‘Hypocrisy’: coalition poised to reject hate crime bill

By Grace Crivellaro and Tess Ikonomou

Labor says there could not be a more “serious impetus for action” for quickly passing sweeping hate speech laws after the Bondi terror attack that killed 15 and injured dozens more.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Thursday labelled the coalition’s criticisms that the bill and its review are being rushed as “ridiculous”.

“The arguments that are coming from the Liberal party now, having spent week after week calling for the early return of parliament and saying how urgently we need to legislate … is just ridiculous,” he told ABC RN.

Liberal Party members expressed opposition to the proposed laws in a meeting on Wednesday night, with Senator Jonathon Duniam saying the party’s “biggest concern” is that it’s being pushed through too quickly.

“This is one of the biggest changes to free speech laws in the last 50 or 60 years, so we can’t take this lightly,” he told ABC News Breakfast.

“The government wants this legislation that they drafted, with no input from anyone else outside of government, passed by next Wednesday.”

The coalition has not yet decided on its support for the legislation, with Nationals Senator Susan McDonald saying the bill “has very few friends” and sought to do too much.

“We need clear and effective action and not rushed, knee-jerk panic,” Senator McDonald said on ABC RN.

She labelled Mr Burke’s comments that the coalition was being hypocritical as “ridiculous”.

“Absolutely we’ve called for legislation to be brought forward,” the senator said.

“We’ve called for the parliament to be reformed because it is absolutely critical that we eradicate anti-Semitism in this country and that we remove radical Islam.”

Barnaby Joyce, who has recently joined One Nation, said the party would not back the legislation as it would punish “recreational pig shooters in country areas”.

“I think that there is something quite obnoxious with dragging them into it when they have done nothing but obeyed the law,” he told ABC RN.

He said Sydney residents could be “easily cajoled” into believing the gun reforms were a solution post-terror attack as they generally don’t own firearms.

The hate speech laws will be debated on Monday when parliament returns early following the December 14 massacre at Bondi Beach.

Under the changes, hate speech and racial vilification offences would be introduced with a defence included for people quoting directly from a religious text.

The bill “sets a principle-based test for conduct and speech that incites racial hatred towards another person or group”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Religious leaders are also urging the government to halt and rewrite the laws, saying it may open people up to prosecution over past remarks in its current form.

Anglican Bishop Michael Stead said the reform created a “minefield of definitions” about hate and that the bill included a retrospective element in relation to banned groups.

“I’ve got particular concerns about the definition of what is a hate crime,” he told a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.

Dr Stead said the bill could be expanded to claim Christian teaching caused serious harm, leading to a Christian organisation being listed as a hate group.

“Defining something which is not a hate crime to be a hate crime, just so that we can list the group, seems to me entirely inappropriate,” he said.

Australian National Imams Council President Sheikh Shadi Alsuleiman said the bill created “serious legal uncertainty” by exposing past lawful speech to new penalties.

“This contradicts fundamental principles of the legality and places religious leaders whose sermons are often public (and) recorded under ongoing retrospective risk,” he said.

Sheikh Alsuleiman also said the reform needed to be delayed by at least a month because a time frame of one week to consider all the implications was unreasonable.

A report on the hate speech reforms is due on Friday before debate next week.