Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. In doing so, I wish to acknowledge Senator Reynolds was a member of the human rights committee that inquired into, particularly, 18C and 18D. Having said that, she would be well aware that there was no recommendation from that committee report that suggested that there should be a change to 18C. She would know that. She was a part of the committee inquiring into the report.

Senator Reynolds also mentioned that people are not talking about 18C. Her own colleague Mr Barnaby Joyce has indicated, to his colleagues and to the wider community, that people are not going up to him and saying, 'You have to do something about 18C.' What Senator Reynolds says to us here today is that, if you ask a different question, if you ask a question about freedom of speech, you will get a different response. And I am sure you would. Mr Joyce is not backwards in coming forwards. I think everyone in Australia would probably agree with that. But if you ask the question: 'Do you believe that we need protections to protect people from race hate?' I believe that, overwhelmingly, Australians would say yes, because this is not a racist country, and that is not what we are saying here. We are saying that the protections are in the act already. We are saying that 18C—and 18D, which provides the exemptions; that was glossed over by Senator Reynolds—is the balance that we need. That is what the Labor Party says. And of course the inquiry, as I have already indicated, found no basis to make this change.

What is even more galling is that the announcement of these changes was made on Harmony Day. I mean, seriously! Give me a break! Couldn't you have done something a bit better than that? We waited over a year to get a response to the inquiry into the violence, abuse and neglect against people with disability. And you responded within days to the inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act—and on Harmony Day. The Prime Minister really should be ashamed.

This bill is about the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, selling his soul to keep his job. It is about the Prime Minister being forced into a position where he now says to the Australian people that racist hate speech is okay, simply to satisfy ideologues in his own party and his accomplices in One Nation. It is a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.

As has been repeatedly stated by senior government frontbenchers, including, as I have already indicated, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Joyce, and the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Senator Fierravanti-Wells, the changes in this bill are not in any way a priority for Australians, and will in fact hurt the government in ethnic communities. So where is the priority? The priority is in their own caucus room, and that is no way to run a government.

The bill changes the wording of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by removing the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' and replacing them with the word 'harass'. There is no basis for this change, no logical reason why this should be done. This is an act that has served us well for over 40 years. It is one of the greatest gifts bestowed upon the Australian people by the Whitlam Labor government. It has stood the test of time as a hallmark of the values we, as a multicultural society, hold. In this country, we do not believe that people should be offended, insulted or humiliated simply on the basis of their racial or ethnic background. That is plainly wrong. Yet that is entirely the consequence of what this bill authorises.

The bill also creates a new objective standard for determining a breach of section 18C that does not allow courts to take into account the perspectives of minority groups. This is unbelievable—completely unbelievable. This is a deliberate weakening of protections against racial hate speech and racial discrimination. It is an absolute disgrace. This amendment is in fact a profound statement of what this government really stands for—what its modus operandi is.

The Senate must stand as the last line of defence from a government deliberately intent on inflicting harm on Australians from a minority background. Labor won the fight to protect Australia's laws against racial discrimination in 2014 and we will do it again. Of course this government has repeatedly failed to answer the simple question—and, in fact, I have heard Senator McKim ask this simple question: just what does the government want Australians to be able to say that they cannot say already under the existing law? Despite the government's decision not to answer this question, we know the answer. We know the answer because friend of the hard right in the Liberal Party—no friend of Mr Turnbull's—Mr Andrew Bolt, told us. Andrew Bolt has told us the truth—a truth that the Prime Minister and his government have tried not to mention: that the proposed changes to section 18C will allow more racial hate speech in Australia. According to Mr Bolt, a person will have to be insulted on the basis of their race five times before they could fall under the government's definition of 'harassment'—five times! Is this the acceptable standard that the government really wants to set? Apparently so. Labor believes that to be harassed just once on the grounds of race is not good enough, that to be offended, insulted, intimidated or humiliated just once is not good enough.

There can be no defence for racist hate speech. The Australian people agree. Just today we have seen polling in the Fairfax papers to back this up. The Fairfax Ipsos poll has found that an overwhelming majority of Australians oppose legalising speech that offends, insults or humiliates on the basis of race. The poll of about 1,400 voters shows that 78 per cent of Australians believe it should be unlawful to offend, insult or humiliate someone on the

basis of their race. Even 76 per cent of respondents who intend to vote for the coalition said they support retaining the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' in the Racial Discrimination Act.

We know the number of Australians who say they intend to vote for the coalition is dwindling. It is no wonder when the government is so intent on ignoring the advice of their own ministers in pursuit of wacky ideological changes that are simply not on the radar of most Australians. Yet for some Australians these changes will have a deeply profound impact, and I want government senators to think about this. I want to quote from Australian of the Year finalist Mr Deng Adut from the page 1 story in today's Sydney Morning Herald. I think this is a particularly pertinent passage:

Australian of the Year finalist Deng Adut, a former South Sudanese child soldier who arrived in Australia as a refugee, said he was deeply concerned by the government's proposals.

'It's outrageous the Senate is thinking about doing this,' Mr Adut told Fairfax Media.

'This will be giving a free ticket to racism and telling the whole world we don't care about minorities.'

