Tuesday, 18 February 2025

Bills

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

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mary-Anne THOMAS (Macedon – Leader of the House, Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (15:04): I wish to advise the house of amendments to this bill, and I request that they be circulated.

Amendments circulated under standing orders.

Mary-Anne THOMAS: There is a reason that this bill has been held over for a second week. It is not only to enable everyone in this house to have the opportunity to get on their feet and tell us why they will or will not be supporting this important legislation but also so that the government can continue to listen to community members. We have been very clear from the get-go that in introducing this legislation we wanted to hear from community and consult extensively. That is why it was introduced at the end of last year so that we had the whole of summer, and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge both the former Attorney-General, Jaclyn Symes in the other place, and our current Attorney-General, the member for Carrum, for the work that they have done to continue to listen to community.

If I could speak to those amendments, I want to be very clear that the Allan government, following further consultations, is moving two amendments to strengthen the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 by removing the political purpose defence from the criminal incitement offence and by adding proselytising and preaching to the civil religious purpose exceptions. Let me talk to you, Acting Speaker, and to the house about why we have taken these actions. Including a genuine political purpose defence to the incitement offence was intended to ensure consistency with the constitutional implied freedom of political communication. It was never intended to expand that protection. The government has continued its conversations with community leaders. We fully acknowledge and appreciate the concern that has been expressed by many that the provision could have been misused, potentially legitimising vilification under the guise of political communication. As such, we will remove the provision, and I want to make sure that doing so will not affect the operation of the offences.

In doing so, can I also point out – because I was listening – the member for Gippsland South in his presentation before said that this was one of the reasons why the opposition were opposing it. That has gone. We have done that because we listen, and we are proud of that. True leadership is actually making a decision that you will bring into this place legislation that has been challenging to write and craft and get right, and you will continue to listen and refine in order to deliver the very best, most workable legislation that you can. We believe that existing general statutory and common-law defences, such as self-defence, duress and the defence of mental impairment, apply to the offences, and this is consistent with the current law. As I have just indicated, it is now up to the Liberal Party to show whether they also stand with many Victorian communities, including Victoria’s Jewish community, who want to see this bill passed.

Secondly, with regard to the civil religious purpose exceptions, the bill strengthens civil anti- vilification protections with incitement and harm provisions, and existing exceptions are retained. The religious purpose exception had minor amendments to make the language consistent with other legislation, protecting worship, observance, practice and teaching. But we heard concerns that the revised language could have the effect of narrowing the exception, and that was never our intention. Therefore we will add the words ‘proselytising’ and ‘preaching’ to make that crystal clear. I know that this also responds to feedback that we had from faith leaders, and we have been pleased to be able to listen to them and incorporate their concerns. This exception is necessary to balance rights and ensure legitimate activities are not against the law. The government will always stand with Victorians and their right to practice religion, so these are the amendments that we are introducing today.

I come before you today both as the member for Macedon and as the Minister for Health and Minister for Ambulance Services, and I want to say a few things about why this bill is so important. We know that vilification, racism, homophobia and antisemitism all have real impacts on people’s health and wellbeing, and it has been one of my focal points of work with our health services to increase cultural safety in our hospitals. A focus of that has been on our First Nations people, who we know of course do not have the same health outcomes as non-Indigenous people in our state. But I am firmly of the belief that if we can work to make our health services culturally safe for Aboriginal people, they will be culturally safe for many more people, including people from minorities. So it is really, really important that we pass this legislation.

Can I also say that there have been instances – shocking, horrifying, vile instances – that we have seen in New South Wales of antisemitism in our health services. This is completely and utterly unacceptable. Health services have to be places of safety, and they have to be places of safety for people no matter what their background, their religion, their politics, their sexuality or their gender. They have to be places of safety for patients and places of safety for health workers, and while I will always respect the rights of people to hold political positions and to take strong positions in relation to tragic world events, including the disaster that is the war in Gaza, it is not appropriate to bring those opinions and views into a healthcare setting, because it does not create safety for patients and it does not create safety for the workforce. So it is really important that we do everything that we can and that we are obliged to do to stamp out hurtful hate speech and hurtful actions of hate. This bill is a very important legislative step to ensure that we can do more to stamp out vilification of people based on a range of attributes.

We have also heard today – and again I want to reference my good friend the member for Thomastown, because I have been out to Epping many times with the member for Thomastown – what happened to two women in the Epping plaza, which was truly horrifying and shocking. The police have indicated that they believe that this is an attack that is based on prejudice, and again it has no place in our society. It is incumbent on all of us in this place to do everything that we can to support social cohesion – that is, to respect the rights of all Victorians to be who they are, to love who they love and to worship the gods who they want to without fear of being vilified or, even worse, subject to physical attack as these two women at the Epping plaza were. It was absolutely shocking.

Finally, I have spoken a little bit about why this is important to me as health minister. This bill is really important to me as the member for Macedon. We are proudly home to one of the largest regional LGBTQ+ communities in the nation, and we celebrate our LGBTIQ+ community at the annual event called ChillOut; it is an amazing event to which everyone in this chamber is welcome at all times. I want to say I am in awe of people in my community who have worked so hard over so many years to ensure that not just Daylesford but Hepburn and Kyneton and Trentham and all the towns in my community are warm and welcoming places for our LGBTIQ+ community. Again, there are many places around our nation that could learn from my community and learn the lessons of acceptance, of kindness, of respect. It is not that hard.

It did occur to me that there are other names that we could have given this bill: ‘Just don’t be a bad person’; ‘Don’t be a terrible person’; ‘Be kind’; ‘Be nice’. Just respect others – that is all that we are asking people to do through this bill. I commend it to the house, but I will say this: the buck stops with the Liberal Party. We have addressed some of their concerns, and I have got to tell you that there are many, many people in this community who want to see this bill passed, and it would be a day of great shame should the Liberal Party vote this down. I commend the bill to the house.

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (15:15): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 before the Assembly today. This bill extends anti-vilification laws beyond ethnicity and religion to also cover disability, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, gender identity and personal association with a protected person. It also includes tougher criminal penalties and introduces new serious vilification offences for inciting hate or making threats based on protected attributes, with penalties of up to five years imprisonment. It also does quite a number of other things which a number of other speakers have already talked about, so I will not repeat them once again.

