Australia’s response to its worst terror attack could collapse after the Coalition rejected the Government’s anti-vilification laws and the Greens complained the proposed hate speech crackdown could crimp the pro-Palestinian protest movement. Source: The Age.
Any goodwill between the major parties appeared to evaporate on Thursday when Opposition Leader Sussan Ley declared Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s reforms to counter antisemitism were nearly unsalvageable, effectively killing off the chance of a bipartisan moment before Ms Ley’s shadow cabinet debated the bill.
The Opposition had for weeks called on Labor to adopt in full a report from the nation’s envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, which included a proposal for anti-vilification laws.
Greens senators David Shoebridge and Mehreen Faruqi criticised a move to give the Home Affairs Minister stronger powers to reject or cancel visa applications.
But a broad range of civil rights groups, legal experts, and transparency advocates have criticised the bill, claiming it was too rushed, too broad, and might have a chilling effect on public discussion about issues such as terrorism and migration that might offend certain racial groups.
Mr Albanese has scheduled a two-day parliamentary session to pass the laws next week and Labor appears most likely to try to pass the bill with the support of the Greens, who do not support the current draft but could shift if the Government agreed to extend anti-vilification protections to disabled people, people of other faiths and the LGTBQ community.
Ms Ley said she would go to Parliament next week and put forward a separate package of proposals because Labor’s attempt was confused.
“Now, the Opposition will continue to scrutinise this legislation carefully, but from what we have seen so far, it looks pretty unsalvageable,” she told reporters in Melbourne.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim, a close associate of the Prime Minister, said the major parties must unite in the national interest, and Labor needed to accept a Coalition request to get rid of a proposed religious text exemption in the draft law.
“If this all falls over, it means we’re sending a signal to the world that we just had the worst terror attack in our history and we can’t decide what to do about it,” Mr Wertheim said.
Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi said her party would not back the bill in its current form. She aired concerns that Labor wanted to curb the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which uses chants such as “globalise the intifada” and “river to the sea”. There have been debates about whether these slogans encourage violence.
“Antisemitism is something that needs to be addressed at the roots and the crux of it,” Ms Faruqi said, adding that all forms of hatred needed to be confronted at the same time as protecting “legitimate criticisms of nation states [and] the protest movement”.
FULL STORY
Greens hold the cards to pass hate speech bill as Ley walks away (By Paul Sakkal, Max Maddison and Nick Newling, The Age)
RELATED COVERAGE
Albanese’s ‘perfect’ storm on hate-speech laws (The Australian)
