The Government Has Signed Off On A Plan To Weaken Australia’s Race Hate Laws

Today is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The day has its roots in the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa and this year the theme is “racial profiling and incitement to hatred, including in the context of migration.”

In particular, the UN has pointed out the need to counter racist “attitudes and behaviours, particularly regarding hate crimes, hate speech and racial violence.”

Meanwhile in Canberra the federal Coalition has chosen today, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to sign off on a plan to substantially weaken Australia’s race hate laws in a deliberate bid to make it easier to insult, offend and humiliate people on the basis of race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

Bloody great timing, right?

Conservative Liberal MPs have been campaigning hard to reform Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which makes it unlawful to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” someone on the basis of their race.

The Prime Minister eventually caved into the pressure and launched a parliamentary inquiry into the issue under the guise of “freedom of speech”. The inquiry’s report failed to make any concrete recommendations on how the law should be changed, but the racism freedom loving right-wing Liberal MPs just wouldn’t give up, even though Barnaby Joyce told them literally no one cared about the issue.

Malcolm ‘Pacific Geoduck’ Turnbull (it’s a giant spineless creature, look it up) has found a “compromise” position between those who want the law gone entirely and others who think racism is really not that great.

Under reforms signed off by senior government ministers yesterday, it will still be an offence to intimidate someone on the basis of race, but the words “offend, insult and humiliate” will be replaced with “harass”.

The end result is that it will now be easier, and lawful, for certain national newspapers to offend and insult people, or entire communities, just because of the colour of their skin. Awesome.

But even though the government has decided to water down the law, there’s no guarantee it will get through parliament. In fact it looks like the plan will struggle to attract support, with the Greens, Labor and the Nick Xenophon Team all opposed.

So far the only votes the government can probably rely on are One Nation’s.

While Australia’s conservative and ultra-conservative parties are teaming up to make it easier to be racist, the UN’s human rights chief is telling governments “that they have a legal obligation to stop hate speech and hate crimes.”

Oh well. I guess if we didn’t listen to the UN on that whole “torturing refugees is bad” thing hate speech had no chance.