I note that last sitting week the government, as part of this bill, introduced a political defence for incitement, ‘genuine political purpose’. I note that the Leader of the House has now put forward an amendment on this issue. After much pressure, this government has finally started to listen to Jewish community groups, other faith community groups and the opposition and is removing this problematic provision. However, they should have listened in the very first place. As I know and as we know – and I know in particular as the Opposition Whip, having received the email – the government originally planned to both debate and vote on this bill last sitting week but then changed it to debate only, purportedly at the time to give members more of a say. But as the Leader of the House has confirmed just now, it was not just about giving members more of a say, it was also because of concerns raised by Jewish community groups and many others. They have admitted the fact that there were these concerns that were not listened to in the first place. They should have waited until they were ready to debate the bill rather than introducing it when they were not ready.

I note as well that the bill also explicitly includes the terms ‘preaching’ and ‘proselytising’ in the government’s definition of religious purpose. Legitimate religious activities such as preaching, teaching and advocating spiritual beliefs should never be lumped in with hateful conduct, but the bill still uses a subjective standard in its harm-based provisions, which I will go into more later.

There are a number of key concerns regarding this bill. Firstly, there is the overreach and potential threat to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. This bill risks stifling legitimate political expression like protests against state actors and political ideologies. Also, the definition of race in the bill – albeit it is my view that we should move on from using this term – includes nationality or national origin, which could mean criticism of foreign governments is misinterpreted as vilification. In addition, broad and vague references to social cohesion could allow laws to be weaponised to silence dissent and protest.

A second key concern relates to the expansion of criminal offences. Five years of imprisonment is disproportionate in many cases for expression-based offences. The definition of ‘incite’ is way too broad, capturing even subtle speech, and creates a lot of uncertainty in legal application. And the threshold for criminal vilification is lowered to recklessness instead of intent, making it way too easy to prosecute for speech-based offences.

A third key concern relates to religious implications. The harm-based provision is subjective, allowing individuals to define what is harmful, making it easier to silence religious or moral views simply because someone feels offended. This is the biggest red flag with this bill, allowing courts or indeed complainants to drill down to narrower subgroups within a faith or community to determine harm, creating enormous legal uncertainty. One example is, say, the distinctions between Sunni and Shia Muslims or between and within other religious groups, such as within Christianity. This is a highly subjective approach which is confusing and unpredictable. Protections and outcomes might differ even within the same faith or community if sensitivities vary between different subgroups.

Also I note the expanded definition of ‘public’ means the law could apply to sermons, religious teachings, masses and social media posts, even if shared in private settings. And religious teachings and moral views could still be targeted if somebody simply feels that they are harmful, even if it aligns with centuries-old faith traditions and doctrines. Basically the government will or may have unprecedented authority over what religious groups and other groups in our community can say.

I do note that these amendments that have been circulated today by the Leader of the House do address some of these concerns, but, as noted, the bill still uses a subjective standard in its harm-based provision which, in my view and the view of many colleagues and many in the community, will impact upon freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

I want to just give some quotes from some of my constituents that I have been listening to about this issue in the electorate of Mornington. Mat from Mornington said:

I fear that this Bill could further divide our community if it is weaponized against political opponents. I urge you to reconsider this legislation and ensure that the rights of Christians and other religious groups are fully protected.

In addition, Keith from Mount Martha said:

I am genuinely worried that the law would divide the community …

Kate from Mornington said:

As a Christian, I am worried that the low vilification threshold and subjective elements in the law could put Christians at risk of litigation.

Robert from Mornington said:

I call for the abandonment of this Bill as I believe it poses a threat to the religious freedom of Christians in Victoria.

And Jody from Mount Martha said:

… I urge you to abandon the bill to protect the rights and freedoms of Christians in our society.

I have also heard from many others from both faith and non-faith groups, from Christians through to Muslims and many others, about their concerns about this bill, particularly about the subjective elements of this bill.

Overall, as noted by my colleagues, the coalition will be opposing this bill because we believe that the subjective test for harm still raises substantial concerns and, as the member for Evelyn noted earlier, we had asked for consideration in detail on this bill which was denied by the government, which actually would have given us further opportunity to look at some of the elements of this bill in more detail. With the excessive subjectivity, vague thresholds and potential for overreach, we cannot in good conscience support it. Of course we do not want people vilifying others, but this bill goes too far and will stifle or potentially stifle freedoms, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In my maiden speech to this house I said:

I will stand up for people of faith or non-faith to freely speak their mind.

I also note a famous quote from Sir Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, who said:

Stagnant waters are level, and in them the scum rises. Active waters are never level … they purify themselves in a few hundred yards.

When we allow for a diversity of ideas and opinions and views in our community, we allow for the best outcomes, and we also allow for those views to be criticised publicly. When you suppress things, you sometimes create more problems in society in the long run.

I note that our reasoned amendment still remains in place with respect to this bill as well, and I will read that again:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the Allan Labor government:

(a) urgently considers additional options, including those available to Victoria Police, as a practical means of tackling antisocial and vilifying behaviours; and

(b) consults further with Victoria’s faith groups, including the Jewish and Islamic communities, who have warned the government that the proposed ‘genuine political purpose’ defence to incitement will damage social cohesion in this state.’

To conclude, I ask that the government further consider and further consult with respect to this bill. I ask that the government reconsider what they have done with respect to denying consideration in detail. It will of course go through the lower house with the numbers that the government has in this place, but I ask that before it goes through the upper house they further consider amendments to this bill and perhaps actually consider withdrawing it altogether, particularly given that I do not think sufficient consultation has taken place and, given the subjective harm, may well harm people of faith, harm freedom of religion, harm freedom of speech. We need to be a Victoria that actually looks after people of faith and that encourages freedom of expression, and that is something that we always stand up for in the Liberal Party and within the coalition.

Will Fowles: Acting Speaker Tak, my point of order relates to the introduction of these substantial amendments to this legislation. I am seeking leave, notwithstanding the fact that I have already spoken on this bill, to speak to those amendments.

