Amendments to the Northern Territory’s anti-discrimination laws that the Country Liberal Party Government claims will “restore” freedom of speech and religion have passed Parliament. Source: ABC News.
The CLP promised to make changes to the NT’s Anti-Discrimination Act before the August 2024 territory election, which the party won from opposition in a landslide.
Its election commitment followed amendments made to the Act by the former Labor Government in 2022, which strengthened vilification provisions.
At the time, the CLP claimed Labor’s changes had eroded the territory’s “larrikin culture”.
After the election, the CLP initially announced it would scrap a provision prohibiting conduct likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” another person or group based on a protected attribute in public, but then back-pedalled and opted to revise the wording instead.
In the changes passed by the Parliament on Thursday night, the Government amended that section of the Act to replace the words “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” with “incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of”.
During the debate, Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby said the amendment would restore “freedom of speech, especially for individuals and religious communities … without allowing [or] condoning hate speech”.
NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam criticised the changes, saying they were “not about freedom of speech” or “freedom of religion”.
“It was really about a pre-election promise to place power and privilege back to groups that already are in places of power and privilege,” he said.
A new section of the Act introduced under the changes will now provide “an exemption for religious educational institutions to discriminate” by allowing them to preference employees based on their shared religious beliefs.
Before the bill was reintroduced to parliament on Thursday, it was last month pulled from the parliamentary agenda when Ms Boothby said the Government had withdrawn it to consult further with religious groups.
FULL STORY
NT government’s anti-discrimination law changes to ‘restore’ free speech pass parliament (By Jack Hislop, ABC News)
