Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Rennick. Obviously, I'm not going to be offering a legal opinion on whether the actions of an individual person breach Australian laws. What we're here to do is to set those laws and let the courts then interpret them. But, as I was saying, there have always been restrictions on freedom of speech in our country—defamation, contempt of court, and of course a really important one that has been there for quite a long time, which is section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It wasn't that long ago that people like Senator Paterson and Senator Cash were trying to abolish section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, because they wanted to open the floodgates to racial vilification and all sorts of other hate speech. It was the Labor Party who stood against that, just as it's been the Labor Party in government that have passed further laws about hate speech. So we will protect people from unlawful behaviour like that in the future.