Leave refused.

Will Fowles: Further to the point of order, Acting Speaker, section 157, subsection (5), of the standing orders provides that a proposed amendment may be withdrawn with the leave of the house. I previously moved an amendment to the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Malvern. Given that the government has now proposed to amend this legislation, my reasoned amendment is no longer pertinent, and I seek the leave of the house to withdraw my amendment to the member for Malvern’s reasoned amendment.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Standing order 157 does allow for an amendment to be withdrawn with leave of the house. Is leave granted?

Leave refused.

Will Fowles: On a point of order, I seek some guidance, Deputy Speaker. We are left with the farcical notion that we might have an amendment to a reasoned amendment being put to the chamber when no-one supports it, including the mover of that amendment to the reasoned amendment. In those circumstances I do not think it is a particularly complicated matter. In order to help focus the debate for the balance of the debating time on this legislation, I wonder whether either the minister at the table or others could seek some urgent guidance from their colleagues, because to continue to have the amendment to the reasoned amendment tabled risks tipping us into a pretty farcical territory.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think I understand the logic of the member’s argument. However, the debate is the same debate with amendments. Therefore, if leave is not granted, as it was not – does the minister wish to speak on the point of order?

Steve Dimopoulos: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, if I understand it, the member for Ringwood seeks leave to withdraw his amendment to the member for Malvern’s reasoned amendment. If that is all that the member is seeking leave for, that is fine.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Ringwood, if you wish to re-ask the question, we will go through the process.

Will Fowles: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker – it will come as a great surprise to the house – section 157, subsection (5), of the standing orders provides that a proposed amendment may be withdrawn with the leave of the house. I moved an amendment to the member for Malvern’s reasoned amendment. That is the process demanded by these standing orders; it is clunky, but that is the process nonetheless demanded by the standing orders. The effect of that amendment to the reasoned amendment was to simply have a reasoned amendment that the bill be withdrawn until such time as the government had consulted more broadly on, in particular, the ‘genuine political purpose’ defence. The government has now done that. They have signalled in amendments circulated just now that they are proposing to remove that ‘genuine political purpose’ defence. I think that is terrific. I congratulate them for that. I am very pleased that they have come around to my view on that. On that basis I seek to withdraw my amendment to the member for Malvern’s reasoned amendment.

Leave granted and amendment withdrawn.

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (15:29): I do not think I have sat down and jumped up more times. So there we go; I have got the squats up.

I would like to welcome the changes to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. It has been an important journey for a number of years to get this legislation to this point in time, led by some work of this Parliament. It is an opportunity to reflect again on the important work of committees to bring complex legislation into being. The work of a cross-parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections in 2021 set the scene for this legislative reform of some significance. Like any piece of legislation that has significant challenges in the restriction of speech and restriction of certain rights to balance the protections against vilification and impact and harm in our community, there are tensions and challenges that we face. So these house amendments are a demonstration of the work that we do to make things fair, to make things right and to also be open to dialogue on those changes.

I contrast that to some of the bill discussions that we have seen from the coalition, who were fundamentally opposed to this in all its elements, in all its rights. In fact last sitting week they moved a reasoned amendment and had no interest in going any further. Barely did we see too many speakers on that side really go into the detail that we have seen further as well. The coalition has asked for committee interrogation of a bill that it is completely opposed to and does not want to move any amendments, besides the member for Mornington – and it was a little on brand to quote Menzies in some of his dialogue – who has a genuine concern and has raised that. We would disagree with some of the things put forward. He has read out on behalf of his constituents the narration of that. That is the appropriate discussion. We will have that tension out, and it will be voted upon. That is the kind of contribution that is needed. I would differ on and argue some of the protections that have been formed and some of the amendments that clarify – they are not wholesale. It is clarification in respect of our faith-based communities and religious organisations, who are such a large part of who we are as a society and a community in Victoria. It is a recognition of that ongoing discussion and consultation, in the open and transparent way that we have had this discussion with a range of leaders. Maybe the members opposite might reflect on that and the engagement that has been had to this point.

But I think fundamentally I am really struggling with the narration in this Parliament, of a severe deterioration in what we see in the targeting of certain communities like we have never seen before. Some of the rise in hate speech that we have seen around our communities recently has been platformed on mainstream media, and we have seen targeting of the Jewish community, with antisemitism rising in our community. They are some of the most corrosive and toxic elements, and we have to call them out. We have to front up to that. For coalition members on that side to say in one frame, ‘We need to do so much more, we are not doing enough; we need Victoria Police to be empowered more, the government needs to do more,’ and then to come to this bill and oppose some of those changes that will create the legislative framework to protect and support vulnerable Victorians who fear for their lives right now, is one of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy our Parliament has seen in some time. We have members of the community who fear going about their business, who they are and who they identify as, with thousands of years of faith and identity. It is an absolute travesty where we find ourselves right now.

We see members opposite criticise leaders of the Commonwealth and leaders of Victoria and then come in and totally oppose a bill that goes towards addressing some of these elements. I have to say I am really glad that the political purpose defence is a feature of some of these house amendments, because we cannot have political debate be a shield and window-dressing for severe hate and alienation of communities. We cannot have that as an element. That was not its intent. It was to line up with constitutional elements in our rights and responsibilities charter. I nearly said bill of rights, and as another learned friend over there said, it would not be the bill of rights; it would be under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. When you see those clarifications, that is a really important step and approach that we need to take.

But I am absolutely astonished at some of the commentary that has changed positions over time. It is a challenge for the Leader of the Opposition: why have they walked back significant defences for people who have been targeted in our community? Why is it dressed up in a free speech element when members of his shadow cabinet are pleading for intervention, particularly after the targeting of Jewish Victorians and Australians at a time of significant volatility? Why is it okay to oppose this bill that aims to address some of those challenges and establish an important conversation in Victoria around calling out antisemitism and addressing the toxicity of this and the growing elements and extremism that we see?

