TONY Abbott has ruled out reviving the government’s shelved changes to race hate laws despite campaigners reigniting their push to remove the shackles on free speech.
Conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs emailed supporters saying the Prime Minister might have given up but “the fight to restore freedom of speech in Australia is not over’’.
Mr Abbott abandoned the proposed changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act after they proved deeply unpopular, especially in ethnic communities.
The government had proposed scrapping the protections making it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate other people or groups of people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin and replace them with provisions making it unlawful to vilify or intimidate others on similar grounds.
Mr Abbott ditched the controversial changes on Tuesday while announcing plans to beef up Australia’s counter-terrorism powers to prevent a surge in domestic attacks from jihadists being “radicalised and militarised’’ in overseas conflicts.
He said any reworking of 18C was a needless complication to the government’s efforts to “crack down on the kind of incitement to terrorism which we are now seeing in our community’’.
Asked if the changes to race hate laws, which were an election pledge, had been permanently shelved, Mr Abbott said: “Look, it’s off the table. It’s off the table, it’s gone, it’s disappeared.
“Our intention is to work as effectively as we can with the communities of Australia to ensure that we take a ‘Team Australia’ approach to countering terrorism and to building our nation,’’ he told the ABC.
But Bill Shorten expressed concern that Mr Abbott had only “temporarily retreated from watering down protections against hate speech in this country’’.
The government copped a community backlash against the proposed changes, which were championed by Attorney-General George Brandis. His comment in March that people had a “right to be bigots’’ proved a lightning rod for opposition.
Asked if he had been rolled, Senator Brandis said: “Well, you know what this business is like: you win a few, you lose a few.”
He said the government’s agenda had been too cluttered, and Mr Abbott had made a leader’s call.
“I accept the Prime Minister’s view that the government needs to focus on a smaller number of core priorities and that was the reason for his decision,’’ Senator Brandis told Sky News.
The Opposition Leader said Mr Abbott needed “to come out and just say ‘no one has a right to be a racist in Australia, no one’s got the right to be a bigot’.’’
“I think the Abbott government’s just put the watering down of hate speech laws in the top drawer — it may be off the table — but it’s sitting there in the top drawer of the Liberal Party,’’ Mr Shorten said.
source: theaustralian.com
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 