The New South Wales (NSW) government is considering an overhaul of the state’s hate speech laws following clashes over the Israel-Hamas war in the community.
The move was a response to a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the Sydney Opera House in early October, which sparked criticism that the current laws prohibiting religious and racial vilification didn’t fit for purpose.
The Sydney demonstration, which took place after terrorist group Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis in its Gaza attacks, saw protesters shouting anti-Semitic slurs, including “gas the Jews.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns on Tuesday said the current law criminalising hate speech didn’t go far enough.
Mr. Minns said the current bar is set “too high” and that there is “no point” in having the hate speech laws on the books if they’re not applied in the end.
“I don’t think anyone with a straight face ... could make the claim that we’ve solved or there isn’t racism or racial vilification in NSW,” he told ABC Radio on Nov. 14.
“With a state as big as ours, there are going to be ratbags and bad-faith actors and if they go too far they need to be charged.”
Mr. Minns also argued that while freedom of speech should be protected, “we also need to make sure that people aren’t inciting others to hatred and violence.”
“You can protest, but you can’t take it so far that you’re advocating for violence or hatred on city streets.”
Limitation Of The Current Law
Under the current legislation, it is an offence for a person to publicly threaten or incite violence against an individual or a group on racial or religious grounds. The maximum penalty for the crime would be three years in jail and a fine of $11,000.However, it has never been successfully prosecuted since it was rolled out in 2018 because police need to obtain the approval of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), which can add an extra barrier of administration to the process.
Jewish Community Living In Fear
The comment came as the Jewish community reported they were feeling hypervigilant over the rising tide of hostility against them and complained that the current hate speech law was ineffective.Julie Nathan, research director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said that the Jewish community is still “reeling from the massacre in southern Israel because that was unprecedented.”
“There’s a great deal of concern amongst the Jewish community because we’re seeing what’s happening in London, New York, Russia, and elsewhere in the world and seeing some of that start to transpire here,” she told The Australian newspaper.
But Lydia Shelly, the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, argued that freedom of speech was a “fundamental value” in a democracy and the decision to overhaul the hate speech law lacks legal grounds.
“Speech that is controversial should be rightly challenged, debated or even ridiculed—including in an open and free press—and ought not to be criminalised,” she told the Guardian.
