Page 5214 - Week 16 - Thursday, 28 November 1991
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Turning in detail to the racial vilification clauses, what is unique about these clauses, which I have adapted from the New South Wales law, with the help of the Attorney's officers, is that they extend the operation of discrimination law to acts done at large. This is what they should have had before the Reichstag was burnt in Germany, because libraries, literature and issues of that nature are attacked. The racial vilification clauses will attack forms of communication to the public, including speaking, writing, printing, displaying notices, broadcasting, telecasting, screening and playing of tapes or other recorded material. In addition, any other conduct observable by the public, such as actions and gestures and the wearing or display of clothing, signs, flags, emblems and insignia, is covered.
As a person who has a strong persuasion to civil liberties and civil rights, I say that here is another compromise in society. I believe that this is a necessary compromise. I would not be moving these amendments, were Mr Stevenson not in this house. We should probably not need them. There are enough signs given to those elements in Western Australia and New South Wales to suggest that we need not trouble ourselves to put them on the statute book here before problems emerge; but I think we have to. There is a need for preventative measures, and I commend the provisions to the house.
MR STEVENSON (11.44): Mr Collaery and, I hope, not too many others would seek to destroy rights that have been fought for in this country and in England for a long time. The simplicity of the Bill and its amendments is twofold, as I mentioned. It creates a Star Chamber and it removes common law protections that prevent someone from being dragged before some sort of tribunal and hounded.
The Bill and amendments are the product of one of the many so-called human rights treaties signed by the Australian Government through the auspices of the United Nations. They thereby seek to bring Australian laws into alignment with UN treaties, with the views of the United Nations. However, the majority of the countries of the United Nations represented on the body do not in any way respect Australian traditions of democracy and economic freedom, the family, personal liberty, the common law and the rule of law, Judeo-Christian ethics, personal responsibility, initiative and innovation, and independent institutions, and are socialist or communist totalitarian states.
A succession of governments in Australia, without the approval of the Australian people, notwithstanding this claim that people know what is going on, have signed a plethora of human rights treaties. They agreed to bring Australia's internal laws into line with the views of such states as Poland and the USSR, which certainly do not have any respect for the traditional heritage in Australia.
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