Everything you need to know about Albanese’s hate laws. By Daniel Wild at The IPA.
If the government wants to ban a group, then that group will be banned.
The legislation is being marketed as targeting Hizb ut-Tahrir and neo-Nazi groups, but the powers are much wider. Conceivably the ambit could include groups such as the IPA, Advance Australia, and Jewish organisations.
Let me talk you through this. The process for a group being banned is the following:
1. The Minister for Home Affairs (currently Tony Burke) can declare a group a hate group if the Minister believes the group is engaged in committing or advocated committing ‘hate crimes’ …
There are no effective limits to this power: the Minister only has to believethe group is committing a hate crime. The hate crimes could have been alleged to have occurred before these laws passed, no conviction of a crime is required, and the Minister is not required to observe any requirements of procedural fairness in deciding whether or not the he or she is satisfied a group can be declared a hate group.
2. In order to exercise this power the Minister must receive advice from the Director-General of Security of ASIO.
The Director-General of Security of ASIO is a political appointee and will inevitably be subject to political pressure to align with the government’s wishes. …
3. The Leader of the Opposition must be briefed before a declaration takes effect.
Only a briefing needs to be provided. The Leader of the Opposition cannot stop the listing of a group. This amounts to nothing more than a notice to the Opposition of what the government will do.
4. The Attorney-General must be consulted.
The Attorney-General is a member of the government and will follow the government’s line. …
5. A review of the listing is to be undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.
A review cannot stop the listing, so this has no practical effect.
6. The listing of a hate group is disallowable by Parliament. …
For a limited time, either the lower house or the Senate can, in effect, stop the Minister from listing a group. Obviously, the lower house will not do this because the government has the numbers in that house. So the only thing stopping the unfettered use of this power is the Senate. That’s it. That’s the only real “safeguard.”
How’s it going?
The laws passed, yet Hizb ut-Tahrir is still in existence. … In fact, Hizb ut-Tahrir, far from having been banned, is now more active than ever in announcing it will be launching a legal challenge to the laws. In other words, extremist groups have been emboldened by these laws, and will use them to fundraise and recruit. This contrasts with the UK where it was simply declared a prohibited terrorist organisation, using existing powers. …
Emboldened
The laws have created a powerful incentive for Hizb ut-Tahrir and like-minded organisations at risk of being disbanded to re-constitute themselves as a political party in order to circumvent the laws. …
Increase the risk of politically motivated violence?? Says who?
Apologists of the laws point to Section 114A.5 of the legislation which says that the Director-General of Security of ASIO, in providing advice, must be satisfied the activities of the group in question would or are likely to increase the risk of politically motivated violence or the promotion of communal violence.
However, there are two fundamental problems with this view. Firstly, the section only says the Director-General needs to be “satisfied”, which is vague and subjective. The Director-General could be “satisfied” simply because he or she doesn’t like a certain group in our society.
Secondly, the group in question itself does not have to be advocating for violence, only that the existence of a group increases the risk of politically motivated violence. This is a very important distinction.
It means that, say, an anti-immigration group could be banned because the existence of that group may prompt violent protests by others. It also means that a Zionist group could be disbanded because its activities could provoke a politically violent response by an Islamist group. Experience demonstrates how these laws would license victim blaming and be used by governments to target political enemies.
Hate crime?? Says who?
The hate crime provisions in the legislation (at Schedule 1, Part 4, Section 114A.3 (2)) provide numerous definitions, including the following: A hate crime is conduct “that would, in all the circumstances, cause a reasonable person who is the target, or a member of the target group, to be intimidated, to fear harassment or violence, or to fear for their safety.” …
Recall, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) makes it unlawful to do an act that could offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate someone because of their race, colour, or national or ethnic origin. However, as bad as these provisions are, breaches carry civil rather than criminal penalties, meaning guilty parties cannot be sentenced to imprisonment. Conversely, the current legislation carries imprisonment of up to 15 years for breaching certain provisions.
The threshold for a hate crime is so low that it would have captured the No campaign against the Voice to Parliament.
Probably illegal now
One definition of a hate crime used in the legislation (at Schedule 1, Part 4, Section 114A.3(5)) is “conduct, or threat of conduct, (whether engaged in or threatened before or after this section commences) that involves, or would involve creating a serious risk to the health or safety of a section of the public,” and “that a person engaged in or threatened to engage in because of the person’s belief that: the targeted person or persons are distinguished by race or national or ethnic origin; or the targeted property is associated with a person or persons distinguished by race or national or ethnic origin.”
These provisions also need to be read in the context of the objects of the section which is to “protect the Australian community or part of the Australian community against social, economic, psychological and physical harm.”
These are absurdly subjective and vague and could be weaponised against any group.
For example, take the No campaign against the Voice to Parliament for example. It is obvious that a claim could be made that the actions of that campaign could have caused psychological harm to sections of the community, and that a member of the ‘target’ group would have been intimidated by the actions of the No campaign. All that would be needed would be for the Director-General of Security to merely be satisfied that there was a risk of political violence resulting from the No campaign, which could happen through violent actions of their opponents, and the No campaign could have been banned.
The IPA has done a tremendous job on this issue:
This email will let you know what the IPA has been doing, provide context for the laws, outline why claims about ‘safeguards’ for freedoms are misplaced, and provide you with analysis of everything that is wrong with the laws. …
The IPA was the driving force behind stopping these laws from being even worse than they now are. The original laws, for example, would have seen Australians going to jail, as we have seen in the UK, for social media posts about migration which were claimed to vilify someone on the basis of their race.
hat-tip Stephen Neil