Page 2349 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016
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of Islamic faith. She told a radio host it was okay for Muslims to be in Australia as long as they are Christian. Reportedly, when selling her house she refused to consider Muslim buyers. She wants surveillance cameras in mosques and Islamic schools, to ban the immigration of Muslim people and to deny refugee status to anyone who is a Muslim.
Perhaps Islamaphobia has worsened in recent months and years but these problems have been occurring for a long time. In 2003 the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission produced a report called Listen after it conducted national consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. It reveals a disturbing picture and I will quote from the report’s foreword:
What we heard was often disturbing. Participants identifiable as Arab or Muslim by their dress, language, name or appearance told of having been abused, threatened, spat on, assailed with eggs, bottles, cans and rocks, punched and even bitten. Drivers have been run off the road and pedestrians run down on footpaths and in car parks. People reported being fired from their jobs or refused employment or promotion because of their race or religion. Children have been bullied in school yards. Women have been stalked, abused and assaulted in shopping centres. Private homes, places of worship and schools were vandalised and burned. “Terrorist”, “Dirty Arab”, “Murderer”, “Bloody Muslim”, “Raghead”, “Bin-Laden”, “Illegal Immigrant” … are just some of the labels and profanities that we were told have been used against Arabs and Muslims in public places. Arab and Muslim Australians were told to “Go back to your own country”, even those whose families have been in Australia for many generations.
Perhaps more troubling than the nature and intensity of discrimination and vilification is the impact such incidents had on participants. Many Arab and Muslim Australians said they were feeling isolated and fearful. “I don’t feel like I can belong here anymore” was a common sentiment.
That was in the foreword to that report.
Here in the Assembly we should be taking all the action we can to address this. An obvious and easy action for us to take is to enact unlawful religious vilification laws in the territory. It provides a means of redress for people subject to vilification because of their religion. It also sends a powerful and important message from our parliament: religious vilification is simply not acceptable. We do not tolerate it here in the ACT.
On Tuesday I did write to the Liberal and Labor parties and presented a copy of my amendments that will introduce unlawful religious vilification provisions into this act. The amendments are simple. They add religious conviction as one of the grounds of unlawful vilification. Vilification as described in the act occurs:
… otherwise than in private and 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 with a protected attribute.
My amendments also add religious conviction as one of the grounds for the criminal offence of serious vilification. This offence occurs when a person:
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