Labor has substantially watered down proposed hate speech laws, but is nevertheless facing a religious backlash, with claims it would turn Australia into a police state by creating “thought crime”. Source: The Guardian.
The Australian Christian Lobby, the Catholic Church and Christian Schools Australia are among faith organisations to make submissions to the legal and constitutional affairs committee inquiry about the laws.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus introduced the hate speech bill in September, proposing to extend existing offences of urging force or violence against specified targeted groups to protect people distinguished by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status or disability.
The bill lowers the threshold for the offences, to punish a person who is “reckless” as to whether the violence urged will occur, rather than requiring that they intend it.
The bill also creates new offences for threatening to use force or violence against a group, or a member of a group, distinguished by race, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, and political opinion.
The Australian Christian Lobby warned the bill had the “clear potential to serve as the instrument of viewpoint suppression on ideological grounds, even to criminalise political beliefs and expression contrary to a government-approved orthodoxy”.
The ACL argued that “non-physical harm” had been used to justify laws banning conversion practices, “changing the legal landscape concerning Christian and medical counselling, and other practices such as mere praying”.
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference agreed that “threats” should be limited to “threats of physical force or violence” and not include psychological harms.
It noted that “a number of state-based laws allow sex to be freely chosen and changed at will, with some claiming that to disagree with that proposition is hateful”.
“It is not hateful to hold a view that people are created male and female, but unless the bill’s definitions of force or violence are restricted to physical harm, some groups may attempt to use the law to restrict the free speech of people or groups who hold this view.”
The religious submissions could make it harder for Labor to win Coalition support for the bill.
The Greens, LGBTQ+ equality groups and Jewish groups have criticised the bill for abandoning the Government’s commitment to outlaw vilification.
FULL STORY
Labor’s ‘thought crime’ hate speech laws will turn nation into ‘police state’, Australian Christian Lobby says (By Paul Karp, The Guardian)
