In 1950, the Menzies Government introduced laws to ban the Australian Communist Party. Prime Minister Menzies told the Parliament that communists must be banned because they had “perfected the technique” of “peace demonstrations … not to promote peace but to prevent or impair defence preparations in the democracies.”
The Parliament voted for the laws but the High Court struck them down as unconstitutional and the Australian Communist Party was allowed to continue.
Just like the 1950s, politicians are seeking to pass draconian and unconstitutional laws so they can be seen to be doing something about an ideological threat. The last few years have seen mass protests to “Free Palestine”. Some of these protestors have expressed repulsive views. Some blame these protests for creating the fertile ground upon which the tragic Bondi attacks occurred.
Next week the Australian Parliament is being recalled to pass laws against “antisemitism, hate and extremism”. Politicians are once again acting under the delusion that we can defeat ideas (even repulsive ones) by criminalising them. Just like the Menzies Government’s attempts in the 1950s, it is the wrong approach.
The Government’s laws provide unprecedented powers to the government to control the speech and communication of the Australian people. The laws define a “hate crime” as anything that causes, or would cause, “serious harm to a person” based on conduct that targeted a person’s “race or national or ethnic origin”.
Groups that are suspected of conducting such hate crimes can be banned.
People that “promote or incite hatred of another person … because of [their] race, colour or national or ethnic origin” can face five years in jail if their speech causes someone “to be intimidated”. The law says that it is “immaterial whether … the conduct actually results in any person feeling intimidated.”
The proposed laws are so vague that a wide variety of legitimate political communication could be banned.
The current government is facing significant criticism of its immigration policies that have allowed 1.3 million migrants into Australia in just three years. I have argued that we should not take so many people in from countries that have different cultures and customs than us so quickly. We must make sure people that do move here adopt our values and lifestyles. Taking in so many people so quickly simply overwhelms our ability to assimilate people while maintaining a harmonious country.
My argument against mass migration could easily fall foul of the above definitions because what makes someone “intimidated” is left vague and undefined. The proposed laws provide no protections for political communication which is a right due to all Australians under the Australian Constitution.
These laws could easily become a trojan horse to silence criticism of politicians, not to protect people from hate. It should never be a crime in a democracy (let alone in Australia) to express hate towards politicians.
The laws also allow authorities to tap your phones if they suspect you of committing hate crimes. The laws are retrospective so that even things done before the laws come into effect can be deemed hate crimes.
The Australian Government would rely on an international agreement against racism as the basis on which it has the power to pass these laws.
Just because a politician says something is racist does not make it so. As Justice Fullagar said in striking down Menzies attempt to ban the Communist Party:
“A power to make laws with respect to lighthouses does not authorize the making of a law with respect to anything which is, in the opinion of the law-maker, a lighthouse.”
The Government’s proposed laws are not about outlawing hate against other persons, they are aimed at outlawing criticism of governments.
We defeated communism not by passing laws but by pointing out how silly a dictatorship of the proletariat was.
We should heed that lesson to defeat the radical Islamic ideology that inspired the murder of 15 innocent Jewish Australians last year. We already have laws that make it illegal to promote violence. They should be enforced instead of passing new laws that restrict the free speech of all Australians and does not tackle the division that we have unnecessarily imported into Australia.
