Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the contained in the Racial Discrimination Amendment Bill 2014. I do not think any senator here holds the view that these issues do not warrant very careful consideration. As we have said in an earlier debate on these matters, the provisions have been in place for around 20 years. I am aware even before entering political life of some of the debate about whether the balance was quite right. So, Senator Bernardi, in part I take exception at the suggestion that the debate here is the tyranny of political correctness, because I hold a view contrary to yours and I support the Labor Party's position that we should not attempt to weaken the provisions as they currently apply.

There is not a tyranny of political correctness occurring at the moment. Instead, we have a situation where, fortunately, the Attorney-General at the Press Club yesterday indicated a somewhat new perspective on these issues, which I think is important to highlight. He told the Press Club yesterday that, in the face of a rising risk of terrorism, there could be no greater error than for Australians to demonise our fellow Islamic citizens. While I accept that there is a genuine debate about these issues, unfortunately, at this time, there are those who are happy to use this debate as a means of fanning prejudice—and that is something we must not do.

As I said, in the past I have weighed these issues and concluded well in the past that we do indeed have the balance fairly right. I am a Victorian senator. I live in Melbourne. These issues have, as I said, flared in the past and we have addressed them. We have considered whether we have the balance right, and in my home and in my community I believe there is general acceptance of that. More recently, with the draft circulated by the Attorney-General, broader community debate concerned these issues, and that community debate, I believe, demonstrated well beyond the Melbourne community that there is a consensus that the current balance is correct. While I appreciate there are a handful of senators in this place wanting to redress these issues again, I take exception at the suggestion from Senator Bernardi that what we are dealing with is a tyranny of political correctness, because it is just not the case.

I will come in a moment to why it would be better to see some greater leadership in how we deal with some of these issues; but, before I do, I want to address one other issue raised by Senator Bernardi in his contribution, because he suggests to us that just removing 'taking offence; is no big deal, that it is not an issue. I want to share with you an anecdote—gosh! it is almost 30 years old now—about taking offence. In my youth it highlighted to me that sometimes, indeed, the law is an ass. I was on my way to work one morning, taking a train in inner Melbourne, and there was a flasher near the station. I thought, 'That's a bit concerning.' I was not particularly offended by it, but I was aware that there had been reported rapes in the vicinity of that station. So I took time out that day to attend the police at Flinders Street Station, and I was astounded to hear from the police that they were not prepared to take a statement from me about this incident unless I was prepared to say 'I was offended'. So please do not pretend that simply removing 'taking offence' is insignificant in legal terms, as Senator Bernardi did, because it is not. The notion of taking offence moves through our laws in so many interesting ways and, on that occasion, it demonstrated to me that sometimes our law is an ass. We could not address personal safety and security issues for women without me being prepared to say 'I had taken offence'. That is simply bizarre.

So I thought that on this occasion I would go and look at some of the applications—perhaps those that are bit less notorious than the Andrew Bolt incident—and bring to the Senate's attention some of the uses of the provisions as they currently stand.

Before I do so, I will again reiterate the Labor Party's position: we indeed introduced section 18C and we will fight to retain it. We, along with many other Australians, have campaigned in the streets to protect it and we will vote in this parliament to oppose any attempt to weaken the vital protections it contains against the scourge of racist hate speech.

Section 18C is a critical element of Australia's antidiscrimination framework, which has served our country well for 20 years. It strengthens the rich fabric of Australia's successful multicultural community. Section 18C appropriately balances freedom of speech with the right of all Australians to live in dignity, free from bigotry and the destructive, divisive effects of racially-motivated hate speech. This is the Labor Party's position, and we are proud of it. As I mentioned, coming from Melbourne, I am particularly proud of the balance that we are able to achieve amongst a very vibrant, diverse community. As I said before, we have never wavered on these provisions and we will not. Almost two decades of experience has convincingly demonstrated that this is the right policy for Australia, and the community response to the draft highlights that further.

As we have seen, the coalition's position, though, is much less clear. Indeed, numerous senators have co-sponsored this bill, and it is now before us. It is been reported, though, that as many as 10 coalition senators wished to add their names to this bill, only to be overruled by the Prime Minister's office. So perhaps I should highlight that this is perhaps more than the handful that I first indicated.

But we in the Labor Party believe that Australia's political leaders ought to focus their energies on bringing people together and protecting social cohesion that underpins our proud and successful multicultural community. It is disappointing that some voices from within the coalition seem to feel that their energies are better directed at prosecuting an agenda of intolerance, bigotry, fear and hatred. I am sure that is not all senators who are involved in supporting this bill. I am sure that for some they have not yet worked through the issues I have in the past in assessing whether we have the balance right. But then, equally, at this point in time they fall easily into the trap, as highlighted by Peter Hartcher today in TheSydney Morning Herald, of working with those who really are only interested in fanning prejudice. And that is an association that I would encourage senators to think carefully about. If coalition senators are going to vote in favour of this bill they should be honest with the Australian people about what they are actually voting for. The contribution from Senator Bernardi simply referring to 'a limited view' about what the impact of taking offence out of the provisions would be and glib comments about the 'tyranny of political correctness' does not indeed do that.

