Coalition will proceed with changes to Racial Discrimination Act to remove the words ‘offend’ and ‘insult’ over opposition from party moderates

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Turnbull government will press ahead with an overhaul of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act despite explicit warnings from party moderates and ministers that the change will cost the government politically in marginal seats.



After debate in the Coalition party room on Tuesday, in which the former prime minister Tony Abbott congratulated Malcolm Turnbull for pursuing reform, and the Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, expressed his view that overhauling 18C really wasn’t a priority – the government resolved to press ahead with both legislative change and procedural change.

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Five moderates spoke against changing the RDA – New South Wales Liberals David Coleman, Julian Leeser, and Craig Laundy, and Victorians, Julia Banks and Russell Broadbent – but all resolved to stand behind the new policy.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the minister for international development and the Pacific, warned the party room the decision would hurt the government in ethnic communities. She said Labor would mount an aggressive campaign attacking the Coalition, a campaign the government would need to counter.

While the proposed legislative change will struggle to win Senate support, the government will attempt to remove the words “offend” and “insult” from section 18C of the RDA, and insert the term “harass” – which is a higher bar for actions to proceed.

Addressing reporters after the party room debate, the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said the change was “an issue of values – free speech.”

“Free speech is a value at the very core of our party,” Turnbull said. “Ensuring Australians are protected from racial vilification, likewise, is part of the mutual respect of which I often speak, which is the foundation of our success as the greatest and most successful multicultural society in the world.”

He said the law as it currently stood “had lost its credibility”.

“We struck the balance right,” Turnbull said on Tuesday. “We’ve done this carefully.”

Despite the fact the government is quite clearly inserting a higher bar to allow future RDA cases to proceed, Turnbull claimed the changes represented a strengthening of the law because the change would clarify the intent of the provision.

The proposed legislative overhaul, which will be introduced into the Senate rather than the House of Representatives, will include inserting a new test in the law in line with a recent recommendation from parliament’s human rights committee.

Under this proposal, the relevant test in the law would be changed from the current wording – a “reasonable member of the relevant group” to “the reasonable member of the Australian community”.

Asked about the prospect of securing Senate support, given a key voting bloc, the Nick Xenophon Team, is currently opposed to changing the law, Turnbull said: “Our goal is to persuade the Senate to pass the legislation.”

The commitments on Tuesday follow months of internal debate between rightwingers and party moderates about the RDA, which culminated in a parliamentary inquiry by the human rights committee that was unable to reach a consensus on whether legislative reform was necessary.

With rightwingers campaigning vociferously in favour of change, cabinet resolved on Monday night to pursue both a legislative and procedural overhaul, and that position was taken to the party room on Tuesday.

The changes were backed by government MPs including James Paterson, Tony Pasin, Andrew Hastie, Tim Wilson and George Christensen.

Government sources have told Guardian Australia ethnic and religious groups are prepared to campaign against the Coalition if it pursues the change, and the activist group GetUp has confirmed it will run a campaign against the changes.

Ahead of the party room debate, Laundy issued a blunt public warning that the government was going down the wrong path.

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Laundy said leaving the current protections in place wasn’t a pragmatic calculation about winning votes, it was just a matter of being sensitive about the “issues people face”.

In the party room meeting, Laundy warned the change would be difficult to explain to the voters.

Broadbent told Tuesday’s party room meeting the government would need to take care to send a signal that it was on the side of ethnic communities concerned about the change.

After the debate, the assistant minister to the prime minister, James McGrath, took to Facebook to praise the resolution.