Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today, the Prime Minister has announced that his government will attempt to weaken protections against racist hate speech in this country. I rise today on the occasion of the tabling of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report which, I might add, recommends no such thing as weakening protections against racist hate speech in this country. I rise as yet another privileged white bloke with little or no lived experience of racism to speak about something that is very difficult for me to comprehend, as it is very difficult for most who have offered opinions on this matter recently to comprehend because we have little or no lived experience of it. We have been told today by yet another privileged white bloke, the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, that Australia is not a racist country. I say to Senator Brandis and I say anyone else who thinks that racism does not exist or is not rife in Australia that they have not been listening. They have not listened to the evidence that was put before the human rights committee, and they have not listened to the terrible stories of racism that are being told right now on a hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' on Twitter.

I am going to read some of the tweets on the hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' now so that no-one who is in here or who is listening or watching can ever say again that they did not know about racism in Australia. Here is Reah when someone describes her interracial relationship as 'jungle fever #FreedomOfSpeech''. Here is Benjamin Law who, by the way, started this hashtag 'FreedomofSpeech' discussion today: 'At the age of 10, I was at the local pool as a group of white boys held my head underwater, laughing at me for being Asian #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Milleficent: 'A cop saw me with my black boyfriend and gave me unsolicited DV hotline numbers #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Sarah: 'I was called a "bloody Muslim" on the school run, in front of my daughter. Now don't wear my hijab when she's with me #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Andre: 'People would introduce me and say "This is Andre, he's a Leb, but he's not one those Lebs" so group would feel comfortable #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Faustina: 'In the 90s: almost veered off the road with my Chinese mum and aunt by a group of white men yelling "go back to where you came from!" #Freedomof Speech.' Here is Omar: 'I've been called a terrorist too many times to count. I've been stopped by cops and other authorities too many times to count #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Sonia: 'Being called a "fucking curry" from a passing car while I was minding my own business at a tram stop #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Pat: 'I was sent a letter that said "shut your mouth you wog" and called a "foreign mug" when I was in the local paper aged 10 #Freedomofspeech.' Here is Con who grew up in a town where he was in one of only two Greek families and he felt like an outsider every day and feared he would be bashed for being Greek. Here is Philip: 'I saw a white man on a train spit on a Sudanese man as he called him a monkey. It was horrific. #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Thatgirl: 'I was six years old the first time someone told me to go back to where I came from #freedomofspeech.' Here is Meleika: 'If you don't like it pee off and go back to where you came from!' I'm First Nations. This is my country #FreedomOfSpeech.' Here is Kat: 'I've had people throw coins at me because I'm Jewish #FreedomofSpeech.' Here's Randa: 'Dropping my kids aged 7 and 10 off at school and the car slows down and yells out "effing terrorists" #FreedomofSpeech.' Here is Bronte: 'Bogans in Perth pretending to shoot a gun at my best friend and screaming, "F-off back where you came from, gook." We were 14 years old, at a train station in our school uniforms #FreedomOfSpeech'. Here is Caravaggio: 'My best friend in primary school had her food spat on regularly because she brought what they called chink food from home #FreedomOfSpeech'. Here is Squeak: 'I was bullied and bashed by the good Catholic white boys at school because I was friends with "all the wogs" #FreedomOfSpeech'. It goes on and on and on.

And on this day, Harmony Day, a day that the UN has called on the world's political leaders to stand up against race hate speech, we have a Prime Minister who has announced that he will water down protections against race-based hate speech in this country. The lived experiences of people from multicultural communities in this country are absolutely devastating. The stories are awful. You can see them under the hashtag 'FreedomOfSpeech' or you can go through and read the submissions from right across the spectrum of multicultural Australia that were made to the human rights committee inquiry, which I sat on, Senator Paterson sat on, people from right across the political spectrum in this place sat on recently, and you can read the stories of people's lived experiences of racism in this country. Yet we have a Prime Minister who, in order to appease One Nation and to appease the far right of his party, has announced today that he wants to water down protections against race-based hate speech in this country. Not only has he done that; he has the gall to send his Attorney-General into this place to claim that he wants to strengthen protections against race-based hate speech. It is a barefaced lie.

The changes proposed today will water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and will make it easier for people to be racist in this country. And racism hurts; racism harms. It harms mentally and it harms physically, and we heard evidence of that during this committee's hearings. Make no mistake: if this reform passes, the reform announced by Prime Minister Turnbull today, it will shake multiculturalism in this country to its core, because there has never been a worse time for western democracies around the world to send a message out into the community that it is okay to be more racist than you could be before. But that is exactly what will happen if Prime Minister Turnbull's legislation passes this parliament. And it is only this chamber, the Senate, that can stand up and save us from sending the message out into the country that racism is now more permissible than it was before.

I will make a prediction here: if these reforms passed—and I sincerely hope they do not, and the Greens will do everything we can to ensure that they do not—you will have the freedom-of-speech warriors in this place, the Senator Patersons, the Senator Leyonhjelms and One Nation, going, 'This is a great victory for freedom of speech.' But what the racists who undoubtedly live in this country will hear is, 'It is okay now to be more racist than we were before.' That will hurt and that will harm. It will hurt people from the Jewish community, the Muslim community, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, the Greek community, the Italian community, the Chinese community, the Indian community and all people right across the multicultural spectrum.

I say this: the Greens have listened to the evidence put to us, we have listened to the horrendous, devastating stories of casual racism during this committee process, and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with multicultural Australia to defend section 18C— (Time expired)