Section 18C has been used to combat the vilest forms of hate speech; behaviour which the Labor Party believes has no place, not only in Australian society but in any civilised society. In the case of Jones v Toben, section 18C was used to combat infamous Holocaust denier, Fredrick Toben, who sickeningly claimed that there is serious doubt about the Holocaust actually occurring. He also claimed that it is unlikely that there were homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, that Jewish people who are offended by and challenge Holocaust denial are of limited intelligence, and that some Jewish people, for financial gain, exaggerated the number of Jews murdered during World War II and the circumstances in which they were murdered.

The Labor Party does not believe that this sickening attack has any place in Australian society. If coalition senators want to vote to support Fredrick Toben and his ilk, then the Australian people will judge them accordingly. It is easy to say that we should out these sorts of views and their exposure will diminish them, but I think that is far less than clear.

In the case of Hobart Hebrew Congregation v Scully, a Hobart woman was restrained from distributing hate mail in letterboxes and at a public market which described Jewish people as 'leeches' who were involved in 'destroying white society' and using 'predatory tactics'.

In the case of Campbell v Kirstenfeldt, a Perth man was found to have breached section 18C by repeatedly calling his neighbour, an Indigenous woman, deeply offensive racists names and telling her to go 'back to the scrub where you belong'. The abuse was often made in the presence of Campbell's family and friends.

We, in the Labor Party, say that this sort of behaviour has no place in Australia. Senators who vote for this bill are compromising the strong standards that we currently have that have been demonstrated by the outcomes of these cases under section 18C. But they are also contributing to a broader concerning issue. In his address to the Press Club yesterday, Senator Brandis has perhaps moved away from the notion that you have a right to be a bigot. I hope he has. I hope he has seen the error in what was hopefully a glib question time expression from the comments he indicated yesterday. I do not believe there is a right to be a bigot and I would be interested to see the vote in this chamber on the actual question.

As I indicated previously, I have weighed up these issues in the past and I do believe that the current provisions have the balance right. Now that I have heard some of the argument about how innocuous it would be to remove the notion of taking offence, I will revisit this and I will have another look at that point. As I highlighted from my experience, the notion of offence is deep within the law's consideration of many matters and it is, I think, a bit deceptive to suggest that simply removing the taking of offence will not compromise the standards as they currently exist.

I want to conclude on one point and that is a point I alluded to earlier about leadership. Where is the political leadership on some of these issues? I was taken back to this point when I read The Sydney Morning Herald today and Peter Hartcher makes the point that Tony Abbott has implicitly endorsed, he says:

their dirty, divisive, dogwhistle politics to appease them—

referring to two government members' plans around, on this occasion, the issue of wearing a burqa in Parliament House. Peter Hartcher says:

Instead of winking at their intolerance, a real leader would have shut them down in a moment of crisis.

But he has not. He has not been able to shut them down. A real leader would be in that position. Instead, what we have seen from our current leader in relation to section 18 C was the fanning of this issue in the lead-up to the last election. It was deliberately fanned. Looking at the Bolt case, the Prime Minister was more concerned about Andrew Bolt than about those who felt they had been vilified.

The coalition indicated that in government they would deal with this issue, and the Attorney-General distributed the draft paper—and I think Senator Bernardi, in commending Senator Day on the current provisions in this bill, seemed to imply that even he accepted the draft paper went too far. And it did. As I said before, the community accepted that they went too far. This was not my narrow but somewhat proud experience of community life in Melbourne; this was a broad, cross-Australian cry that, in response to the Andrew Bolt case, this government on this issue was going too far.

So, Senator Day, I will be interested in looking at the broader implications of removing 'offend', because I am convinced it is nowhere near as simple as Senator Bernardi has suggested. But at the same time I decry the lack of genuine leadership in this area. I believe that your intentions are genuine but, over the last 18 months, I have seen this issue used solely to fan prejudice—to fan prejudice to the extent that we saw in this place, in question time, the Attorney of all people say, 'People have a right to be bigots.' And we saw the outcry over that. Senator Day, I accept that there are genuine concerns about how these provisions have operated. I have watched them over the years, I have weighed them and I have assessed that we have generally got the balance right. I have not accepted reasonably glib contributions about how insignificant the removal of 'offend' would be and I am happy to look at those issues. However, my message to all of us is: be very careful; do not allow us to be used to fan prejudice here in Australia.

As I said, I decry the lack of leadership from our Prime Minister on this issue. He should shut down debates which will only fan prejudice, particularly as we look at issues around national security legislation. He should have shown stronger leadership earlier. He should not have fanned this debate. This should not have been an issue he campaigned on before the last election which has led to the situation where we were told we have 'a right to be bigots'. I hope to hear other senators in this debate disassociate themselves from that view. I do not believe any member of this Senate genuinely believes that here in Australia we have a right to be bigots.

I accept that the balance of these provisions are something that it is appropriate for us to consider, but it is not a new debate. It is not something that has not been considered over the years and, in my view and in the Labor Party's view, we do indeed have that balance right. The Prime Minister should be exercising more leadership to promote social cohesion and fairness and the Australian way of life, rather than allowing coalition senators to join here and fan the prejudice— (Time expired)