The Federal Opposition insists it is working “in good faith” with the Government to reach a consensus on hate groups laws Anthony Albanese hopes to pass this week.
Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam said the Coalition would not bring forward its own legislation as Parliament resumes over the next few days, contrary to what Opposition leader Sussan Ley appeared to suggest last week.
“We’ve had what can only be described as a shambolic process over the past five or six days since the Government presented their legislation,” Mr Duniam said.
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“The fact is the Government have muffed this — they have completely stuffed it up.
“What we’re doing now — working through the provisions of this legislation at the invitation of government to see what can be salvaged from these laws — should have happened at the beginning.”
Jonno Duniam has blasted Labor over the hate law reforms. Credit: News Corp Australia
The Prime Minister made an embarrassing backdown on Labor’s proposed hate speech reforms on Saturday.
Mr Albanese announced that contentious racial vilification laws would be removed from an omnibus Bill to deliver hate speech law reform.
He was forced to make the concession after realising he did not have the numbers in the Senate to pass the legislation.
“That is what the Greens Party and the Liberals have made clear. So we deal with the Parliament that we have,” he said on Saturday.
The announcement prompted the Australia’s top Jewish organisation, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to renew its pleas to Labor and the Coalition to revive the hate speech laws, according to a report in The Australian.
“We are disappointed there will not be a serious vilification offence and very concerned at the message this will send that deliberate promotion of racial hatred is not considered serious enough to be criminalised,” ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim told the paper.
“Over the past two years amid record levels of anti-Semitism, we have seen synagogues, kindergartens, cars and homes being firebombed, culminating in the murder of 15 innocent people in an anti-Semitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach.
“How much worse do things need to get before we as a nation finally have the courage to tackle the deliberate promotion of anti-Semitic hatred that is the heart of the problem?”
The Government’s bigger Bill — which included the creation of a Federal offence for publicly prompting or inciting racial hatred — prompted concerns about the limits it may place on free speech.
Having insisted that Parliament be recalled to debate the Bill, Mr Albanese said the legislation would now be split into two parts — covering gun reform and a new hate groups regime.
Key racial vilification provisions would be removed.
Prior to the Bill being split, Ms Ley declared the legislation “unsalvageable” and ruled out supporting it as it was.
The Government hopes to pass he gun reform and hate groups Bills by the end of an emergency session of Parliament on Tuesday.
But it will require the support of either the Greens or the Opposition to get the measures through the Senate.
The Greens previously signalled they would only support the firearms proposal.
On Sunday, senior ministers Mark Butler and Katy Gallagher said Labor had met Parliament’s demands around the reforms and called on the Coalition to support the new Bills.
“It’s time for action,” Senator Gallagher said.
“These are really important responses to what we saw happen in Bondi. There is no reason to delay them. We’ve taken out the bit that people were concerned about.”
Mr Butler said MPs should move past the politics and grasp the opportunity for national unity “in the face of the worst terror attack in our history”.
“We have got to grasp the opportunity to . . . crack down on hate preachers once and for all, crack down on these hate groups that are doing protests and fomenting the sort of hate that we saw drive that awful terror attack,” he said.
“Enough of the politics, enough of the debate about whether the Bill should be big or should be separate.
“We’ve got a focused challenge for the parliament this Tuesday, and it’s time Sussan Ley got on board and came together and saw . . . a moment of national unity which I think will serve the country enormously well.”
But speaking in Canberra on Sunday, Senator Duniam said the Opposition still had grave concerns about elements of the legislation, including any unintended consequences that may flow from it.
“Contained in those provisions around racial vilification and the need to have a religious text exemption, were the biggest shift in laws governing speech in this country in more than half a century,” he said.
“You can’t trifle with that, so we had to get it right.”
The Tasmania Senator said Australians deserved a response to what happened in Bondi and Opposition MPs would do their best to work through the process.
“We want to make sure that any measure that gives a government officer or a minister powers to list a group has appropriate safeguards around it,” Senator Duniam said.
“I can’t give any guarantee about whether we’ll be able to reach an agreement with the Government on any changes to their laws, but we’re going through the process now.”
