House debates

Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Statements by Members

Racial Discrimination Act 1975

1:57 pm

Photo of Graham PerrettGraham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the human rights inquiry into freedom of speech in Australia and a comment made by Jeremy Jones from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. He said in response to a question:

The question is: are we opening the floodgates to stuff that we would not want to hear, that no-one around this table would want to hear, inadvertently by trying to improve it without knowing what is likely to happen next?

Since there was the shameful coalition decision in the party room yesterday to attack minorities in Australia—or to open the floodgates, as Jeremy Jones has suggested—I wanted to point out a couple of facts.

The first is that minority groups have made submission after submission saying that opening the floodgates will create harm for minorities and will create more work for lawyers.

Mr Craig Kelly interjecting

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