Australia is considering a new bill to combat anti-semitism, hate, and extremism, which critics argue is overly broad and potentially criminalizes speech, with particular concern that it disproportionately targets Christianity while offering exemptions for other religious groups.
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Well, next week, Australia will take up
consideration of their combating
anti-semitism, hate, and extremism bill
in Parliament. This is one of the most
draconian pieces of legislation to hit
the English-speaking world. The Green
Party has now come out posting their
concerns, saying they will not support
it in its current form and that that it
may have some unintended consequences.
You think they But it's funny, their
their concerns seem to go the opposite.
They don't think maybe it goes far
enough. They think, "Hey, we should just
why are we just covering like religious
Jews, like against anti-semitism? Why
shouldn't we also cover LGBTQ plus?
Like, let's put everything we can into
this hate speech bucket."
Okay. Have they gone completely insane
in Australia? Here to help us understand
what is happening is Maria Z. Uh,
welcome back to the show from Z Media.
Great to have you here, keeping her eye
on the pulse of everything what's
happening there. Um, how close are we to
seeing these things actually passed?
Maria, great to see you.
>> Great to see you as well. Thank you for
having me back. It's yet to be
determined at this stage. It looks like
the Greens do want some amendments made
as you said. The opposition party, which
is actually so the the party in power at
the moment is Labor, which is kind of
like the Democrats here. Uh, the
opposition is the Liberal Party, which
is actually more supposed to be more
like Republicans. But Australia is very
similar to the US in the sense that what
you have most of the time is a uni
party. So the opposition, the liberals
aka like the Republicans are saying,
"We're not really uh supporting this. We
actually want to introduce our own
version of this." Whichever way you
turn, they're all saying seemingly that
it doesn't go far enough or they want to
amend it in some ways. No one's saying
actually no, this should be abolished
altogether. And it should be, Clayton,
because there is no such thing as hate
speech. Hate speech is simply speech
that certain people don't like. And
guess what? You're not God. You don't
get to decide who is and isn't allowed
to say what they want to say. And it's
just insane to me. But what we do have
is this lockstep approach across
multiple countries. We have similar
pushes here in the US for these types of
hate speech laws. So people in America
should be paying attention to what's
happening over there because similar
arguments are being made here. Now, if
you want, I can take you through some of
the most egregious points in this bill.
It says that it criminalizes speech that
merely causes fear, even if no harm
occurs, and it results in 5 years
imprisonment. This is very similar to
previous uh laws that they've passed,
which suggests that if you say anything
quote unquote reckless, you could go to
jail without trial. Um, it defines
public space so broadly that it would
include anything that you say on the
internet. The law states that it's
irrelevant whether hatred actually
occurs or whe whether anyone truly felt
fear. You are guilty.
>> Sorry, how are you going to measure
that? Right. It's it's 5 years in prison
because you caused fear. Someone had
fear based on something you said on the
internet. But then we don't really care
if we can even measure your fear. So how right?
right?
even if no hatred actually occurred.
It's basically the government saying we
get to decide unilaterally what we do
and don't like. That's what this bill
is. Um they say that you're guilty of
displaying a prohibited symbol unless
you can prove a religious, academic or
journalistic exemption. I do want to
talk about the implications for
Christianity in this bill as well,
Clayton, because I think Australia is
moving to criminalize Christianity and
that seems to be clear in this bill.
I'll get to that. Uh it says that the uh
Australian federal police minister can
declare quote unquote prohibited groups
without any procedural fairness. Uh so
they decide who is and isn't prohibited.
Obviously this will have implications
for any political parties that rise up
or community action groups. Um you know
people that form groups to push back on
legislation for example they could
suddenly declare they're prohibited or
hostile to the government. And the
powers can actually extend to actions
that occurred outside Australia. So say
you're a citizen that says I it's no
longer safe to live in this country. I'm
leaving. And on top of that, they can
actually do it uh based on retroactive
conduct. So no one knows how far back
they want to go. Yes, they no one knows
how far back they want to go, but that's included.
