George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

We want Australia's racial vilification laws to be as effective as possible. That is why we have introduced a new standard of harassment, which was meant to be in the legislation introduced many years ago by former Attorney-General Lavarch but was for some unexplained reason omitted. Senator Dastyari, the question you have to answer is this: what is the conduct that you would prohibit that would not be prohibited by the government's new test? What is the conduct that you would prohibit that would not be prohibited by a prohibition on intimidation or harassment? If you look at the racial anti-vilification statutes of every like-minded country in the world, the two key concepts are harassment and intimidation. In this case, harassment, for the first time, will be outlawed by the Turnbull government. (Time expired)