Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
Speaker 3: the fifth of April.
Speaker 4: I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
Speaker 3: In today's deep dive, we're going to speak about the
Speaker 3: hate crime laws that have author JK. Rowling telling her
Speaker 3: fourteen million followers that she should be arrested. The laws
Speaker 3: aimed to protect people against hate crimes, but they've also
Speaker 3: attracted some criticism, both in Scotland and.
Speaker 2: Across the world.
Speaker 3: We'll tell you everything you need to know in today's
Speaker 3: deep dive, But first Sam, it's making headlines.
Speaker 4: The National Anti Corruption Commission says it's conducting fifteen corruption investigations.
Speaker 4: The Commission hasn't provided much detail around the focus of
Speaker 4: the probes, but it did confirm five a part of
Speaker 4: joint investigations with other agencies. The regulatory body has received
Speaker 4: over twenty seven hundred referrals of suspected corruptions since it
Speaker 4: launched in July last year. It confirmed it's currently assessing
Speaker 4: around four hundred and fifty of those claims to determine
Speaker 4: if they weren't further corruption investigation.
Speaker 3: Spending on transport increased by twelve point three percent in
Speaker 3: the twelve months to February. According to the latest data
Speaker 3: from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Transport was the biggest
Speaker 3: contributor to the overall increase in household spending, which overall
Speaker 3: grew by three point six percent in the past year.
Speaker 3: Spending on essentials increased by six point nine percent, while
Speaker 3: non essential spending decreased by zero point eight percent, which
Speaker 3: the ABS said highlights the shift in consumer behavior due
Speaker 3: to cost of living pressures.
Speaker 4: The Queensland Government has announced its expanding the protected areas
Speaker 4: of the Great Barrier Reef. Around one hundred and forty
Speaker 4: additional islands have been added to the marine park, with
Speaker 4: a combined total land size of one three hundred and
Speaker 4: ninety hectares. It will ensure endangered and at risk ecosystems
Speaker 4: and habitats in the sea and on land will be
Speaker 4: included in conservation efforts. Queensland's Environment Minister Lianne Lenard said
Speaker 4: the project will quote ensure our wildlife will thrive.
Speaker 3: And the good news Australian researchers have been chosen by
Speaker 3: NASA to study how plants could grow on the Moon.
Speaker 3: A group of Researchers from Ozzie Universities, including the University
Speaker 3: of Adelaide and Latrobe, will send plants to space with
Speaker 3: NASA's Artamus three mission and monitor how they fare on
Speaker 3: the lunar surface. Researchers say they're hoping to gather data
Speaker 3: about how plants respond in an off earth environment to
Speaker 3: inform the design of future space crops.
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Speaker 1: back to the deep dive.
Speaker 3: Last week, new laws came into effect in Scotland and
Speaker 3: they're aiming to target hate speech. Specifically, under the new laws,
Speaker 3: it's illegal to incite hate against people based on age, disability, ethnicity, religion,
Speaker 3: sexual orientation, transgender identity or for being intersex. Now, it's
Speaker 3: fair to say that the new laws have attracted quite
Speaker 3: a fair bit of criticism.
Speaker 2: So SA in today I wanted.
Speaker 3: To go through the laws, what they are, what they're
Speaker 3: aiming to achieve, the passage of the legislation, it's been
Speaker 3: a hot minute and what people are saying about it.
Speaker 4: And are these laws new to Scotland's in the UK,
Speaker 4: Like is this the first time they've had hate laws
Speaker 4: or is there a bit of a history there.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I mean that's a two pronged question. So to answer it, firstly, no,
Speaker 3: it's not a new law. So this legislation was actually
Speaker 3: passed back in twenty twenty one. It's taken until now
Speaker 3: for it to come into effect though, so that's why
Speaker 3: we're talking about it today. These laws also an't the
Speaker 3: first time that hate crimes have been legislated in Scotland,
Speaker 3: so that's happened before. Inciting racial hatred has been outlawed
Speaker 3: across the UK, including Scotland since nineteen eighty six. However,
Speaker 3: there was a twenty eighteen review of hate crime legislation
Speaker 3: and that found that Scotland's laws were outdated, that they
Speaker 3: needed reviewing and needed updating. That review called for hate
Speaker 3: crime regulations to be strengthened and to be expanded.
Speaker 4: So give me a sense of how many hate crimes
Speaker 4: there were in Scotland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think that this is like an imperfect
Speaker 3: science to talk about. We know with any kind of
Speaker 3: reporting on crime that there's a lot that goes unreported.