We have seen extreme elements in political ideology play out in tragic circumstances in our state and our nation before, and we are at a critical point in time now when we need to address and front up to these challenges and traumas. We have seen some horrific examples. The Adass Israel example in recent times was a terrifying and traumatic experience. It was not just a random incident or attack. It was planned, it was meticulous and it had no regard for any loss of life or impact. It struck at the heart of trying to dress up terror and cause ongoing fear and trauma in the Jewish community. This is where I really am interested: coming in here with a reasoned amendment that talks about some of the technical elements of this bill or, in this discussion, not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. What are the reasons that the coalition are opposed to a bill that I see at its heart as looking to protect vulnerable Victorians and Australians right now, in one of the most damaging and toxic times that we have seen? We literally have elements celebrating neo-Nazism in our state right now that have been platformed by mainstream media, and that is being used as a recruiting tool.

When we see radicalisations in other communities, we strike at that moment, and this is a bill for this moment. This is a bill in this time to address some of these concerns into the future. If you are not happy about some of the elements, if you are not happy about some of the protections that it suggests, come in and move those amendments or discuss it with that integrity. Do not say one thing out there, like, ‘We need more powers and more protections than ever before,’ and then come in here and say that the existing legislation is enough. That has been the commentary of the Leader of the Opposition: that it is enough, that the current state of play in protecting vulnerable communities is enough, even though we see targeting of Jewish communities. We saw the horrific example in Epping recently for Muslim communities and a general fear. There are faith-based communities and schools in my area who are of Muslim faith who are terrified or get threats, who have to deal with that and who have to front up to security grants just to make sure that their kids are safe walking into their school. At a time of such vulnerability, such a deterioration in respect for others and a monetarisation of hate – and that is what we see. When you see the platforming of some of this far-right extremism right now, there is a quest to recruit and there is a quest to monetarise.

It is going to take our collective will and sometimes giving up a bit of political window or the political grab of the day to do what is good and to do what is right. That is where a committee structure like this has brought a piece of legislation forward that is for our times. I plead for those opposite and I plead for the Greens representatives here to think about the consequences of inaction, think about not having a collective purpose here to erode and challenge and drive out some of the more hateful elements that we have seen like never before. Anyone that has fronted up to some of the Holocaust memorial recognitions – you have that opportunity as a member of Parliament – you go through and it is hard not to be absolutely horrified, moved, that this is within a 80-year period, that this happened at the time of our grandparents. A federal member in my area, the federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, has shared his lived experience of the impact on his family. If we do not address this in communities now and we do not stamp it out, it slides and deteriorates into so many other facets of our life. That is the challenge. Can we be big enough for the moment, pass this groundbreaking legislation to protect others into the future and do what is truly Victorian: show love, show compassion and embrace. That is what this bill is all about.

Tim READ (Brunswick) (15:40): I rise to speak very briefly about our position on these amendments. The bill, as you will recall, expands the list of attributes that are protected from just race and religion to now include gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, disability and personal association. However, the Greens have already urged the government to include gender expression, bloodborne virus status, homelessness, immigration status and lawful sexual activity in the protected attributes. These new laws will also make it easier to pursue vilification in a civil matter through the courts when someone has been vilified and is seeking compensation, an apology or an injunction. We are also in favour of these changes because it has been too difficult to use the civil provisions so far.

With regard to the latest amendments, however, we have heard concerns from experts that the criminal provisions of the bill could be used by police or others to stifle legitimate political comment. They could be weaponised, and indeed there is a long history in this state of marginalised communities being overpoliced. There is a real risk that the bill in its latest iteration will be weaponised against people who are least able to defend themselves. So we look forward to the outcome of discussions with the Attorney-General’s office to see how the Greens and the government can further improve the bill, particularly in the upper house.

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (15:42): We on this side of the house have a very simple belief: whoever you are and wherever you are from, whoever you pray to and whoever you love, you deserve to be safe in our state, free of hate, and that is what our anti-vilification and social cohesion bill is all about.

This is a bill that had as its genesis an act of racism and Islamophobia that occurred in my own community. I will never forget what happened in my beautiful home town, and I will never forget the way our community responded. They stared down racism and offered love. If you look around Bendigo today, you will find one of the most accepting, welcoming and diverse communities anywhere in our state, and you will also see a mosque and an Islamic community centre under construction. That sickening Nazi act was a deliberate attempt to pull at the fabric of our multicultural society, and it set this government on a mission to deliver a set of laws to protect Victorians from hateful speech and hateful conduct that profoundly hurts us all. We need that now more than ever. Racism, sexism and intolerance exist in this country. Nazis exist in this country. Antisemitism exists in this country. Homophobia and transphobia exist in this country. Islamophobia exists in this country. You can find it on YouTube. You can find it in public. In December last year you could find it in Berwick at Guru Nanak Lake. You could find in Ripponlea. You could find it on the front steps of this Parliament. And last week you could find it in Epping plaza. It is hurting us all and it is dividing us all.

These laws cannot stop every act of hate, but they are extra tools, extra powers for police and also for communities to help keep Victorians safe. I will step briefly through how they will work. Firstly, the bill will expand protection from vilification, which is the worst kind of hate speech or conduct and profoundly hurts people. There are already legal protections against vilification for race and religion, but we are going to expand those protections so they cover people with a disability, they cover women, they cover people from our LGBTIQA+ community and more, because that is what equality means. Secondly, this bill will crack down on further criminal vilification. It toughens the existing laws so they will be easier to prove and they will incur stronger penalties of up to five years imprisonment. Thirdly, this bill provides more options to people if they have been harmed, and it does this through introducing a civil framework for victims to seek remedy and resolution to complement the criminal framework.

Finally and fourthly, this bill will protect freedoms. It recognises the rights of communities to follow and share and preach their own beliefs, and more importantly, it is all about protecting people’s right to practise and identify with their religion free from harm in public.

As has been referred to previously, the government will today move two important amendments. We said when we introduced this bill to the Parliament late last year that we would listen to communities and we would consult with communities and respond to what we heard, and we have. We said we were prepared to make amendments if it meant the bill would be used and understood better in the community, and we have. Firstly, there is an amendment that clarifies a religious purpose that includes proselytising and preaching. We always intended that, and we accept the views of community leaders who have shared their thoughts with us that inserting these words into the definition makes it even clearer. Secondly, the other amendment ensures that the ‘limited political purpose’ defence can never be used to excuse vilifying conduct, and it does that by removing it. It was never the government’s intention for the defence to be used in this way. We thank the community groups who have worked with us and shared their concerns, and we have responded. With these amendments we can now take this bill forward and bring it closer to reality.

