Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamiot.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, January sixteenth, twenty twenty six. A new twist
Speaker 1: in the Adelaide Writers Week saga Anti Israel author Randa
Speaker 1: Abdelphatar has been invited back and a new board has
Speaker 1: issued a groveling apology for dumping her from the lineup.
Speaker 1: The festival's former board disinvited Abdelphatar from it's now canceled
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six event, citing cultural sensitivities following the bond
Speaker 1: Eyed terror attack, prompting a mass boycott. Now a new
Speaker 1: board has reinstated the author for the twenty twenty seven
Speaker 1: festival and apologized unreservedly for the decision. That story is
Speaker 1: live right now at the Australian dot com dot au unsalvageable,
Speaker 1: rushed too far, not far enough. Everyone's got some thing
Speaker 1: to say about a bill designed to curb anti Semitism
Speaker 1: and prevent another tragedy like the Bondai massacre. It'll be
Speaker 1: debated in the Federal Parliament next week, but the government
Speaker 1: is alleging hypocrisy and MPs say they were blindsided as
Speaker 1: the Coalition and Greens pull their support for the reforms.
Speaker 1: That's today's episode.
Speaker 2: The bill is a combating anti Semitism, hate an extremism bill,
Speaker 2: but from.
Speaker 3: What we have seen so far, it looks pretty unissavage.
Speaker 4: The Council of Australian Jury would urge the Coalition not
Speaker 4: to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
Speaker 2: Why don't you deal with your problem, mate, is fundamentalist
Speaker 2: Islam from the western suburbs of Sydney.
Speaker 3: This bill needed much more than the very short, sharp,
Speaker 3: perfunctory review that's been undertaken over the last forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: So these are complex laws and our focus is ensuring
Speaker 2: their effective and practical.
Speaker 1: The government's new hate speech laws were supposed to curb
Speaker 1: anti semitism and extremism. In the wake of the Heineker
Speaker 1: terror attack at Bondai Beach.
Speaker 5: As the sun was setting on Sunday, two gunmen, a
Speaker 5: father and son, open fire as families gathered to celebrate
Speaker 5: the Jewish Festival of Lights. Fifteen innocent lives were taken
Speaker 5: and more than forty people were injured.
Speaker 1: Opposition leader Susan Lee has her own ideas.
Speaker 3: These changes to legislation will tackle antisemitism head on in education,
Speaker 3: the arts and society more broadly and critically enshrine a
Speaker 3: definition of antisemitism in law.
Speaker 1: It's a move that took the Prime Minister by surprise,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 6: Find it absolutely astonishing that they are continuing to play politics.
Speaker 6: If they have amendments, by all means, put them forward,
Speaker 6: pick up the phone, engage constructively and we will engage
Speaker 6: because this needs to be a moment that is above
Speaker 6: party politics.
Speaker 1: And it blindsided some of the opposition leader's own team.
Speaker 7: Well, her comments had a very mixed response. I actually
Speaker 7: heard from nearly a dozen coalition MP's and senators pretty
Speaker 7: alarmed actually with some of the language.
Speaker 1: Sarah Eisen is a senior political reporter with The Australian.
Speaker 7: They were listening very closely when she said that next
Speaker 7: week the opposition will Now this is will, not is considering,
Speaker 7: this is time frame. This is her saying the way forward.
Speaker 7: And that's what a heap of people called me about,
Speaker 7: saying she is absolutely going off on her own house.
Speaker 7: This has got no tick off. No one is expecting
Speaker 7: us to pass our own legislation next week. And then
Speaker 7: a bit of clarification I guess from the Leader's office
Speaker 7: that she was saying they're going to progress their package,
Speaker 7: and by that she just sort of means argue for it,
Speaker 7: and then sometime in the future they'll try to pass
Speaker 7: maybe some private members bills that go to very specific things.
Speaker 7: But a lot of this got lost, and unfortunately, at
Speaker 7: an already very message time and fractious time within the coalition,
Speaker 7: it only added to that internal debate, division and frustration
Speaker 7: which we've really seen in the last week or so.
Speaker 1: The government's proposed in Omnibus All Encompassing Bill, Part one
Speaker 1: is working with the States on gun reform, import controls,
Speaker 1: tighter rules to stop three D printing of gun parts,
Speaker 1: end a buyback.
Speaker 7: Now, the second piece of this omnibus bill, and arguably
Speaker 7: the much more contentious part, is the hate speech legislation.
Speaker 7: And that's because some of the thresholds around what you're
Speaker 7: allowed to say when it comes to hate speech, whether
Speaker 7: that's anti Semitic or so on, it's pretty high. It's
Speaker 7: about inciting violence, So it's saying no, we're going to
Speaker 7: lower that from the insarting of violence to this insarting
Speaker 7: of hatred for the purpose of intimidation and harassment. It's
Speaker 7: very much aimed at that anti Semitic problem. It also
Speaker 7: talks about hate preachers very specifically, and of course banning
Speaker 7: certain groups. This is after years of the Australian government
Speaker 7: and governments of both side of politics trying to ban
Speaker 7: his bacteria and the other problem which has been more
Speaker 7: recent about the neo Nazis National Socialist Network. This creates
Speaker 7: a sort of system where you can criminalize a group
Speaker 7: that you've categorized as being banned, and if you're part
Speaker 7: of it, if you fund it, if you're training with
Speaker 7: it or whatever, you're facing not just financial penalties but
Speaker 7: up to fifteen years of jail time. The bill does
Speaker 7: a heap of stuff, but in this area of policy,
Speaker 7: when it comes to constraining speech in any way, when
Speaker 7: it comes to maybe constraining religion or religious text in
Speaker 7: any way, it's very vexed. Both the left and the
Speaker 7: right and the Greens and the Coalition is what I
Speaker 7: mean by that, have a shopping list of concerns when
Speaker 7: it comes to the legislation.
