The government will push to amend its shake-up to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act to ensure the new definition of harass can incorporate bullying behaviour waged over social media or email.
The changes tabled in the Senate last night are aimed at ensuring the word harass does not only capture conduct committed within the vicinity of an individual, but could also cover behaviour over the internet.
The government is proposing to reform section 18C by making it unlawful to harass or intimidate someone on the basis of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin and is pushing for procedural changes at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Currently, 18C makes it unlawful to offend, insult or humiliate an individual because of their race.
The government was holding meetings last night with some crossbench senators on its 18C changes, including Derryn Hinch.
A second set of amendments will respond to concerns raised over the proposed changes to the complaints handling processes at the AHRC after its president, Gillian Triggs, identified problems with the bill in its original form.
One of these amendments will ensure the legislation will be able to knock out frivolous and vexatious complaints already lodged at the AHRC a change with which Labor yesterday raised serious concerns. As revealed yesterday byThe Australian, this course of action was urged by the Senate legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee in a report tabled shortly after midday.
Its one thing to introduce procedural changes going forward, said opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus. Its another to tell the Human Rights Commission that, for their current caseload of some 2000 cases, many of which are nearing completion, that it has to go over them again and run the ruler over them again using the new procedural arrangements that the government is here creating.
Mr Dreyfus toldThe Australianlast night the amendments had been delivered at five minutes to midnight and noted they arrived after debate on the bill had already begun. He said Labor would look at the amendments to the procedural changes but said they did not appear, on first glance, to fully address the many drafting errors that had been raised about the bill.
The government has opted not to split its bill despite the opposition of Labor, the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team to the substantive changes to section 18C an obstacle which will prevent the passage of the legislation in its current form.
Opposition Senate leader Penny Wong said there was the possibility of Labor negotiating to pass some of the changes to the complaints handling processes.But she argued the government had botched its legislation by introducing the bill for debate before it tabled its amendments.
At the Labor caucus meeting yesterday, indigenous senator Pat Dodson said the handling of the changes had been a shambles. If this had been an Aboriginal organisation, it would be sacked, Senator Dodson said.
The Australian, 29 March 2017