To bring it to reality we need the support of the Parliament. We have heard a lot of talk from the Liberal Party in the last week that they could not support these laws with the political defence issue outstanding. It is no longer outstanding. It has now been addressed to the satisfaction of a wide range of community voices. I thank the Jewish community for their statements this morning about the necessity of this legislation. We made that decision because it is the right thing to do. We listened; we acted. But it saddens me – the Liberal Party have discovered a new reason to oppose this bill, and I fear we could amend this bill a thousand ways and they would oppose it a thousand times. It is now clear to me they do not oppose this bill because of the political defence, they do not oppose it because of the subjective test, they oppose it because it offers equal protection to LGBTIQA+ Victorians. This is the Victorian Liberal Party under its new leader.

We have an opportunity to deliver a bipartisan law to deal with the challenges we see on our streets – and they are grave and troubling challenges we see on our streets. These laws will be the strongest in the country. We know that there are Liberal members of Parliament in this place who support this bill. I know this because I was at a community event last year when the member for Hawthorn as the then Leader of the Liberal Party said that this legislation could not be delayed a moment longer. And I know in my heart there are other Liberal members of Parliament who do not feel the slightest bit comfortable about their party’s stance.

We all have a choice to stand with Victorian people against hate, antisemitism, racism and discrimination in all its forms or, in the Liberal Party, to stand with the hard right, who want to sink this bill. And if they choose to sink it, they will have to explain themselves to the Jewish community, to the Hindu community and to all Victorians, multicultural and multifaith communities why they gave up not just a golden opportunity but a generational opportunity to act in a bipartisan way to deal with the hate and division we are seeing in our society – hate and division that we in this place can take action on by strengthening the law and supporting multifaith and multicultural communities.

Ultimately, if they oppose it, I hope it is worth it for the Liberal Party, because stopping hate and crime is absolutely worth it to me. I will keep on fighting for those Victorians who need us in this place to fight for them – to fight for them for stronger protections, to fight for them to stamp out evil and hate and to fight for them for a strong, cohesive community, which we all know we have here in Victoria. We just have to work incredibly hard to keep it strong, and we do so from this place with this bill. I commend the bill to the house.

Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (15:50): I do not know how I can follow our Premier in speaking to this bill. It is an honour to stand so soon after our Premier, but I am so pleased to rise today in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. I thank the Attorney-General for introducing this bill. There are many on this side of this place who want to talk on this bill, so many that I was battling with my colleague here on who got to speak first.

Paul Edbrooke: You won!

Eden Foster: And I won, and it is an honour, but I notice also on the other side that there are not too many speaking on this. I think there is a sense of shame perhaps in the fact that they are not here to speak on this.

A member interjected.

Eden Foster: It certainly does show their values or lack thereof. This bill gives effect to recommendations from the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. The first recommendation was one of the most important: the expansion of anti-vilification laws to go beyond race and religious belief and also protect the attributes of gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person or group with a protected attribute. Further protected attributes include disability, mental illness – which is close to my heart as a psychologist – and HIV/AIDS status. All of these are commendable developments which align with modern Victorian and, might I add, Aussie values. We have a duty to address hate and vilification in our community. No matter where we may have come from, as Australians it is in our blood to help out a mate, to look out for each other and to lend a hand. Put simply, it is the Australian spirit, and it is probably a reason why my mum chose to come to Australia, because of its welcoming nature, because of its mateship to care for our fellow person.

This bill supports and expands upon those community values and entrenches them in law, which can only be a good thing. It is sad that some in our community continue to vilify others on the basis of their identity and lifestyle. This is why measures in this bill make it clear that hate will not be accepted in our state, delivering harsh penalties for those that incite and carry out vilification, because it is simply not who we are as Victorians and it is the right thing for us to do.

Inciting hate against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule of another person or group of persons on the grounds of a protected attribute will be punishable by up to three years imprisonment. This offence is entirely reserved for extremely serious offences which promote the strongest forms of hate and discrimination, so I am not sure what those opposite are scared of. The harshest of offences will be punished by up to five years imprisonment. Again, this is reserved for the most severe of offences, such as threatening physical harm or damaging personal property based on a protected attribute.

In times of global uncertainty, social cohesion is vital, and this bill will work to stop hate and vilification in our Victorian community. Some of the changes from the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections have already been enacted, including the banning of the use of the Nazi symbol in 2022, followed by the 2023 ban of the Nazi salute and other symbols and gestures used by Nazi sympathisers.

We on this side are against Nazis. Those on the other side – I do not know. We have seen some rallies where Nazis attended. It is quite concerning. To not support this is equally concerning, if not more so. If you have got a rally and you have got Nazis attending there, why not support this to show them that you are not backing them but you are backing these anti-vilification laws? I just do not understand – I really do not understand. We have seen these laws in place. They have been working, and they have been preventing those who want to loudly parade racism and antisemitism in the community from feeling that they have a right to do so.

Just as the government regularly assesses the effectiveness of previous changes, these new anti-vilification laws will also be closely monitored to evaluate their practical impact. The Allan Labor government have shown their willingness to act swiftly on community feedback, even as the final decisions are currently happening. That is why there are two amendments before the house today and why the bill also includes a statutory review of these changes, which must occur no later than five years after the commencement of such changes.

I would also like to speak a little of my own experience of racism. Whilst I grew up in Springvale and loved its growing diversity in the 1980s and 90s and still do, as a woman of colour I have experienced racism of my own, whether it was being told to go back to where you came from, witnessing my mum being told to go back to where she came from, being overlooked when waiting to be served or, even worse, being overlooked for a job or a promotion.

