Racial Discrimination Act amendment: Warren Mundine warns against changes, labels George Brandis's bigotry comment 'bizarre'

Updated

The man chosen by Prime Minister Tony Abbott to head his Indigenous Advisory Council has warned against changing Australia's racial discrimination laws.

Indigenous Advisory Council chairman Warren Mundine said Attorney-General George Brandis's recent comment about people "having the right to be bigots" was "quite bizarre".

And he said the Government's planned changes to the Racial Discrimination Act would make no difference to the racial abuse suffered by him and others on a regular basis.

The Government wants to remove provisions making it unlawful for someone to publicly "offend, insult, or humiliate" another person or group based on their race.

But it intends to retain the offence of intimidating another person, and insert a new clause banning racial vilification.

Mr Abbott says the goal is to remove restrictions on "free speech", but Mr Mundine says the changes are not necessary.

"There has been no curtailing of public comment in regard to a wide range of interests, there's been no curtailing of abuse," Mr Mundine told AM.

"I get racial abuse every day. I get comments made every day about my heritage and everything like that and the whole country still flows forward.

"We have thousands of years of history of bigotry, of racism, and how people have been treated - and I've been treated badly," he said.

"And we all know that from history, when you let people off the chain in regard to bigotry, then you start having problems.

"I just find it funny that we are quite accepting that no-one should swear in public, but it's OK for people to be bigots and I find that a bizarre situation.

"I can assure people, more people died from bigotry than people died from being swore at.

"Knowing George Brandis personally, I found it quite bizarre that he stood up in Parliament and said what he said."

Mr Mundine denies the current law restrains free speech.

"We had a Second World War about opinions," he said.

"We all agreed that we are against racism. We find it evil. We are against bigotry because we find that evil.

"And quite frankly under the law, the current law, you can still have those conversations.

"I just don't understand how it was stopping people from having conversations."

Abbott says racial abuse will be prohibited

Mr Abbott has defended the changes this morning.

"What I intend is that there are strong prohibitions on racial vilification," he told Fairfax Radio.

But when pressed by presenter Neil Mitchell over whether the proposed changes would make it illegal to deny the Holocaust, Mr Abbott said that would be a matter for the courts.

Asked if it would outlaw calling somebody a "silly black drongo", Mr Abbott indicated it would.

"Racial abuse will be prohibited," he said.

"Again, again it will be up to a relevant court or tribunal to make these decisions."

The Government's amendments define vilify as to "incite hatred" and intimidate as to cause "fear of physical harm" - definitions have been criticised by the Opposition as too narrow.

But the Government's approach has been welcomed by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt - who was found to have breached the current Act in 2011.

Mr Mundine says Bolt "could still have made his point" in the articles he wrote about light-skinned people who identify as Aboriginal.

"It was the way he made his point, and that's the problem," he said.

A federal court judge found Bolt's articles would have offended a reasonable member of the Aboriginal community, that he had not written them in good faith and that there were factual errors.

The Government's draft proposal has been released for community consultation for one month.

Government MPs raise concern about bill

Meanwhile Government MPs are raising concerns about subsection four of the draft bill, which would allow a range of exemptions to the racial vilification laws for those participating in political, social, cultural, artistic and scientific discussion.

ACT Senator Zed Seselja has told the ABC the exemptions are too broad, given the Government is narrowing section 18 to the two offences of vilification and intimidation on the grounds of race.

"Those exemptions were okay when we were outlawing offensive speech and insulting speech, we're no longer outlawing that kind of speech," Senator Seselja said.

"We have said we won't outlaw speech that's offensive and insulting but we will outlaw racial vilification and intimidation on racial grounds, it seems to me that there are going to be relatively few grounds where you need an exemption for that type of speech.

"So I think this is the area we need to look at very closely.

"Given we've raised the bar I think that's why these exemptions do need to be looked at again because we're talking about racial vilification and intimidation so we don't want to see too broad a defence for that kind of speech. "

Senator Seselja said he was not alone in the Government with his concerns but that Senator Brandis "is listening".

He said one way of addressing the issue would be insert back in the proviso that any speech that could be exempt had to be done "in good faith".

West Australian Liberal MP Ken Wyatt had previously threatened to cross the floor to vote against any weakening of the laws.

Now he has seen the draft legislation, he is still not ruling it out.

"A member of Parliament will at times be asked to stand for the principles they believe in, and if you believe in your principles and you stand by them, then you will work within your party structures to make sure that your logic of argument is reflected," he said.

"But sometimes there is a point, and I think of people like Phillip Ruddock who did cross the floor on principle.

"They didn't cross it for a political reason, they crossed it for the principle of the greater good for the people they were arguing for, and I think that is the important underlying issue in all of this.

Mr Abbott says he will consult on the draft legislation and put a final proposal to the Parliament in May.

Topics: race-relations, community-and-society, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, federal-government, government-and-politics, australia, nt

First posted