In their rush to get a political fix to antisemitism, both sides of politics chose to ignore the very real risks of such legislation.
In Jerusalem on Tuesday, former prime minister Scott Morrison spoke powerfully about the evil of antisemitism. He quoted the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who warned that the hatred that begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
Morrison correctly identified the antisemitism of today as one of the products of the cultural decline of the West. The former PM said, “grievance politics … excuses failure, displaces responsibility and justifies hatred … When everything becomes systemic oppression and nothing is personal responsibility, liberal norms collapse. Institutions that adopt this mindset – universities, media, cultural bodies and even religious organisations – become incubators for those who wish to destroy the very liberal society such institutions are supposed to nourish and protect.”
Strong stuff. And true. And the only way to defend liberal norms is through debate and discussion. A liberal society can be maintained only if freedom of speech exists.
Given what he said in Israel, it could be that Morrison has come to realise how utterly wrong he was when he dismissed freedom of speech as unimportant. In 2017, as treasurer in the Turnbull government, he opposed attempts to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. He famously announced his opinion about freedom of speech: “As a senior figure in this government … I know this issue doesn’t create one job, doesn’t open one business, doesn’t give anyone one extra hour.”
Morrison revealed he didn’t comprehend two things.
First, that freedom of speech is a fundamental norm of the kind of society Morrison claims he wants to fight to preserve. To suggest, as he did in his Jerusalem speech, that the exercise of religion should be regulated by the government, is to employ the freedom he once said he didn’t care about.
“There is no sunset provision to the law. Until it is repealed it will be on the statute books forever.”
Second, that laws like Section 18C operate to censor those who argue for basic liberal norms such as racial equality.
The law which makes it a civil offence to “offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate” a person on the basis of their race is more than merely symbolic. All the high-profile prosecutions under the section have been either of conservatives, or of everyday Australians.
In 2016, three students at Queensland University of Technology were sued under 18C for $250,000, following comments they had made on social media after one of them was ejected from computer room on campus reserved for the exclusive use of Indigenous students. The students wrote on Facebook that race should not determine access to university facilities. One of the remarks that was claimed to have been unlawful was, “QUT stopping segregation with segregation …?” After years of litigation, the case against the students was eventually dismissed by the Federal Court.
Proposed by Labor and passed with the support of the Liberal Party, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act now makes saying “stopping segregation with segregation” a potential “hate crime”. Attending a Black Lives Matter protest while holding a sign that says “All Lives Matter” would almost certainly be a crime.
The national media has been remarkably incurious about the contents of the act. The fact that the Nationals, One Nation, the Greens, many independents, and one Liberal senator all opposed the legislation didn’t attract the attention of the press gallery.
Negotiated in secret between the ALP and the Liberals, and rushed through the parliament, the new law doesn’t specifically address antisemitism. What it does do is dramatically expand the definition of “hate crime” to encompass not only acts of violence, but also words that could cause psychological harm. It also gives the minister for home affairs the power to designate an organisation as “a prohibited hate group”, therefore making it a crime to be a member of that organisation.
In their rush to get a political fix to antisemitism, Labor and Liberal MPs chose to ignore the very real risks of such legislation. There is no sunset provision to the law. Until it is repealed it will be on the statute books forever.
Presumably Labor and Liberal MPs believe it is unthinkable that the law would ever be used against them.
However, as the past few years of this country’s history have revealed, things once thought unthinkable are now, unfortunately, all too thinkable.
