This article was originally published by QNews. You can find the original article here.
LGBTQIA+ community advocates have welcomed proposed amendments that would see “sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status and disability” added to federal hate crimes legislation for the first time but are concerned that the changes don’t go far enough.
The Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024 aims to strengthen the “urging violence offences” in current federal hate crimes legislation to reduce the “fault element” to “recklessness”, protect an expanded list of targeted groups, and remove a “good faith” defence for offenders.
“The effect of these amendments would be that the offences would apply where a person is reckless as to whether the force or violence urged against a group, or member of a group, will occur; that is, if the person is aware of a substantial risk that the force or violence will occur and it is unjustifiable in the circumstances to take the risk,” an explanatory note for the bill states.
“The existing requirement for the prosecution to prove intent for this element of the offence sets the bar so high that conduct which is reprehensible enough to appropriately attract criminal liability is not captured by the offences.
“Amending the requirement to ‘recklessness’ will align the offence with the standard fault elements in the Criminal Code and common law. The existing maximum penalties for these offences would remain unchanged.
“The Bill would establish new offences … for threatening to use force or violence against groups … or members of groups … distinguished by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, national or ethnic origin or political opinion, where a reasonable person who is a member of the targeted group would fear that the threat will be carried out.
“The offences are intended to capture persons who are targeted by the conduct because of their membership of one, or more than one, protected group.
“The new offences would address a gap in Commonwealth laws by criminalising conduct that involves a direct threat from one person to another. This supplements the urging force or violence offences … which apply where a person urges another person to use force or violence.”
However advocates are concerned that hate speech and vilification are not covered by the proposed changes in themselves.
“We should be stopping hate before it translates into violence,” Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said earlier this week.
“The current threats to the community are real, severe and worrying. We are currently working with local groups across the country who are facing threats to their events, intimidation and vile hate speech, just for being who they are.
“Small but noisy fringe groups are getting louder with libraries and councils now caught up in the rising tide of hate against our community.”
“LGBTIQ+ communities do not have sufficient protection under the law. For our communities the need for greater protection from hate and vilification is urgent. These laws must cover hate speech and conduct as well as threats of violence.
“Our political leaders should be sending a clear message that Australia is not a country of division and hate and this kind of harmful rhetoric has no place on our streets, in our libraries and online.
“We want a federal law that protects all of us. The patchwork of laws across the country have crucial gaps and are not fit for purpose.”
Brown said Equality Australia is currently working with Pride groups across the country whose events are being shut down and organisers harassed.
Equality Australia is also monitoring groups trying to enact book bans, alongside propagating hateful and damaging stereotypes about our communities. They say hate speech and conduct is a common element in each of these instances.
Just.Equal Australia says the Federal Government must do more to prohibit hate speech against LGBTIQA+ Australians following the tabling of this new hate crime legislation.
The Government’s new law will prohibit incitement to violence, but not incitement to hatred as the Government promised.
“The Government’s plan to amend the criminal code to prohibit incitement to violence against LGBTIQA+ people needs to occur because we are one of the groups not already protected,” Just.Equal spokesperson, Rodney Croome, said.
“But with rising hate against our community, especially transgender people, our top priority is to prohibit vilification against LGBTIQA+ people in the Sex Discrimination Act.”
“Prohibiting incitement to violence but not incitement to hatred is like curing the symptoms rather than preventing the illness.”
Croome said anti-LGBTQIA+ vilification has already been prohibited in Tasmania, Queensland, the ACT, NT and partially in NSW.
“With vilification protections in place in several states and territories, the federal government has no excuses.”
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