I have had a number of different jobs as a psychologist, from working with children in schools to working with those affected by drugs and alcohol, and through my experience I have seen the devastating effects that discrimination and hate can have on both adults and children. Working with young people is an honour, but it also can be quite hurtful to hear some of their experiences. For some of the young people that I have provided counselling for in my years, whether they have battled with their sexuality or their gender identity or whether they have been quite certain about it, hearing certain anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric is damaging, and I have seen firsthand what that does to young people. I get emotional about this because it is close to my heart and I have seen the damage that it can do, whether it be self-harm or whether it be suicide attempts. It is damaging. I do not understand why those opposite refuse to support this. They are refusing to support our young people. They refuse to support the vulnerable in our community. They refuse to support people with mental illness that are vilified because of something that they cannot help or those with disability that are discriminated against just because they look different. How can those on the other side not support this bill? It is completely wrong, and I ask them to question themselves and question their conscience.

This bill will move the serious vilification offences to the Crimes Act 1958, where they should be, and the civil anti-vilification protections to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. By moving serious vilification offences to the Crimes Act we make clear the severity of this conduct and reiterate that hate and vilification will not be accepted in Victoria. The 2024 Understanding Reporting Barriers and Support Needs for those Experiencing Racism in Victoria report found that 76 per cent of those surveyed reported that they or someone in their care had experienced racism, just like me and my mum. Additionally, the Islamophobia Register Australia has reported a 600 per cent increase in reported incidents since the end of 2023. Accordingly, the Allan Labor government has been actively trying to protect our communities and children during these challenging times.

I am fortunate to have the incredible Minaret College within the Mulgrave electorate. The Allan Labor government have been great supporters of the school, creating impressive new learning and assembly spaces for students to enjoy and feel safe in. But in the face of rising Islamophobia we have been proactive in protecting our children, with Minaret College receiving $156,900 from the safer faith-based place grants.

The safety and wellbeing of Minaret students, parents and staff is important to me and the Allan Labor government. Treating these crimes with the seriousness that they warrant is a necessary step to delivering that safety and moving them from the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act into the Crimes Act and Equal Opportunity Act is an important part of the raft of measures we are undertaking to strengthen social cohesion and protect our beloved communities here in Victoria.

I might start wrapping up, with only 10 seconds or thereabouts to go. I unequivocally commend this bill to the house.

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (16:00): It is a pleasure to rise to follow that impassioned contribution from the member for Mulgrave, whose words talked about the profound impact that the kinds of harmful, hurtful, offensive, vilifying behaviours that this bill seeks to address and to counter have upon people and had upon a younger member for Mulgrave and her mother. It is also a pleasure to rise to follow the Premier, who set out the journey of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024 to this place over a very long period of time. I know that the Minister for Veterans played a central role along with other members of the house in considering these issues very deeply through the parliamentary process and considering whether Victoria’s laws were best placed to deal with the kinds of hatred perpetrated and visited upon religious communities – people who were vilified on the basis of their faith in the aftermath of the abomination that took place in Christchurch in March 2019. The overview of this bill has been well traversed, and the Premier talked about why it is relevant, why it is necessary and the impact it will have in communities like hers.

I want to talk about the impact that this bill will have in communities like mine in expanding anti-vilification protections and building upon protections from racial and religious vilification to also include the attributes of disability. This is something that is very dear to me as a past Parliamentary Secretary for Disability but also as somebody who has a deep personal relationship with people with disability and who is part of the broader disability community. The hurt that is occasioned by people being vilified on account of fundamentally who they are – whether that is on the basis of their race, their ethnicity, their religion or their disability, or any of the other characteristics that this bill seeks to protect – has a consequence. It perpetrates a harm. It inflicts a hurt. Government cannot always do everything and regulation cannot fully regulate away that hate, but governments have a role to play in setting out what is deemed acceptable behaviour in a jurisdiction and empowering police to take action where that action is necessary.

We are dealing with some fundamental precepts here, I think. We are a liberal democracy where diversity is manifest in each one of our electorates. In the member for Broadmeadows’ electorate neighbouring mine and in my area, we know this very well. We represent communities that are drawn together from all over the world. We are at citizenship ceremonies every single week, where 165 new citizens, in the context of Hume, are joining our community. They bring with them historical, linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious traditions stretching back thousands of years in many instances, and that adds to and augments the diversity that we already have in Victoria.

One of those important characteristics is the faith of those people who are joining our communities. The member for Broadmeadows and I are proud to represent communities where well over 80 per cent of residents profess a faith. It is deeply important to them, to their families and to the way in which they live their lives. I assert, as I have done since I came to this place and did in my very first speech, that faith communities and people of faith have an important role to play, including in the public sphere and in the delivery of services, whether that is faith-based education, the hospitals that so many of us rely upon and many other dimensions.

Fundamentally, I think we are a community that is abundantly tolerant – overwhelmingly tolerant – and it is the exceptions to that which are so offensive I think to our sense of who we are as Victorians and who we are as Australians. Predominantly we are people who live and let live, and we want people to be happy irrespective of their faith, their sexuality or their gender – any of the characteristics that this bill seeks to protect. But too often that is not the case. I loop the member for Broadmeadows into my contribution again, because the communities we represent share so many common characteristics. We have spoken with many of our mosque communities recently about the insidious hurt that is being perpetrated against them, particularly women, because of the visibility of their faith through the wearing of the hijab and other head coverings.

In my current role as the Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, I have also been speaking at great length with faith leaders from the Islamic community and also just people who I meet in the context of my role as the member for Greenvale, who talk about the hurt that ignorant, ill-informed hatred has upon them in their day-to-day lives. It inhibits their capacity to live their life to the fullest, to feel comfortable and confident in professing their faith and being who they are. This bill seeks to do something about that, and I cannot fathom why those on the other side would not wish to protect people of faith from abuse, vilification and hatred. The Muslim community has talked at length with me and other members, I know, about the kinds of episodes that were discussed earlier, at Epping Plaza, but that sadly is not an outlier. It is something which is experienced by far too many people on a regular basis across Victoria more broadly.

I want to talk about a couple of the amendments that the Leader of the House tabled recently, which included adding proselytising and preaching into the civil religious purpose exceptions. I really thank the Leader of the House and others, including the current Attorney-General and the previous Attorney-General, who were engaged in incredibly extensive consultation with religious leaders and others across Victoria to ensure that the bill that we have on the table reflects their concerns and accommodates those concerns about the imperative to ensure that we sustain freedom of faith and freedom of religion in our community.

