LGBTQ+ and Jewish groups have expressed disappointment at Labor’s decision to abandon its plan to outlaw vilification, warning hate speech will not be prohibited under new laws.
On Thursday the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, introduced the Albanese government’s hate crimes bill, which he said “responds to the increasing prevalence of hate speech and hateful conduct in our society”. “This conduct cannot, and will not, be tolerated,” he said.
The bill expands the existing offence of urging violence and establishes new offences of threatening to use force or violence against groups or individual members of a group. These offences would now protect people on the basis of their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, national or ethnic origin or political opinion.
However, despite promising a bill to criminalise vilification and hate speech more generally, the government opted to not criminalise conduct such as inciting hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule.
The decision follows the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, warning the Coalition party room in May that Labor’s original hate speech proposal was a “trap” and “wedge” for the opposition.
On Thursday the shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash, noted the bill had “changed significantly” after Labor’s original proposal was “heavily criticised”.
“For months now, the Coalition has called for our laws to properly deal with the abhorrent rise in antisemitic attacks that we have seen since October 7,” she said, promising the Coalition would look at them “carefully”.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim, said the bill was a “step in the right direction but still falls short of the reforms which are needed”.
He said it would not be possible “to prosecute hate preachers who have called for a ‘final solution’ against ‘the Jews’, and described Jews collectively as innately ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘treacherous’, ‘criminals’ and ‘monsters’”.
Anna Brown, the chief executive of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Australia, said the “current threats to the community are real, severe and worrying”, citing pride groups across the country “who are facing threats to their events, intimidation and vile hate speech, just for being who they are”.
“We should be stopping hate before it translates into violence,” she said.
“Small but noisy fringe groups are getting louder with libraries and councils now caught up in the rising tide of hate against our community.”
“LGBTIQ+ communities do not have sufficient protection under the law. For our communities the need for greater protection from hate and vilification is urgent.
“These laws must cover hate speech and conduct as well as threats of violence.”
Dr Nicole Shackleton, from RMIT’s graduate school of business and law, said the decision “capitulates to those who prioritise freedom of speech over the safety of minority groups, particularly online”.
“The reliance on … incitement to violence, rather than hatred or ridicule, means these new laws would only target deliberate acts that seek to incite violence or cause harm,” she said.
Alastair Lawrie, the director of policy and advocacy at the Justice and Equity Centre, said that criminalising acts and threats of violence “would be rarely used in practice” and would not combat “the rising tide of public homophobia and transphobia”.
He said that civil vilification provisions – such as section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which prohibits offending, insulting or humiliating a person based on race – should “also cover religious belief, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status and disability at a minimum”.
Rodney Croome, the Just Equal spokesperson, said anti-LGBTQ+ vilification had “already been prohibited in Tasmania, Queensland, the ACT, NT and partially in NSW so the federal government has no excuses”.
Dreyfus also introduced a privacy bill, which includes the new offence for using a carriage service to release personal information in “a way that reasonable persons would regard as being … menacing or harassing”.
The doxing offence is punishable by up to six years in prison or up to seven years for targeting a person based on a protected characteristic.
Wertheim said the offence was “very welcome” and the legislation was needed “long ago”.