Speaker 1: So what does Susan Lee say is the problem with
Speaker 1: the bill as it currently stands.
Speaker 7: So her concern and the concern of a lot of
Speaker 7: her colleagues is this doesn't target what they call the
Speaker 7: extreme Islamic movement. In their perfect world, it would be
Speaker 7: really targeted on this one cohort of society. And they're
Speaker 7: very worried as well about an exemption in the bill
Speaker 7: that goes to the religious texts. Essentially, in this bill
Speaker 7: it says you can quote a religious text or even
Speaker 7: discuss it, and it has to be for the purpose
Speaker 7: of religious teaching or discussion. They're also worried by things
Speaker 7: like the fact that there's no definition of a religious
Speaker 7: text that is up to the court to define that,
Speaker 7: just like there's no ability to say definitively that under
Speaker 7: this legislation from the river to the Sea or death
Speaker 7: to the IDF that those phrases that we've heard chanted
Speaker 7: at protests would be stopped from happening. And this lack
Speaker 7: of clarity and definitiveness over all of this has got
Speaker 7: the Caulution to this point where they're saying that the
Speaker 7: bill doesn't really target anti Semitism and it's not cracking
Speaker 7: down on Islamic extremism, and so really in its current form,
Speaker 7: they are starting to harden their position against this particular
Speaker 7: bill and all of those things with it.
Speaker 1: Some Jewish groups have urged the Coalition not to oppose
Speaker 1: the Government's Hate Speech Bill as it currently stands. They've
Speaker 1: acknowledged there are some imperfections with that bill, including that
Speaker 1: so called loophole that you mentioned earlier, but the head
Speaker 1: of the Executive Council of Australian Jury has said that
Speaker 1: the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good in
Speaker 1: this situation. Other leaders have agreed with Susan Lee that
Speaker 1: this legislation feels rushed, that it's happening too soon after Bondie.
Speaker 1: How does Susan Lee reassure Jewish Australians and the wider
Speaker 1: Jewish community that the Coalition supports them and can she
Speaker 1: actually offer that reassurance when they're debating the intricacies of
Speaker 1: a very complex bill.
Speaker 7: So at about four pm on Thursday, we heard from
Speaker 7: the Jewish Board of Deputies in New South Wales and
Speaker 7: they were saying that yeah, they really want the Coalition
Speaker 7: to be the one to do the deal with the government,
Speaker 7: but they weren't having their language directed at the Coalition.
Speaker 7: They were saying it's up to the government actually to
Speaker 7: give way more time than it has and ensure that
Speaker 7: they are doing the deal with the coalition. Rather than
Speaker 7: the Greens. So yes, there is pressure on the Coalition
Speaker 7: to come back to the table. But the longer this
Speaker 7: goes on and the longer it becomes unclear of how
Speaker 7: Labour's going to do this, the more pressure also builds
Speaker 7: on the government from the Jewish community and otherwise.
Speaker 1: Coming up without the Coalition on side, where does the
Speaker 1: government turn for support? On Thursday, the Greens also announced
Speaker 1: they won't support the government's proposed hate speech laws in
Speaker 1: their current form. Green Senator David Shubridge said the legislation
Speaker 1: is too narrow in its scope and doesn't go far
Speaker 1: enough to protect the LGBTQ community and people with disability.
Speaker 4: The same hateful ideology that was directed against the Jewish
Speaker 4: community at Bondai could have as easily been directed against
Speaker 4: women in positions of power, or the LGBTIQ community and
Speaker 4: those vulnerable parts of our community. They absolutely deserve equal
Speaker 4: protections from this parliament.
Speaker 1: The Greens have been the government's best hope of passing
Speaker 1: the bill, So what now? Does the government have any
Speaker 1: other options or is it back to the drawing board.
Speaker 7: It's part of saying well, the and the Nationals don't
Speaker 7: look like they're going to support you, So we pretty
Speaker 7: much are going to ask for all of this, knowing
Speaker 7: full well it would be incredible to get one hundred
Speaker 7: percent of that. But by leveraging it so hard and
Speaker 7: by asking for a hundred things, when you get maybe
Speaker 7: the five things you really want, that's fantastic. And the
Speaker 7: way you do that is with this kind of negotiating.
Speaker 7: You know, I think a lot of Jewish groups would
Speaker 7: really prefer this be done with the coalition, in part
Speaker 7: because it would make it a bipartisan bill, but similarly
Speaker 7: because there's been an adversarial nature to the relationship between
Speaker 7: the Greens and the Jewish community. They don't like this
Speaker 7: idea of the government saying, hey, just trust us, we'll
Speaker 7: address your concerns after this, when right now is when
Speaker 7: they've got a point of leverage. So they want to
Speaker 7: see other forms of hate included in this bill rather
Speaker 7: than the government promising to get to it later. They've
Speaker 7: also raised concerns about this extension of powers given to
Speaker 7: the Home Affairs Minister to counsel visas more easily or
Speaker 7: refuse them. No surprise, they don't like the loring of
Speaker 7: the threshold or any breach to what they see is
Speaker 7: due process. The bill would have to be really radically redesigned,
Speaker 7: it feels like, regardless of if it's a deal with
Speaker 7: the coalition all the Greens Party, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: changes the government's looking at having to implement if it
Speaker 7: has a chance of getting this done.
Speaker 1: Sarah Eison is a senior political reporter with The Australian.
Speaker 1: You can read all the latest about the government's proposed
Speaker 1: hate speech legislation and all the nation's best news and
Speaker 1: politics right now at the Australian dot com dot au