I share the faith of many people in my community, and I have been privileged to join many of them in sharing the mass at St Charbel in Greenvale, St Carlo Borromeo in Greenvale, St George Chaldean parish in Campbellfield and the Holy Spirit Syriac church just in recent weeks and to hear the feedback that members of our community have had for whom freedom of faith is not an abstract concept. They have come from countries and other parts of the world where vilification of them on the basis of their faith has not just been about words, but it has been something deeply visceral and it has resulted in members of their family being targeted, attacked, killed, forced from their homes, driven into other parts of the world as refugees and ultimately to settle in Australia. So when members of my community raise issues around the freedom of religion, the capacity to freely express their faith, it is not an abstract concept. It is something which matters deeply to my community and to me, so I am deeply glad that the bill now includes the words ‘proselytising’ and ‘preaching’ in the civil and religious purpose exceptions. It was always the case that the government intended to ensure that the capacity of Victorians to practise their faith freely was not trammelled by this bill, and I am confident that it now does not. I thank the religious leaders who provided their feedback to the government to ensure that those amendments continue to protect the rights of people of faith to practise that without hindrance or fear.

There have been too many disquieting occasions I think in this place recently when members of this place have deeply cynically, offensively and divisively sought to mislead and manipulate our faith communities, to suggest and to purport somehow that this Parliament is intending to remove prayer, for example, or is seeking to restrict the capacity of religious communities to have schools that reflect their values, their teachings and their traditions. This is simply untrue. It has been untrue at every turn. It is something which is divisive, which is wilfully misleading, and it seeks to I think stoke division on the basis of faith and within our faith communities. I hope that this bill that is on the table now with these amendments does not become another opportunity for that behaviour to occur.

I again assert the importance of people in my community being able to fully express and practise their faith, whether that be the Chaldean faith, the Orthodox faith, the Islamic faith, the Buddhist faith or the Hindu faith. We have a profusion of faith communities across the north, and they play an integral role in our community. Their contribution to our broader state is also important. It cannot be understated. I thank the Attorney-General. I thank the Premier for her words. I thank all of those who have sought to engage in good faith with religious communities and who have brought the amendments to this place today. It has been a pleasure to speak on the bill, and I wish it a speedy passage.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (16:10): It is no surprise to say that I am a proud Victorian. I am not ashamed to declare that I am very parochial about this state. The love that I feel for it is real. I have lived in and travelled to other places, other states and other countries, and every time I have returned to Victoria I have felt real deep pride that this is my home and this is where I come from. What I have been most proud of has been the incredible diversity amongst our people. We are home to people from almost every nation. We practise almost all faiths, and we speak over 300 languages. We are a society where people living with disability are respected and supported, where members of the LGBTQIA+ community are free to love who they love. It is a society I have long been proud of because for as long as I can remember by and large it has been a place where people have been able and have had the right to live in relative peace and harmony. I have spoken in this place before about diversity, about equality, about inclusion and about how proud I am of our government and how we promote that at every single turn. In everything we do we have that in our heart to ensure that Victorians are equal and that they can enjoy their lives in relative peace.

However, there has been a rising problem, which we have all acknowledged in this place thus far when speaking on this bill. We have seen it in our electorates or we have seen it on the news or we have experienced it within our own families or our circles of friends: we are seeing a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. We are seeing neo-Nazis more frequently out on display, spreading vile messages of hate, recruiting to grow their numbers, bold enough to stand on Elwood Beach and do their exercises, bold enough to hold their gatherings in the Grampians and bold enough to stand on the steps of this place and spread their messages of antisemitism and hate of anything that they think looks mildly different to them. I will not repeat the words that they use. They do not deserve my oxygen.

Vilification is not disagreeing with someone else. Vilification, as per the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, refers to behaviour that incites or encourages hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule against a person or group based on their race or religion. We are expanding that in this bill, and others have spoken about those expansions to cover disability, our LGBTQIA+ community and gender and sex. It is important that we do this, because we do not want our society to look like the ideal for people like neo-Nazis. It is precisely why we have worked hard as a government. I thank the former Attorney-General for all her work and the current Attorney-General. I thank the Premier. I thank every member of this government who has contributed. I thank everyone in the community who has participated in this to make sure that the legislation before us today, including the two government amendments, is as robust as it can be to ensure that it does the job it needs to do. I thank them all.

I have a friend who works at a Jewish school where last year graffiti was sprayed on the school walls. I spoke to her earlier today. She talked to me about how they worked so hard to remove those words – again I will not repeat the words in here – so that when the buses arrived on Monday morning the children would not have to see those words. Unfortunately word had got out. It had made the news, and the children knew exactly what had been written on the walls of that school. The first thing they had to do was debrief with those kids and check in on them and make sure they were feeling okay, because there is trauma involved. Words – we have spoken about this many times in here; I know I have – have an effect.

Words have a tangible result. The way we use our words, what we say and how we say them affects people very, very deeply. This legislation is here, as the Premier rightly pointed out, to give police the further tools that they need to start stamping this vile behaviour out. I heard actually yesterday that there is a building supply store in Malvern that was founded by Holocaust survivors. It is no longer there – they closed it up a year ago – but the signage is still there indicating it was a Jewish family’s building. Again, we have seen horrific words sprayed on there.

The Premier spoke in here before. I listened intently to her words. It was wonderful to be able to hear her speak about this with passion. She said that we were prepared to make amendments originally. We have gone ahead and done that. We have put in two amendments. The first one, which is removing the protection for political defence, was the key concern of those opposite. I ask you: where are they? Because they are not in here. Where are they to speak on this now that we have put in this amendment? Where are they to actually turn up and say, ‘Wow, okay. We’ve asked for this. It’s now been given to us. We will now speak to this’? That is the good-faith part I am a little bit concerned about, that they are not in this room right now.

Today’s Age article states that:

The amendments address the main concerns from the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, Zionism Victoria, the Zionist Federation of Australia and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, set out in a joint letter to state MPs two weeks ago.

