Allan government faces showdown with faith groups over hate laws

A proposed overhaul of Victoria’s hate laws has provoked a backlash from church leaders and faith-based groups who fear the reforms will erode protections for religious freedom and invite discrimination against people expressing orthodox beliefs.

The Allan government is also facing opposition from women’s rights groups concerned that the proposed new laws – in which existing protections for racial and religious vilification are expanded to cover a broad range of personal attributes, including gender identity – will be weaponised by activists.

Former MP Fiona Patten was the original architect of the proposed reform of Victoria’s hate laws.Credit: Justin McManus

The original architect of the reforms, former independent MP Fiona Patten, dismissed these objections as “bullshit”. She said the new laws would give women, girls, people living with disabilities and LGBTQI people overdue protection from abuse.

“We saw women being attacked so relentlessly online, it desperately affected their mental health and also, their ability to work,” she said. “We saw the harassment of people on the grounds of their sexuality, and increased rates of suicide within the LGBTI community. These were the reasons we went down this path.”

A protracted reform process, which began five years ago with Patten’s private member’s bill, will culminate this month with the introduction of the government’s Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification) Bill.

The omnibus legislation, if supported in its current form, would radically redraw the state’s anti-vilification framework.

Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes says the reform legislation will be introduced in the next sitting week of state parliament. Credit: Eddie Jim

It seeks to abolish the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act introduced by the Bracks government, establish civil offences within the Equal Opportunity Act for vilification on the grounds of race, religion, disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association, and insert offences for serious vilification into the Crime Act.

The proposed changes would also lower the bar for civil and criminal vilification offences, increase the maximum penalty for serious vilification from six months to five years in jail and introduce a new “genuine political purpose” defence for people accused of inciting hatred.

Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said while the church “abhors vilification of any kind”, it was concerned that proposed changes to the “religious purpose” exemption currently in place, combined with the lowered legal threshold for vilification, could erode freedom of religious expression.

Comensoli met with Attorney General Jaclyn Symes last week to express the church’s concerns.

Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli.Credit: Penny Stephens

“Attempts to lower the threshold of what constitutes vilification must not stifle genuine discussion and acts done in good faith, particularly the sharing of religious beliefs by people of faith,” he told The Age. “The current proposals include highly subjective elements that risk limiting legitimate religious speech while the religious purposes defence is not sufficiently clear.”

Symes has sought to assure faith leaders that communications done in genuine, good-faith observance of religious practice would be exempt from civil complaints and criminal prosecution.

“These laws will appropriately reflect the seriousness of incitements and threats made against all Victorians better than the current acts,” she said. “Freedom of expression is important, but this must be balanced with the vital right for Victorians to be safe in public life and that’s what our laws will aim to balance.”

Melbourne Law School professor Beth Gaze, an expert in equality and discrimination law, said the proposed legislation would bring Victoria into line with other states. She said vilification law changes were usually controversial and rarely carried a political benefit.

“Governments can only see a loss of votes in this,” Gaze said. “I suspect that is why it has taken so long to get through.”

The limitations of Victoria’s current anti-vilification laws are illustrated by the paucity of complaints lodged in the past five years.

The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act is regulated by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. Between July 1, 2019 and June 30 this year, the Commission received almost 20 complaints a year on average for racial and religious vilification.

Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner Ro Allen, who previously served as the state’s commissioner for LGBTQI communities, said reform was needed.

“The current law does not go far enough to protect Victorians,” they said. “The law needs to be changed to provide broader protection against hateful conduct so that people in Victoria are safer and perpetrators are held to account.”

The Islamic Council of Victoria supports expanding anti-vilification laws beyond race and religion. It has argued since 2019 that better protections are needed for Muslim women, who are targeted both for their sex and religion.

But the ICV has urged the government not to abolish its standalone protection against racial and religious vilification, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act (RRTA), as the Middle East conflict has produced a surge in reported Islamophobia.

“We don’t support the termination of the RRTA and the inclusion of race and religion with other protected attributes in one ‘cover all’ legislation,” ICV president Adel Salman said. “We believe that racial and religious vilification remains a serious problem – and is, in fact, increasing – and requires specific remedies.”

Islamic Council of Victoria president Adel Salman.Credit: Jason South

Jewish Community Council of Victoria chief executive Naomi Levin said the current protections against vilification were weak and ineffective, as shown by the dearth of prosecutions despite the reported increase in antisemitic incidents since the war in Gaza began.

Levin also wants the new laws to capture people who use “Zionist” as a term of race or religious-based hatred.

“It is noticeable that local bigots will substitute the word ‘Zionist’ for the word ‘Jew’ to somehow make hate speech acceptable,” she said. “We know that these bigots are not really attacking Zionism, which is a belief or movement, they are attacking Jews.”

Australian Christian Lobby Victorian director Jasmine Yuen said the proposed changes had “sent a shockwave” through the Christian community. “My fear is that preaching and teaching in Christian schools and churches on anything regarding biblical sexual ethics and God’s creation of biology could be considered hate speech if someone feels it is offensive to them.”

Melbourne rabbi Gabi Kaltmann said the ACL stance was flawed: “It’s hard to imagine that any person of faith would oppose the idea that all Victorians should feel safe.”

Bronwyn Winter, a spokeswoman for Australian Feminists for Women’s Rights, which campaigns for the sex-based rights of women, welcomed the inclusion of sex as a protected attribute to give women and girls legal recourse against sexualised vilification. But she said women could themselves be at risk of being criminalised if they defended sex-based rights at the expense of trans rights.

Women’s Rights Network Australia, which also campaigns for women’s sex-based rights, was more blunt in its submission to the government about the law changes: “We believe that if this Bill passes, it will be weaponised by trans activists against women.”

Symes said the reform legislation would be introduced in the next sitting week of parliament beginning November 26.

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