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While the federal Misinformation and Disinformation Bill has been abandoned, planned new Victorian anti-hate speech laws will widen the net of draconian federal, state and territory laws crushing freedom of speech in Australia.

After a massive outcry and much lobbying – of Coalition, independent, minor party and Greens’ senators – federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland confirmed on November 24 that the misinformation bill was dead.

The bill represented the fourth failure by Federal Labor to tighten the screws on freedom of speech and freedom of religion during the term of the Albanese Government.

Earlier, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had failed to gain the support of either his own party or the Opposition for radical changes to the Sex Discrimination Act to remove exemptions for faith-based schools.

Those exemptions are the most important shield protecting the right of religious schools to teach their moral and religious principles on the nature of sex, sexual behaviour and the natural family. Without those exemptions, religious schools would be forced to employ staff and enrol students who actively oppose the ethical principles of the school.

These form an expanding matrix (see table below) of state and territory anti-vilification laws operating in four ways to cut away at freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

First, the range of protected attributes has been expanding well beyond race to include sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).

Most controversial are the laws giving protected attribute status to a person’s gender identity, which is based on the highly contested idea that sex and gender are fluid and changeable.

These laws bring the sex-based rights of girls (that is, their right to access female-only sports, showers, change rooms, toilets, schools, etc.) into conflict with the transgender-based rights of biological males who identify as female and claim the right to access female sports and safe spaces.

More widely, these SOGI laws bring the state into conflict with those who hold to the biological worldview of sex being immutable and natural marriage being between a man and a woman. In particular, these laws attack the inherent right of religious people and faith-based organisations to express and manifest their religious beliefs (and scientific understanding) about the nature of sex.

Second, these conflicts are amplified when the bar for a discrimination or vilification complaint is set so low.

The lowest bar for vilification (until now) was set in 1975 in the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). For an offence, it only had to be shown that a person was “reasonably likely” to have offended or insulted the person because of their race. All three terms – “reasonably likely”, “offend”, “insult” – are highly subjective. In contrast, other vilification laws are set at a higher bar, at threats of force or incitement to hatred or violence.

Yet the RDA became the “gold standard” for activists determined to expand anti-discrimination and anti-hate speech laws to impose on society their worldview on human sexuality.

A Victorian discussion paper on planned new state anti-hate speech legislation indicates that the bar will be lowered again to “incitement to hatred” or “other serious emotions”. What other “serious emotions” – anger? Would it allow a complaint to be made if any person becomes very angry simply because another person expresses an opinion or view that doesn’t accord with their view?

Third, in the recently amended Queensland law, and in proposed new Victoria legislation, determining whether an offence has occurred will be based on how “a reasonable person” would judge and act in the case of possible vilification.

Incredibly, “a reasonable person” is narrowed down to being a person from the same identity group (that is, persons with the same protected attribute as the aggrieved person). So, presumably, drag queens will in some way determine whether a drag queen has been offended or insulted by another person; or Catholics only will somehow determine whether Catholics have suffered religious vilification. Is that not a very subjective test to establish grounds for a complaint?

Fourth, increasingly, it is not required to show that harm actually occurred. Victoria proposes that it would only have to be shown that an act was “likely” to “incite … serious emotions …. not that the conduct actually incited those emotions”.

While the federal misinformation bill is now dead, state and territory governments are using “salami” tactics to amend laws such that they undermine basic human freedoms.

These laws invite endless lawfare, and the fear of prosecution exerts a crushing and silencing effect on freedom of speech and religion, which are the foundation stones of a true democracy.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.