James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights on freedom of speech in Australia together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Order that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I begin tonight by talking about the committee process and, obviously, the committee report but, fortuitously, we had the announcement of the government's response to the report today so I am also going to address that in my remarks.

Firstly, I want to place on the record my appreciation and thanks to the committee's secretariat who did heroic work in a short time to assist the committee with its work, receiving over 10,000 submissions and holding over nine hearings in six cities. It was a phenomenal effort and I know all members of the committee are very grateful for the support we received from the secretariat.

I am also very grateful to my colleagues on the committee—both my coalition colleagues and colleagues from other parties—for the way in which they participated in this inquiry. It was a genuine inquiry of people with sincere and different beliefs and different conclusions were drawn but everyone brought to this debate their own values and principles, and I recognise the sincere commitment that my colleagues have to these issues.

As a committee we were wrestling, on the one hand, with a very fundamental freedom—which we should all cherish and which is so central to living in a free society and a liberal democracy—freedom of speech, and, on the other hand, the right not to be discriminated against and, for me, particularly, the right to feel safe and included in the Australian community. They are difficult issues to reconcile. They do clash and, ultimately, this is a question about where we draw the line.

I believe the committee report pointed in a good direction and gave the government a good path, which they have now taken up, to resolve that issue, and the government has done so today with a reasonable compromise. I say compromise because one of the things all members of the committee agreed to, during this process, was that the Queensland University of Technology students' case was a travesty of justice and should never happen again, but we had different views about how best to ensure a case like that never happens again.

There are those who believe—and by the comments today I assume that includes members of the Labor Party and the Greens—it would be sufficient only to update the Human Rights Commission's processes to ensure that a QUT case does not happen again. Even though I very much welcome the proposed changes to the Human Rights Commission's process announced by the government today, I do not think they are sufficient on their own to ensure that we never have another QUT case. I will use this opportunity to outline, in detail, why I think that is.

The Human Rights Commission already has the power to terminate unmeritorious, vexatious, weak cases. In this case, they did not use those existing powers. The President of the Human Rights Commission said, publicly, that she believed this case had a level of merit and that is why it was not terminated. So I am not confident that extra powers to terminate cases like this would ensure that this case would have been terminated. But even if they did provide that a QUT case in the future would be terminated by the commission, I am not convinced that that would be sufficient to discourage what we had in this case, which was a very determined applicant and lawyers who advised her to continue the case.

Not only did this applicant continue it beyond conciliation, when conciliation was unsuccessful, and take it to the Federal Circuit Court but also when she was unsuccessful in the Federal Circuit Court and when costs were awarded against her in the Federal Circuit Court she chose to appeal the court's decision to the Federal Court and continue the case. Clearly, any discouragement that was put in place at the Human Rights Commission level, by these reforms to the Human Rights Commission processes, would not have been sufficient to dissuade the applicant.

I am concerned not just about the three students who, ultimately, went to court and defended themselves—though I have great admiration for them and their lawyers, who offered their services pro bono to defend this case, this important principle case—but also about the students electing to reach a confidential financial settlement with the applicant. They did so for a number of reasons. One is that they did not want to be accused, in public, of being racist and breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. I do not blame them for not wanting that on the record. The students, in persisting with the case, have detailed to the committee how this has profoundly affected their lives and careers.

Another reason is that they did not have confidence, had it gone to court, that they would have been successful in defending their case. And so they elected to pay money. It has been reported it was $5,000 each. It was also reported that they offered to settle for lesser amounts or to apologise, but the applicant did not accept those offers. The students felt that the law was so stacked against them that there was no choice but to pay money—and they have testified that they were barely able to afford this and had to scrounge together for it. They chose to do that because the law was so stacked against them. That is also why change to the law itself is necessary.

I am very pleased, today, that the Prime Minister and Attorney-General have announced that the government intends to reform 18C by removing the words 'offend, insult and humiliate', and adding the word 'harassment' in its place, keeping the word 'intimidate' in the law. That will give students, like those at QUT, confidence that if they are accused of this and if the Human Rights Commission handles it well—or badly—ultimately, if they choose to defend their case in court, they will get a fair hearing and there is a good chance they will get off. Hopefully, it will not take them 3½ years to clear their names—as it did for the students who decided to defend their names, in this case.

The government will also proceed to reforming the test in 18C to ensure that it is an actual objective community standards test. A number of court cases have narrowed this reasonable-person test to make it not just in my view a relatively subjective test but in the view of many legal experts, like Professor George Williams and Justice Sackville—because it relies on the perception of offence, insult or humiliation, in the current law, by a member of the affected community rather than by a member of the Australian community at large. That is an important and welcome reform.

