Albanese pledged to protect Australians from hate speech. Sources familiar with the legislation said it had been weakened in the final stages.
Labor has scrubbed criminal penalties for seriously vilifying minority groups from its upcoming hate crimes bill, just months after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to introduce stronger measures to protect people from hate speech.
The softer version of the laws will disappoint those who had demanded strong action on hate speech, such as LGBTQ advocates and Jewish representatives, but should satisfy stakeholders who were more concerned about freedom of religion and speech, such as Christian groups. Victoria’s anti-vilification laws, for example, prohibit behaviour that “incites hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule” of people based on race or religion. The threshhold for the federal law would have been much higher, but people consulted on it were at odds over the balance between free speech and making the protections strong enough to win prosecutions.
But Albanese, when asked in question time on Tuesday if the government would enact comprehensive vilification protections for LGBTQ Australians, said: “The government will be introducing legislation this week to create new criminal offences and strengthen protections against hate crimes”.
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