Page 2350 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016
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… intentionally engages in a public act that threatens harm, and is reckless about whether that act incites hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of people on the basis of a protected attribute.
Of course I hope that my colleagues here will support these amendments, but let me pre-empt some of the reasons members may suggest for not agreeing to add this important ground to the legislation. These arguments are around. They have been floated at various times in the extensive public debate. In light of Mr Hanson’s comments in his in-principle remarks about time to consider this, it is worth reflecting on the fact that this has had a considerable period of discussion, considerable period of public consultation through the Law Reform Advisory Council, LRAC, process. To suggest that this has been sprung this week belies the fact that there has been an extensive community discussion about this, that the issue has been worked through and that provisions exist in a number of other jurisdictions in Australia.
Members may say there needs to be community consultation but, as I have touched on, there has been an extensive review. It is true that some submitters to some of these processes do not support the addition of religious vilification. LRAC’s final report responds to the submissions, considers the issue and recommends that the government add religion as a ground for unlawful vilification. Not only that but Minister Corbell tabled legislation on this same issue last Assembly, and it did draw community comment.
I think we know the different views in the community, and in fact many of the issues are similar to the ones that played out during the national debate on section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act in recent years. So I do not believe that we need further consultation. The consultation has been had. It is actually time for the Assembly to make a decision on this issue. If we do nothing we leave a gap where it is not unlawful to vilify someone on the basis of their religion.
As Mrs Jones told us in some detail yesterday afternoon, a person’s religion is fundamentally important to them and they should have the right to practise it freely. We had quite a good discussion on that topic yesterday afternoon, and I think there was unanimity of view in the Assembly about the points that Mrs Jones was making around the ability of people to practise the religion that they choose or were born into and how important it is to individuals.
Like the Law Reform Advisory Council, like the Human Rights Commission, like ethnic community councils and religious leaders, like many members of the community, the Greens and I support adding religion as a ground of vilification. Members may raise a criticism that religious vilification laws will limit free speech so that people cannot offend each other anymore unless they break the law. This is not the case. We are talking here about vilification, not mere offence. Vilification is a standard that requires a public act that expresses, or is reasonably likely in the circumstances to incite, hatred towards, serious contempt for, severe ridicule towards or revulsion of, a person or people based on their religion.
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