Human Rights Commission, and it proposes procedural changes and protections which will mean vexatious claims just get thrown out the door. It will make people justify what they are doing. It provides the capacity that, if a lawyer makes a claim, they are going to be held accountable under these recommendations. So these recommendations are good, and the committee ought to be congratulated for them.

Recommendation 2 of the committee says:

Recognising the profound impacts of serious forms of racism, the committee recommends that leaders of the Australian community and politicians exercise their freedom of speech to identify and condemn racially hateful and discriminatory speech where it occurs in public.

And we should. We have a responsibility to call it out, and we should. We should none of us take a backward step when we see someone being racially vilified or attacked in public or in the street because of the colour of their skin, because of their religion, because they are male, because they are female or because they might be gay. We cannot tolerate it, and we should not.

I suspect the Prime Minister, in his heart of hearts, does not want to go anywhere near changing this act, and I would say to him: don't, because if you do you will open a Pandora's box and you will not be able to put the lid back on. You will provide succour to some of the most virulent grubs in the country, and we should not do that. I respect the right of members of parliament to have different points of view and to articulate those points of view in this parliament, but I respectfully say to them: think very, very hard about going down the course of trying to change 18C.

As we know, 18D sets out the parameters within which section 18C functions and overrides 18C any time it applies, providing that 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith in the course of what might be summarised as public debate or fair comment, including artistic expression. That is a good protection and we should have it. We should have the right to say things strongly, absolutely. But there is no room for hate speech or vilification.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.