Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner is calling on the government to scrap its proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act.
Attorney-General George Brandis and the federal government plan to repeal sections of the act, which News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt was found guilty of breaching.
Arguing for the changes, Senator Brandis declared Australians had the rights to be bigots.
But speaking at a forum in Footscray on Friday, Dr Tim Soutphommasane said the government was yet to provide any credible evidence there was a need to change the laws.
Dr Soutphommasane said 20 per cent of Australians reported being victims of racial hate speech, and 5 per cent had been victims of physical assault based on their race.
“Racism cannot be dismissed as something that affects a small number of people. It can cause profound civic harms and health harms,” he said.
Dr Soutphommasane said the act came about as the result of extended deliberation and it would be a mistake to throw it away when it worked well.
“Freedom of speech is not the only freedom that counts; there is also the freedom from discrimination,” he said.
“If ever there were to be a change to the law, I think it needs to be preceded by an inquiry of some kind establishing the need for a change.”
Victorian shadow parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs Telmo Languiller said changing the act risked a return to the open racism of the 1970s and ’80s.
Gellibrand MP Tim Watts, who organised the forum, said he had changed his view over time that the “cure for bad speech is more speech”.
He said the experience of his wife growing up in Queensland with Chinese heritage during the ascendancy of Pauline Hanson had convinced him there needed to be a limit on the use of race as a weapon in hateful speech.
Mr Watts accused the government of pursuing changes to the act as an appeal to a small section of the community.
“When you have the attorney-general of Australia say we have a right to be a bigot, that’s not a dog whistle, that’s a megaphone,” he said.
Benjamin Millar