The challenge is now before the parliament. The government has resolved its position and is moving forward on this and it is now up to the parliament to decide what, if any, reforms it is willing to vote for. I hope we do not just vote for Human Rights Commission changes alone because, as I have said, I do not think that will ensure there are no more cases like QUT or Bill Leak. I also hope they vote to change the law. In considering how they do that, I hope that members of this place consider that if these reforms are defeated, and if there is another case like QUT, that will be on their conscience. It will be their fault because they have decided to oppose reasonable, compromise reforms. The only thing we can do to guarantee that there will be no more cases like QUT, Bill Leak or Andrew Bolt is to repeal 18C completely. That is not something that has the support of this parliament and it is clearly not going to happen. But we can substantially reduce the risks of that happening and we can do that by voting for both of these reforms. If we do not do that we are running the very real risk that one of the 76 cases that are before the Human Rights Commission today on 18C, or any of those that might be brought in the future, will turn into the next Bill Leak or QUT. Two things will happen: one, people who voted in this place not to reform this law will have to take responsibility for those cases; and two, you can expect the Australian public will be even less sympathetic to the law or to the Human Rights Commission than they are today. If they again see this law being misused to pursue students, cartoonists or journalists, I suspect they will be much less sympathetic to arguments to retain these laws. They might even be more sympathetic to going further and getting rid of all these laws together. So, if you want to preserve 18C in some form, if you want to preserve a targeted limitation on racial abuse, which I think we should have in this country, the time is now to vote for the reform that is on the table because it will ensure that harassment and intimidation based on race are unlawful, as they should be, and it will ensure that freedom of speech is better protected. This is about finding a better balance. I am very pleased that the government has so carefully studied the report of this committee and has taken up many of the recommendations of the committee and I am very hopeful that the parliament will give it equal consideration and, ultimately, support it.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, the Prime Minister has announced that his government will attempt to weaken protections against racist hate speech in this country. I rise today on the occasion of the tabling of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report which, I might add, recommends no such thing as weakening protections against racist hate speech in this country. I rise as yet another privileged white bloke with little or no lived experience of racism to speak about something that is very difficult for me to comprehend, as it is very difficult for most who have offered opinions on this matter recently to comprehend because we have little or no lived experience of it. We have been told today by yet another privileged white bloke, the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, that Australia is not a racist country. I say to Senator Brandis and I say anyone else who thinks that racism does not exist or is not rife in Australia that they have not been listening. They have not listened to the evidence that was put before the human rights committee, and they have not listened to the terrible stories of racism that are being told right now on a hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' on Twitter.

I am going to read some of the tweets on the hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' now so that no-one who is in here or who is listening or watching can ever say again that they did not know about racism in Australia. Here is Reah when someone describes her interracial relationship as 'jungle fever #FreedomOfSpeech''. Here is Benjamin Law who, by the way, started this hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' discussion today: 'At the age of 10, I was at the local pool as a group of white boys held my head underwater, laughing at me for being Asian #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Milleficent: 'A cop saw me with my black boyfriend and gave me unsolicited DV hotline numbers #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Sarah: 'I was called a "bloody Muslim" on the school run, in front of my daughter. Now don't wear my hijab when she's with me #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Andre: 'People would introduce me and say "This is Andre, he's a Leb, but he's not one those Lebs" so group would feel comfortable #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Faustina: 'In the 90s: almost veered off the road with my Chinese mum and aunt by a group of white men yelling "go back to where you came from!" #Freedomof Speech.' Here is Omar: 'I've been called a terrorist too many times to count. I've been stopped by cops and other authorities too many times to count #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Sonia: 'Being called a "fucking curry" from a passing car while I was minding my own business at a tram stop #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Pat: 'I was sent a letter that said "shut your mouth you wog" and called a "foreign mug" when I was in the local paper aged 10 #Freedomofspeech.' Here is Con who grew up in a town where he was in one of only two Greek families and he felt like an outsider every day and feared he would be bashed for being Greek. Here is Philip: 'I saw a white man on a train spit on a Sudanese man as he called him a monkey. It was horrific. #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Thatgirl: 'I was six years old the first time someone told me to go back to where I came from #freedomofspeech.' Here is Meleika: 'If you don't like it pee off and go back to where you came from!' I'm First Nations. This is my country #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Kat: 'I've had people throw coins at me because I'm Jewish #FreedomofSpeech.' Here's Randa: 'Dropping my kids aged 7 and 10 off at school and the car slows down and yells out "effing terrorists" #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Bronte: 'Bogans in Perth pretending to shoot a gun at my best friend and screaming, "F-off back where you came from, gook." We were 14 years old, at a train station in our school uniforms #FreedomOfSpeech'. Here is Caravaggio: 'My best friend in primary school had her food spat on regularly because she brought what they called chink food from home #FreedomOfSpeech'. Here is Squeak: 'I was bullied and bashed by the good Catholic white boys at school because I was friends with "all the wogs" #FreedomOfSpeech'. It goes on and on and on.

