Labor grills Turnbull over weakening of race hate laws on Harmony Day – as it happened

A quick summary:

• Malcolm Turnbull’s government will attempt to remove “insult and offend” from the Racial Discrimination Act and insert the offence of harassment to both enshrine free speech and strengthen racial protections. It is not clear how these two goals will happen simultaneously.
  
• In defending the Coalition’s changes, Steve Ciobo said it was a small niche of people preoccupied with 18C but the government would get on with making the hard decisions.
  
• Barnaby Joyce told the joint party room that this debate would cost the government votes because it was not something that was gripping the people of Australia.
  
• It is Harmony Day, for international day for the elimination of racial discrimination.

Mark Dreyfus says some racial complaints will not be able to be made under the proposed changes.

I am predicting that there are forms of racist hate speech which now fall on the wrong side of the line and can give rise to complaints to the Human Rights Commission, and if they are not resolved, complaints to the federal circuit court or the federal court of Australia. Complaints that can now be made will now not be able to be made because they are seen as insufficiently serious.

Q: Like what? You say you predict it? Like what?

It is not for me to give specific examples.

I am having trouble with the prime minister’s logic on 18C.

The Coalition has to change the Racial Discrimination Act because free speech is restricted.

The Coalition has come up with a change – remove insult and offend and insert harassment – to enshrine more free speech.

But it will make racial protections stronger – in other words it will be more likely to catch racist speech.

Am I missing something?

Tony Burke:

In every school in Australia at moment, there are children, many of them wearing orange, celebrating harmony and being taught about respect. And here in Canberra, we have a government wanting to give permission for more racial hate speech. Yesterday, this government released its multicultural policy. It didn’t even survive 24 hours before they walked all over it.

Labor shadow attorney Mark Dreyfus says Malcolm Turnbull’s 18C change is not a strengthening of the law, it is a weakening of the law.

It is the first time I have ever seen law reform in this country being conducted with reference to claims [QUT and Bill Leak] which have failed. Claims which have failed to meet the standards we’ve set in the law.

Katharine Murphy has done a round up on 18C, drawing together all of the elements that we know so far.

The Turnbull government will press ahead with an overhaul of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act despite explicit warnings from party moderates and ministers that the change will cost the government politically in marginal seats.

After debate in the Coalition party room on Tuesday, in which the former prime minister Tony Abbott congratulated Malcolm Turnbull for pursuing reform, and the Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, expressed his view that overhauling 18C really wasn’t a priority – the government resolved to press ahead with both legislative change and procedural change.

Five moderates spoke against changing the RDA – New South Wales Liberals David Coleman, Julian Leeser, and Craig Laundy, and Victorians, Julia Banks and Russell Broadbent – but all resolved to stand behind the new policy.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the minister for international development and the Pacific, warned the party room the decision would hurt the government in ethnic communities. She said Labor would mount an aggressive campaign attacking the Coalition, a campaign the government would need to counter.

George Brandis says most other countries have “harass” as proscribed language.

Harassment is a more powerful language. There is no country in the world that has “offend, insult, humiliate”, as the terms, the prohibited conduct. But almost every country in the world, or every like-minded country, that has protections against vilification, uses the term “harass” as one of the proscribed types of conduct.

Yet, for unexplained reasons, that was missed when this legislation was passed in 1995. Although, as I said in my opening remarks, the recommendation was that it should be part of the law. It wasn’t. We are correcting a gap in the law.

So if the law passes, we will be allowed to insult and offend but not harass, intimidate and humiliate.

Paul Osborne of AAP asks: Australia is making a bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. What’s your message to people who say – well, why should Australia have such a seat if you’re watering down race hate laws?

Turnbull:

I absolutely reject the premise of your question. We are strengthening the race hate laws. These are stronger laws, more effective laws because they are clearer laws. We are strengthening the Racial Discrimination Act. We are strengthening it because it’s clearer, it will be a more effective protection against race hate. As far as international commitments, I can say, and George will explain, there has been concern that the generality of the language in 18C may, in fact, create issues of that kind.

Paul Karp has another try but is again rebuffed by the prime minister.

Q: Are we going to have a plebiscite on 18C? It is a contentious social reform ... Why are elites allowed to have this but same-sex marriage is going to be done by a popular vote?

Thank you for the editorial.

Turnbull takes the next question.

Turnbull says the law will be changed to provide better protection and not “mere slights”.

From Andrew Probyn: You referred to a very small slight. Isn’t this the point that a rich white guy who refers to something as “very small slight” might not understand what other people feel? And secondly, just on the QUT case and the Bill Leak case, they could have both been dealt with with proper process, couldn’t they?

Well, an improvement to the process of the kind we proposed, we are proposing, would certainly result in a better processing. But nonetheless, the language has been the subject of extensive criticism both from leading legal professionals, from leaders from the left and the right. The language itself is very general and does not strike the right balance between protecting people from racial vilification and free speech.