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Australia’s new national “hate speech” laws are being prepped to persecute.

Labor plans to infuse existing vilification legislation with new powers to criminally prosecute any Australian for speech that Canberra or the states decide is harmful or violent.

Talking up the plans, Labor’s Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, said that increasing the reach of current laws would solve the disintegration of social cohesion.

“We will not tolerate the kind of hatred and abuse on the basis of people’s race or religion,” she explained.

Riding concerns about antisemitism to justify the government policing speech, Rowland argued,

“Where there needs to be further penalties in place, and where they need to be strengthened, … we’re determined to do that.”

Asked if these laws would punish incidents like the protest where Muslims and pro-Hamas supporters were chanting “gas the Jews” at the Opera House earlier this year, she replied,

“Potentially, if that satisfied the criteria for hate speech, then this could operate in any scenario.”

Sentencing for speaking outside parameters set by the Australian government is likely to include gaol time.

Rowland didn’t rule out the prospect, saying,

“The area of penalties is one that is being examined very closely in terms of ensuring that these laws are effective.”

The planned legislation is being debated amongst Labor’s elite.

Matrix of Laws

“Hate speech” laws will sit alongside unpopular misinformation/disinformation legislation, and coincide with Labor’s plan to ban kids from social media.

If you think these are unconnected, you’d be wrong.

The correlation is a centralisation of power.

Note:

1. The Misinformation/Disinformation Bill — a mass censorship, no dissent bill.
2. Banning kids from social media – a government-as-parent bill.
3. New hate speech laws – a ban-the-Bible bill.
4. A weak religious freedom bill – written for Labor’s LGBTQ+/Islamist voter base.
5. The Digital ID bill

All five, and more, benefit the self-interests of left-wing activism, and the Australian Labor Party.

These involve an expansion of government by a further transference of power from the Australian people to the Canberra bubble.

Divergent Values

If Michelle Rowland wants to mend social cohesion, the communications minister should look away from expanding laws, and take an honest look at multiculturalism.

In particular, the emergence of sectarian voting blocs.

Multiculturalism has failed, so declared former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

“Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven to be a toxic combination.”

Braverman paid for her honesty by being removed from the UK cabinet.

The late Jean Bethke Elshtain argued something similar, in the early 2000s.

Elshtain believed democracy was on trial, stating she didn’t think democracy would outlast what it allowed.

Elshtain was only half-right.

It wasn’t democracy that was on trial, it was multiculturalism.

To borrow from both her and Bravermen, I don’t think Western democracies and multi-ethnic social cohesion can survive what multiculturalism allows.

In sum, new hate speech laws will do nothing to solve the deterioration of social cohesion in Australia.

Labor is doing the equivalent of shearing a pig, and asking to be rewarded for it.

Totalitarian Tendencies

There’s nothing inherently harmful about protecting people from abuse, or abusive environments.

There is when protectionism amplifies the arrogance of power, by way of safetyism – a term unpacked by Salvatore Babones in 2018, as the new authoritarianism.

Hate speech laws are inherently harmful, when big government bullies its way past classical liberal boundaries; when individual responsibility is replaced with “collective responsibility.”

This is to say that “hate speech” laws are themselves inherently hate-filled.

They’re often devoid of proper definitions, and lack the necessary checks and balances to stop those laws from being weaponised.

Australians who support safetyism, at the cost of individual rights and responsibilities, are giving pre-approval to Babones’ new authoritarianism.

They are consenting to the abuse of power.

This includes the Liberal-National coalition, who, so far, have indicated that they’re on board with increasing the surveillance state.

Turbo-injected hate speech legislation will further deteriorate social cohesion by opening doors to blasphemy laws.

Policing speech quickly becomes about imposing new cultural norms around a vocabulary of protected speech.

The only talk allowed is that which honours the glorious leader, and serves the saviour state.

Overreach

Those who govern are not a substitute for the God of the governed.

Discernment matters.

When you have two opposing viewpoints, both as equally persuasive as the other:

Paul the Apostle doesn’t say, “run with the most convincing,” nor the “most safe”; he says, test the spirit behind each viewpoint. (Eph. 4; 1 Thess. 5)

The Apostle John does the same when he urges Christians in 1 John 4 to test for the spirit of error and the spirit of truth.

Not all policies are plausible.

As such, I’m a sceptic when it comes to social programs.

Sometimes government needs to get out of the way.

New hate speech laws join a list of bad ideas proposed by Albanese’s activist regime.

They are, in sum, a recipe for disaster.

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