And on this day, Harmony Day, a day that the UN has called on the world's political leaders to stand up against race hate speech, we have a Prime Minister who has announced that he will water down protections against race-based hate speech in this country. The lived experiences of people from multicultural communities in this country are absolutely devastating. The stories are awful. You can see them under the hashtag 'FreedomOfSpeech' or you can go through and read the submissions from right across the spectrum of multicultural Australia that were made to the human rights committee inquiry, which I sat on, Senator Paterson sat on, people from right across the political spectrum in this place sat on recently, and you can read the stories of people's lived experiences of racism in this country. Yet we have a Prime Minister who, in order to appease One Nation and to appease the far right of his party, has announced today that he wants to water down protections against race-based hate speech in this country. Not only has he done that; he has the gall to send his Attorney-General into this place to claim that he wants to strengthen protections against race-based hate speech. It is a barefaced lie.

The changes proposed today will water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and will make it easier for people to be racist in this country. And racism hurts; racism harms. It harms mentally and it harms physically, and we heard evidence of that during this committee's hearings. Make no mistake: if this reform passes, the reform announced by Prime Minister Turnbull today, it will shake multiculturalism in this country to its core, because there has never been a worse time for western democracies around the world to send a message out into the community that it is okay to be more racist than you could be before. But that is exactly what will happen if Prime Minister Turnbull's legislation passes this parliament. And it is only this chamber, the Senate, that can stand up and save us from sending the message out into the country that racism is now more permissible than it was before.

I will make a prediction here: if these reforms passed—and I sincerely hope they do not, and the Greens will do everything we can to ensure that they do not—you will have the freedom-of-speech warriors in this place, the Senator Patersons, the Senator Leyonhjelms and One Nation, going, 'This is a great victory for freedom of speech.' But what the racists who undoubtedly live in this country will hear is, 'It is okay now to be more racist than we were before.' That will hurt and that will harm. It will hurt people from the Jewish community, the Muslim community, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, the Greek community, the Italian community, the Chinese community, the Indian community and all people right across the multicultural spectrum.

I say this: the Greens have listened to the evidence put to us, we have listened to the horrendous, devastating stories of casual racism during this committee process, and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with multicultural Australia to defend section 18C— (Time expired)

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

I also rise to speak in relation to the tabling of the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into freedom of speech in Australia, an inquiry which many would better understand as being about section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the section which makes it illegal to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person on the basis of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin. This inquiry was brought about solely by the stubborn, if not determined, effort to fulfil the desire of the hard-right faction of the Liberal Party to undermine laws against racist hate speech in this country—a desire which the Prime Minister now intends to do his best to fulfil.

It is extremely important to stress and note that, through our inquiry, the committee have found no basis to recommend any changes to section 18C. That should be the end of the matter. If the Prime Minister were true to his word, it would be. Yet now we hear that the government intend to proceed with changes to the act which would see the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate' removed from the act.

Perhaps at this point it is worth noting that today we meet in this place on National Harmony Day, and the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a day which is about celebrating diversity and multiculturalism in our society. On this day we could be celebrating the fact that the final report of the committee has not recommended a change to 18C.

This is a victory for common sense. It is also a victory for multiculturalism and diversity. Labor is pleased to sign onto this report, because we are not for turning in our unwavering support for ethnic communities and diversity. Labor believes unequivocally that protections against racial hate speech are worth keeping. However, today is not a day for celebration, because the Prime Minister has chosen this day to announce that his government, at the behest of the extreme right, intends to ignore the inquiry report—which he asked for—and proceed with changes to section 18C of the act which weaken protections against racist hate speech. Why? Because to say that the Liberal Party is bitterly divided on this matter would be a significant understatement.