Speaker 3: We can only go off what is publicly available. In Scotland,
Speaker 3: we know that in twenty twenty two to twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three there were five thousand, seven hundred and thirty eight
Speaker 3: charges to hate crimes. Again, it's also kind of hard
Speaker 3: to compare this to other jurisdictions because there are differences
Speaker 3: in the way that people report things. Obviously difference in
Speaker 3: what hate crimes defined us exactly. But I guess as
Speaker 3: a point of comparison, in the Republic of Ireland, which
Speaker 3: has a similar sized population, in twenty twenty two, there
Speaker 3: were five hundred and eighty two hate crimes reported. So
Speaker 3: there's a fairly big difference between Scotland and Ireland. But
Speaker 3: if we go back to Scotland for a second, So,
Speaker 3: as I said, the Parliament passed this legislation in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, and what it did was specifically outlaw in
Speaker 3: citing hate against people based on the following categories and
Speaker 3: I named them before. But I just want to go
Speaker 3: through it slowly again, age, disability, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation,
Speaker 3: transgender identity, or being inter sex. So it explicitly added
Speaker 3: those it's called protected classes of people to the existing
Speaker 3: racial hatred laws. So that's why we aren't talking about
Speaker 3: race there. It's because that already existent and these classes
Speaker 3: have now been added as well. What you might have
Speaker 3: noticed is that the laws don't explicitly include women. So
Speaker 3: women aren't included as a protected class. That's because a
Speaker 3: government task force recommended separate legislation ensuring protections against misogynistic
Speaker 3: harassment and abuse. We haven't actually seen that legislation yet,
Speaker 3: but the government says that it's coming, so they're going
Speaker 3: to deal with that separately to this hate crime legislation.
Speaker 2: So now back to the law itself.
Speaker 3: I think that this is important to understand because I
Speaker 3: think sometimes it can be fairly subjective what counts as
Speaker 3: a hate crime. What one person considers a hate crime
Speaker 3: can arguably not be seen the same by another. So
Speaker 3: the threshold that the legislation sets out is that a
Speaker 3: person commits an offense if they communicate material or behave
Speaker 3: in a manner that quote a reasonable person would consider
Speaker 3: to be threatening or abusive with the intention of stirring.
Speaker 4: Up hatredly quite interesting language to put in stirring up, and.
Speaker 3: That's a direct quote. It's everywhere, and it's such an
Speaker 3: interesting term. And obviously that there is a penalty attached
Speaker 3: to if you are found guilty of committing a hate crime,
Speaker 3: and the maximum penalty there is a prison sentence of
Speaker 3: seven years.
Speaker 4: Now, typically when we talk about these types of laws,
Speaker 4: on the other end of the spectrum, there's always people
Speaker 4: who talk about freedom of speech and how to capture
Speaker 4: the balance between hate laws and restricting what someone can
Speaker 4: say and ensuring that people can say what they want
Speaker 4: in a functioning society. Yeap, did the legislation touch on
Speaker 4: that tension? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did so.
Speaker 3: Lawmakers who were responsible for creating this legislation say, obviously
Speaker 3: they were responsible for creating it, that it adequately balances
Speaker 3: free speech with protecting people against hate speech. So they
Speaker 3: say that this has been achieved in a number of ways. Firstly,
Speaker 3: if a person is charged with hate crimes and they
Speaker 3: can prove their actions were reasonable, that counts as a defense.
Speaker 3: The legislation also references the right to freedom of expression
Speaker 3: that's in the European Convention on Human Rights that includes
Speaker 3: the protection of quote ideas that offend, shock or disturb.
Speaker 3: So essentially saying something shocking just to say something shocking
Speaker 3: is under law legally different from saying something that the
Speaker 3: court finds you would know would incite hatred against the
Speaker 3: protected group, So.
Speaker 4: It's not just what you say say. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, according to the first Minister, who is the leader
Speaker 3: of Scotland his name is Humsu Yusuf, the law quote
Speaker 3: protects the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society whilst
Speaker 3: also safeguarding freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
Speaker 4: And would expect that from the first Minister his government
Speaker 4: introduced this law.
Speaker 3: He's obviously he's also worked really closely on it because
Speaker 3: he was in the Justice portfolio run it actually passed,
Speaker 3: so he's been like really involved with it the whole
Speaker 3: way through.
Speaker 4: Okay, And so what have his opponents said about this law?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there are a few different camps who oppose
Speaker 3: it for different reasons. So the first is the Scottish
Speaker 3: Conservative Party, whose leader Douglas Ross called the legislation dangerous
Speaker 3: and he labeled it a threat to free speech.
Speaker 5: The heat clay market will come into force on epul
Speaker 5: Fool's deep but it is no joke. The Scottish Conservatives
Speaker 5: are paused at the time and still do and it
Speaker 5: is soul flawed that whatever its intentions, and it is
Speaker 5: likely to create more division.
Speaker 3: Separately, there have also been concerns raised by Scottish police.
