Bill - Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-Vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024

BILL

‘JUSTICE LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (ANTI-VILIFICATION AND SOCIAL COHESION) BILL 2024 ‘.

Wednesday, 5 February 2025.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (12:23):

I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social
Cohesion) Bill 2024.

This Bill is one that, for context, will not be considered at the end of the week by this Government for being passed by this house. The Government have announced in an unprecedented way, in a way that I have not seen before, that they do not intend for this Bill to be considered in the final vote this week. I have never seen that before. What that tells us in this Chamber is the Government has already acknowledged that it will have to substantially change the Bill. So, when speakers from the Government side stand up and talk about the need for this Bill to be passed, the Government has said it will not pass this week. They have determined it will not pass. The Government made that choice. They have not announced yet that it is because there will be substantive changes, but there will be. There will have to be, because what this Bill is about is trying to do something to address the breaking social cohesion in this State.

Unfortunately, the way the Government is trying to fix that breakdown through this Bill has been shown to be wrong, to not work, to not be appropriate, to not be the way to fix the underlying breakdown of social cohesion. What I am sure about, so terribly sadly, is that not only in this State but in this country more broadly antisemitism is deeply embedded in a proportion of the community – deeply, deeply embedded.

After the Middle East war started following the terrorist attack in 2023 there was a lot of talk from community leaders from the left about the need to not specifically call out antisemitism – not just call out antisemitism – but more broadly talk about antisemitism and Islamophobia. Of course, any form of discrimination is wrong, but what we have seen, without any doubt, is a breakout of the most vile forms of antisemitism on a daily basis.

We are seeing firebombings of kindergartens – firebombings of kindergartens – and of a synagogue. By the way, in New South Wales we have seen multiple arrests for those crimes. In Victoria for many of these heinous crimes there have been no arrests.

This Bill provides an excuse for ongoing antisemitism, and that is why the Jewish community has stood up bravely and said: ‘This Bill is wrong.’ I know personally the people who have stood up. They did not do it with an easy decision. It was a very, very difficult decision for the community to stand up and say no. It was a very, very difficult decision. What they said was that this Bill embeds a political exemption in behaviour, so now you will not hear the most vile people in our community calling out hateful attacks on Jews; you will hear them calling out vile, hateful attacks on Zionists – and that will be their political exemption. It is wrong. This Bill does not fix the problem.

There are things in this Bill which we wholeheartedly support, and we have said that. We have said so strongly that we support it, including expanding the protected attributes. So strongly do we support it – but we do not support an excuse for ongoing antisemitism. The Jewish community has called out – and not just the Jewish community, by the way – this issue embedded in the Bill. We cannot provide an excuse to allow behaviour of this nature.

Only in the last 24 hours a constituent of mine contacted me about having gone into a hotel, and when he arrived, the person behind the desk was frustrated as they were checking him in, walked around the front of the desk, slapped him in the face and called him an ‘effing Jew’, which of course has been referred to police. This is what people are dealing with every single day of the week. Now with this Bill, how would that case have been dealt with if she had called him a Zionist? How would that have been dealt with?

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: This is not funny, Government Members. This is not funny. We can hear them laughing. For the record, they are laughing.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Order! This has been an important and wideranging debate. The Member for Brighton should direct his comments through the Chair.

James NEWBURY: I was. Thank you, Acting Speaker. I am making very, very reasonable points, and there have been other points raised by this side of the House, including on some of the legality issues with the bill – for example, the reasonable person test, the very longstanding legal test whereby the independent reasonable person’s view is assessed in relation to an issue.

Under this Bill there will no longer be a reasonable person test, there will be a test by a person affected in that community. No matter how you see any issue, clearly it changes the longstanding concept of what is a reasonable person. I note that because it is something that has been raised by more than just our side of the place.

As I said, the issue with this Bill is that it does not fix the problem that exists. What we have seen, what we are seeing and what we can be certain of is there is a breakdown of social cohesion. That is not unique to Victoria. We are seeing it around Australia, and we are seeing a lack of action from the Federal Labor Government on fixing it at a broader level. There is no doubt that the community can see that.

I know that when a number of years ago the Parliament, through a committee that I was on, considered some of these issues, one of the issues that we talked about for a really long time was how you can put in place tests and frameworks that can ensure that people are protected. At no time during those discussions was there any thought that anybody could claim a political defence and somehow be exempt from antisemitism. At no time was that discussed, and neither should it be. We need a bill that addresses the problem, and that is what we have said as a Coalition. We want a Bill that addresses the problem.

May I say, because of the work of the Member for Caulfield and I on the Committee, in publicly calling on the Committee to recommend banning the Nazi symbol – publicly, it was not privately, it was publicly, it was through published media at the time; you can you google it and look at up – the Government was pushed into including it in its final report, and that is factual. The Government did act, and so they should have, and we supported them.

But we say to them now: there is a Bill before the Parliament that the most affected parts of the community right now are saying they are deeply worried about. That is why, we know, the government is not proceeding with this Bill. For the record, the Government has chosen to park this Bill. The debate is occurring now, but they are going to park this Bill because there will need to be major amendments. Those major amendments should be transparently worked through with the community to make sure this Bill is up to the standard that the Victorian community deserves. That is what the issue is. This Bill needs to be of the standard that the community deserves to fix the broken social cohesion in this State.