Section 18C has become yet another matter where the Prime Minister is forced to bend to the will of those members of his party who do not even want him as Prime Minister. Already we have multiple reports emerging from discussions at the joint coalition party room meeting this morning. According to reports, not unsurprisingly, those who argued for weakening laws against racist hate speech included the member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson; the member for Barker, Tony Pasin; the member for Canning, Andrew Hastie; the member for Dawson, George Christensen; Senators Paterson and Abetz; and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. On the other side were members in the other place: Mr Laundy, Mr Coleman, Ms Sudmalis and Mr Alexander.

The member for Reid, in what I will acknowledge was a valiant, perhaps even noble, effort, was out on ABC Radio this morning, defending section 18C and arguing that there is no basis for change—exactly what the report found. It is a position, of course, shared by the committee and stated, as I have said, in the report. We know from reports that Senator Fierravanti-Wells warned changing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act would be very unpopular with multicultural communities. We know that the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, warned that dragging out debate on race hate laws will cost the coalition votes. We are no doubt reliably informed by sources inside the room that one of the ardent supporter of former Prime Minister Mr Tony Abbott, the member for Canning, Mr Hastie, argued changing Section 18C was about 'de-fanging the operational arm of the political correctness movement in this country'—whatever that means. Perhaps these are the thoughts that occupy the deepest recesses of the member for Canning's mind as he lies awake at night, fretting about the matters he incorrectly believes to be at the forefront of concerns of the Australian people.

The fact that the Prime Minister has repeatedly been forced to kowtow to the likes of the member for Canning begs the question: what is even the point of being Prime Minister if you cannot even stand by your convictions? Well, The Huffington Post has very helpfully provided some quotes from the Prime Minister to illustrate his evolving view on this matter. In question time on 20 October in 2015 Mr Turnbull said:

The short answer to your question is: the government has no plans to change the Racial Discrimination Act at all.

At a doorstop on 5 February 2016 the Prime Minister said:

There's a longer discussion about the wording of 18c but there are no plans to make any changes to it. OK, thank you.

On 2GB on 25 August last year Mr Turnbull said in relation to the prospect of the government making changes to 18C:

The answer is no, not at this stage because we have higher and more urgent Budget repair priorities.

At a doorstop on 31 August last year he said:

I think the Government has no plans to make any changes to Section 18C. We have other more pressing, much more pressing, priorities to address.

On the ABC's Insiders program in August the host, Barrie Cassidy, asked the Prime Minister if:

… at one stage you'll be open to the idea of taking 'insult' and 'offend' out of the Bill?

Mr Turnbull responded:

Barrie, it is not on our agenda.

More recently, on 2GB in February this year the Prime Minister said:

Well, I've said in the past that I think it can be usefully amended.

It would perhaps, behove the Prime Minister to heed the words of the member for McMillan, Mr Russell Broadbent, who is a member of the committee. He told The Guardian yesterday:

Changes to the RDA should be about process, not about the wording of the section.

Unfortunately, what we have seen instead is that Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to trade away protections for Australia's multicultural communities in order to save his own skin. In doing so, the Prime Minister must answer the question: what forms of racist hate speech does he want to be able to use that he cannot now under current law? Unlike the Prime Minister, Labor is prepared to have the courage of our convictions and stand resolutely on the side of multiculturalism.

Labor will never support changes to section 18C. We believe that protections against racial hate speech are worth keeping. Everyone who opposes hate speech must now stand together to campaign against the government's proposed changes. In doing so we will be demonstrating the commitment of the vast majority of Australians to an inclusive society that respects people from all cultures and backgrounds.

Labor committee members were prepared to support some minor procedural changes to raise the threshold required for a complaint to be dealt with by the Human Rights Commission. These changes were agreed to by the committee in our final report and are supported by the Human Rights Commission and the president, Professor Gillian Triggs. The changes are designed to quickly dispense with frivolous or vexatious claims and will only affect a very miniscule number of complaints made to the commission.

It would have been nice if today we could come together in this place to support the committee's recommendations. Instead, we have had to bear witness to a weakened Prime Minister once again bending to the will of the hard right in his party; a Prime Minister who has been forced to implement one of the priority agenda items of the former Prime Minister, Mr Abbott; a Prime Minister whose legacy will now include a scurrilous attempt to weaken the fabric of harmony in our community and support the most vulgar forms of hate speech imaginable.

In speaking to this committee's final report, I urge senators in this place to take note of all the recommendations contained in it. I urge them to make sure that the Senate remains the place where we are able to stop this sort of law, keeping in place the section of the law that has served this country well since 1975. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.