Speaker 3: They said that they were expecting an influx of online
Speaker 3: abuse complaints. So according to the BBC, and this was
Speaker 3: given directly to them, police have received more than three
Speaker 3: thousand hate crime reports since the new law was introduced
Speaker 3: on Monday, so a week ago. And just again to
Speaker 3: give you a reference, in the whole year of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two to twenty three, there were five seven hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty eight charges.
Speaker 4: Okay, and those are chargers. Three thousand reports in a
Speaker 4: couple of days.
Speaker 2: We don't know how many of those ever amount You assume.
Speaker 4: That that's going to overtake that number pretty quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's where some can from police remains and
Speaker 3: the passage of the law, and the reason it took
Speaker 3: so long was so that it would give the police
Speaker 3: longer to prepare for how they were going to deal
Speaker 3: with this influx. Then there have also been some high
Speaker 3: profile critics of the legislation, people including Elon Musk and JK.
Speaker 2: Rolling.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there have been people who've clicked on this
Speaker 4: podcast to listen to it because we've got the author
Speaker 4: of Harry Potter in the title. And this is where
Speaker 4: she answers the conversation. What have JK. Rolling and Elon
Speaker 4: Musk actually said.
Speaker 3: So we'll get Elon Musk out of the way first,
Speaker 3: because I mean, he hasn't said heaps, but he did
Speaker 3: weigh in. He said that the laws are an example
Speaker 3: of why it's so important to preserve freedom of speech.
Speaker 2: But then JK. Rolling and look, she lives in Scotland.
Speaker 3: Ok So she has a fair bit to do with Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she's had a lot to say. So in her words,
Speaker 3: she believes that the legislation is and our quote here
Speaker 3: wide open to abuse by activists. She alleges that freedom
Speaker 3: of speech and belief are at an end in Skottland
Speaker 3: if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
Speaker 3: So that bit about the accurate description of biological sex
Speaker 3: that JK.
Speaker 2: Rowling's talking about there.
Speaker 3: So that's a term to used by a group including Rolling,
Speaker 3: who describe themselves as gender critical feminists. Other people would
Speaker 3: describe them as anti transactivists. We're not going to weigh
Speaker 3: in on that either way. But in a very long
Speaker 3: social media post, Rolling listed a number of trans women,
Speaker 3: some of them who are high profile TV personalities and activists,
Speaker 3: and concluded the posts by calling them men. She then
Speaker 3: went on to say, and I quote, I'm currently out
Speaker 3: of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies
Speaker 3: as an offense under the terms of the new Act,
Speaker 3: I look forward to being arrested when I returned to
Speaker 3: the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Speaker 4: So she's kind of putting out a challenge to authorities there.
Speaker 2: And to her fourteen million followers.
Speaker 4: Right, okay, so is she in handcuffs?
Speaker 2: She's not.
Speaker 3: The police have said that while they've had referrals about
Speaker 3: Jake Rolling, that they won't be taking action against her,
Speaker 3: and speaking to the BBC, the first Minister in Scotland,
Speaker 3: I think, tried to use this as an example of
Speaker 3: how he could provide further examples of how this law
Speaker 3: will work.
Speaker 2: So he said to the BBC.
Speaker 3: Jk Rowling's tweets may well be offensive, upsetting and insulting
Speaker 3: to trans people, but it doesn't mean that they meet
Speaker 3: a threshold of criminality of being threatening or abusive or
Speaker 3: intending to stir up hatred. So there the First Minister
Speaker 3: is trying to very clearly designate where the law will
Speaker 3: be used and where it won't be Obviously, this is
Speaker 3: just one.
Speaker 2: Very high profile case that JK.
Speaker 3: Rowling has herself asked for the police to weigh in on.
Speaker 3: Each case won't look the same, but it's definitely a
Speaker 3: fascinating piece of legislation and the time it's taken and
Speaker 3: the response it's gotten, it'll be really interesting to see
Speaker 3: what happens from here.
Speaker 4: A very interesting discussion there, and it'll be interesting to
Speaker 4: see and to track those numbers in terms of how
Speaker 4: many hate crimes are reported and subsequently how many charges
Speaker 4: are laid in Scotland and how that weighs up in
Speaker 4: terms of the previous year's records, to look at the
Speaker 4: impact of those laws. Thanks for that, Zara, and thank
Speaker 4: you for joining us on the Daily OHS this morning
Speaker 4: before we leave. If you're in the mood for a game, well,
Speaker 4: it's funny that because we have just launched a game
Speaker 4: and every day we do three little riddles in an
Speaker 4: emoji game that we've called Picture This. We've been getting
Speaker 4: some amazing feedback about this game. It's cause a little
Speaker 4: bit of tension in the office, but some healthy tension,
Speaker 4: I think. And we competition, yeah, and we'd love our
Speaker 4: podcast family to have a play. I'll throw a link
Speaker 4: to the game in today's show notes. We hope you
Speaker 4: enjoy it and let us know what you think. My
Speaker 4: name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung
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