He said he did not believe Coalition MPs understood how damaging racist speech could be.

He said:

'In Australia politicians live very comfortable lives—they aren't the ones on the receiving end'—

of racism.

'Racism reduces you to a lesser being and that's what this legislation is about.'

'It's psychological pain, psychological injury—it holds people down.'

I ask government senators to let that sink in and to have a think about those words. 'It holds people down. It's psychological pain. It's psychological injury.' That is the legacy that Mr Turnbull wants to leave from his time in office as Prime Minister: racist hate speech. That is the gift that Mr Turnbull wants to give to Australians.

How can this government seriously condone what they are doing to our minority communities with this amendment? Really, it is deeply disturbing. Legal experts have agreed that the government's changes to 18C will significantly weaken the existing protections against racist hate speech. We know that ethnic and legal groups, including the Human Rights Commission, the Law Council of Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, have raised serious concerns over this bill. The Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, can make ludicrous and erroneous references to free speech and Voltaire all he wants, but the fact is that this bill has nothing to do with political correctness. It has everything to do with deliberately targeting and singling out minority ethnic communities to make them feel less safe in their home, in their country. It is detrimental to individuals and to communities.

With this bill, this government is directly promoting racial hate speech in Australia. The Attorney and the Prime Minister cannot crab walk away from this damning and inconvenient truth. Let us not forget that, as I said earlier, the government chose to announce these changes on Harmony Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Well, there is a sickening twist if ever there was one. As they walk the tightrope of views in their own shattered and divided party room, the government have sought to bring this bill on without a proper debate. They have limited to just a few days the time available for a Senate inquiry. They deliberately excluded First Australians—unbelievable but true—through the Aboriginal Legal Service, from making adequate representations to that inquiry. A government dominated Senate inquiry did not call any Indigenous witnesses. Some respect for our First Australians shown there! For the government to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians from having a say on legislation that directly affects their ability not to suffer racist abuse in their own country is an absolute disgrace.

And isn't it interesting, Mr Acting Deputy President, that the government have chosen to introduce this bill into the Senate rather than into the other place. It is because the government believe this bill will be voted down in this place. It is all designed to stop them suffering an embarrassing and humiliating defeat on the floor of the other place, where they cannot be confident their own members will support their position. That is how deeply divided the mob over there are.

This bill has pitted members representing diverse communities against members and senators with an ideological obsession with section 18C. It is entirely unwarranted and entirely unfounded. The court has already interpreted section 18C so that it only applies to 'profound and serious effects, not to be likened to mere slights'. The discussion within the government on this made-up issue of free speech and political correctness continues to ignore completely the subsequent section in the act, section 18D, which provides relevant exemptions. Section 18D states:

Section 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith:

(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; or

(c)   in making or publishing:

(i)   a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest; or

(ii)   a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment.

At the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee hearing held on Friday, Mr Harry Oppermann, vice-chair of the Canberra Interfaith Forum, said the current provisions of 18D would have excluded the late cartoonist Bill Leak from any prosecution at all. I quote now from the Guardian Australia article titled 'Ethnic minority and legal groups concerned over Racial Discrimination Act changes', published on Friday, 24 March:

Oppermann said not a single person of his mother’s family, his father's family or their circle of friends survived the Holocaust.

'Both of my families were murdered in their entirety,' he told [Liberal senator] Fawcett.

'I know of no ethnic cleansing, massacre or genocide which was ever prevented by good speech.'

There is a broad coalition of opposition to this amendment bill from ethnic and religious minorities across Australia, the people who will be most affected by this change. We should heed their call, not the siren songs of free speech and anti political correctness emanating from the Institute of Public Affairs, One Nation and half the Liberal party room. Frankly, the Prime Minister too should have heeded their calls. He should be standing with our diverse and multicultural communities. Instead, he has turned his back on them. He has decided to side with One Nation and their leader, Senator Hanson. They have morphed into the one. They are one in the same: One Nation and the Liberal Party; the Prime Minister and Senator Hanson. Well, Labor will not abandon fundamental Australian values. We will not abandon the bedrock principles of the society we have built, where we encourage and respect diversity. We will stand with multicultural communities. We will stand with persecuted minorities. Labor will not support changes to the Racial Discrimination Act deliberately designed to make life harder for Australians from minority backgrounds.

This bill also makes a number of changes to the complaints-handling processes of the Australian Human Rights Commission. A number of these changes have been poorly drafted and rushed through without adequate consultation. That goes to part of the reason that Labor tried, earlier today, to allow more time to deal with this matter by moving a suspension of standing orders. It is disappointing that that motion was voted down, because the proposed changes put forward by the government would result in additional red tape, additional delay and added costs for parties to complaints. They will impede access to justice.

Amendments to this bill must be made to ensure that the government's poorly conceived changes to the complaints-handling procedures do not create new problems. That is why these issues need to be considered properly and in an orderly manner, not in a rushed manner designed to stem the bleeding from a politically wounded Prime Minister.

The Senate should draw to a close this act, draw to a close this tawdry debate, end the hand-wringing over section 18C and vote to protect the right of Australians to freedom— (Time expired)