Page 1187 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 29 March 2017
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Racial Discrimination Act, and we stand in support of this motion. It was encouraging to hear words along those lines from the Labor Party here.
Indeed, the Australian Greens have a petition at this moment calling for a halt to the commonwealth government's aggressive push to change section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, a crucial safeguard against racism and hate speech. It is another attack on multicultural Australia and the latest capitulation by Malcolm Turnbull to his rabid right wing, One Nation and a narrow section of the media.
You need only to look at the politicians pushing to water down section 18C—Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Dutton, Pauline Hanson, and George Brandis—to realise that this is a cultural and ideological war masquerading as a free speech crusade. You really have to ask, what is gained by this amendment? What needs to be said that actually is not already able to be said?
Given that Pauline Hanson has already been able to spread things which, unfortunately, in many instances turn out to be mistruths, rumours and misleading statements, about Muslims in particular, without any negative repercussions, it is hard to see that watering down 18C will make any difference.
The Ipsos poll of 1400 voters released yesterday shows that eight in 10 oppose the proposed changes to 18C. It shows that 78 per cent of all Australians believe it should be unlawful to offend, insult or humiliate someone on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The vast majority of voters—and that, of course, includes coalition supporters—remain unconvinced of the need for change. Seventy-six per cent of respondents who intend to vote for the coalition said they support retaining the words “offend, insult and humiliate”. This compares to 84 per cent of Labor voters and 85 per cent of Greens voters.
The proposal to delete the words “offend, insult and humiliate” from the act and replacing them with something making it unlawful to intimidate or harass someone on the basis of race will do nothing to strengthen protections currently afforded under the act. I am not sure, in fact, what it will do. The words are so confusing; this seems to be a confected debate that is just creating disharmony in our community.
The Greens say no to racism. We will never accept the statements that it should be easier for Australians to be racist. We stand shoulder to shoulder with multicultural Australia against bigotry and hate speech. We have been putting posters around the country to show that, whoever you are and whatever language you speak, we will stand with you against hatred and bigotry. These posters are in a range of different community languages, including Arabic, Hindi and Chinese and they serve to deliver a message to people from various multicultural backgrounds about the support that exists in our parliaments, both nationally and, importantly for today’s motion, locally.
In closing, the Greens affirm that we do not and will not accept vilification of any kind against members of our community, regardless of who they are and what their background is. We support the calls of the ACT government to investigate what steps may need to be taken to protect Canberrans and visitors from racial offence, insults,
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