Zionist Federation president Jeremy Leibler on Tuesday –

today –

urged parliamentarians to support the amended legislation. “This bill will do important work,” he said.

Zionism Victoria president Elyse Schachna said the proposed laws would “send a message that extreme hate has no place in our community.”

This is important to them. It is important to all of us. It is important that we continue to do everything we can in our power to ensure that our state is one where you can be different, where you can practise whichever faith you want to practise – or none at all if that may be the case – where you can speak whichever language, you can wear whatever headdress you prefer or that your religion may require of you and where you can love who you want to love and it should not mean that you are subject to hate. This legislation is critical legislation, and it is beyond upsetting and disappointing to see the response from the coalition.

I am getting a bit emotional about this, as my beautiful colleague the member for Mulgrave was, because I too remember being told to go back where I came from as a child. I do not hear that now because, you know, we are pretty used to Italians in our society. You can thank us all for your beautiful cafe lattes and your cappuccinos and the amazing food that we have and the culture that we brought as well. But there was a time when ‘Dagos go home’ was the headline of the Herald Sun,and my family remember it. There was a time when were called wog and it was not done with any kind of affection or any kind of jocularity: it was nasty, it was mean, it was intended to hurt. So I know how that feels.

I have spoken about this before and I apologise for my repetition, but this is really important legislation. I was having a look at Hansard from last sitting week and I looked at the member for Box Hill’s contribution, and I know how important this is to him. I know how important it is to the member for Thomastown, who spoke earlier today in her members statement about Islamophobia there. All of us are touched by this one way or another. None of us are immune to seeing the terrible effects which vilification has on our society. It is not a place I want us to become, and that is why this is the legislation for our times.

The member for Mordialloc stated, ‘Think of the consequences of inaction’. To stand by and to do nothing would be the worst thing we can do. So once again I ask: where is the opposition? Where are they now that we have moved these two critical amendments, which have been spoken of? I am sorry I have not gone into great detail on both of them, but they are to remove the political purpose defence to the criminal incitement offence and to add proselytising and preaching to the civil religious purpose exceptions, two really important amendments. We went out; we consulted. It took time for this legislation to come here because it is complex to do what we are attempting to do. But I think we have one of the best examples of it, and I am really proud to commend this to the house.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD (Broadmeadows) (16:20): I rise to support the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. I am so proud to live in and represent one of the most multicultural and multifaith electorates. We boast over 150 languages and more than 50 different faiths, where you can be at a school graduation and hear both the haka and the zaghārīt, which is the ‘le le le le le’ as students’ achievements are celebrated. People travel the world to learn about other cultures and lifestyles. We do not even need to travel; we have incredible richness here, along with a great sense of generosity and pride, and I feel so lucky every day.

I am so fortunate to be invited to so many celebrations. Where else in the world would you attend a footy club, a gurdwara, a lunar celebration, an imam graduation, an RSL, a temple and a dinner with a bishop all in one weekend? And of course it is not just the food and the dancing but the different perspectives, the different ways of contributing and the different value sets that we learn from.

I met some Pasifika elders the other day, and I love their fundamental value in the collective, where the community is more important than the individual, where they look out for everyone, help each other in times of trouble and make sure no-one feels alone. There is the Nepalese care and reverence for elders in their community with their Dashain festival, where the oldest member of each family bestows blessings on everyone, including me. There is the Indian community, who so highly value education and learning that if you drop a book on the floor you touch it on your head as a mark of respect. There is the Muslim community, with its profound commitment to faith and compassion and the spirit of charity and selflessness, zakat and sadaqah, ingrained in Islam. I am proud of my Catholic tradition. It is a big part of who I am, and the social justice values of Catholicism and Christianity drive me every day to work to make the world a better and fairer place. Compassion and care for others, particularly those suffering disadvantage and marginalisation, were not just modelled at home but also drummed into us at school and church every Sunday.

This sense of care and compassion is at the core of nearly every religion. I love the poster describing the golden rule, a principal to treat others the way they would like to be treated. A few of the verses in the religious texts are as follows. In Christianity: do unto others what you want them to do unto you. Judaism: that which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Buddhism: do not hurt others in a way you yourself would find hurtful. Hinduism: this is the sum of duty; do nothing to others that would cause you pain if done to you. Islam: none of you believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. And Sikhism: I am a stranger to no-one, and no-one is a stranger to me; indeed I am a friend to all. Over a dozen different traditions are included in the poster, even the Wiccans, which would please the member for Monbulk, which has the highest Wiccan population in the state.

With all the violence in the world right now and throughout history I often wish the rest of the world could look at Broadmeadows and see how people from different backgrounds and faiths can live together side by side in harmony and with respect and acceptance. I have boasted so many times that Victoria is the best multicultural and multifaith state in the world, but recently that harmony all over Victoria is being tested, and it breaks my heart that many in my electorate no longer feel safe. My Muslim friends do not want their daughters catching public transport for fear that they will be spat on, as has happened to them in the past. We only have to look at what happened in Epping to see that this problem is real. It has been real for a long time, but it is getting worse. We made so much progress after 9/11, but it now feels worse than ever. It also breaks my heart that many of my Jewish friends feel unsafe here in Melbourne and that their kids are scared to go to school and that some people think it is okay to do the Nazi salute in public here.

Christians have also felt marginalised, maligned and mocked. Sikhs and Hindus have also suffered vilification, and there have been attacks on temples as well as churches in Broadmeadows.

We in the Labor Party value our faith communities, and the Labor Party has worked so hard to build an Australia where we are free to practise our faiths, pass on our cultures and celebrate our traditions. So many in my community know just how precious and tenuous this freedom is, particularly the many refugees who have escaped countries where they have been persecuted and killed because of their faith, disability or sexuality. They know how stridently we need to protect our freedoms.

People with a disability too have felt maligned and marginalised for years and have been victims of horrendous crimes. You just need to look at the statistics to see their gross over-representation as victims of sexual assault, violence and exploitation. Just look at that taxidriver and how horrendously he treated so many vulnerable people – it is an absolute disgrace. I have even had parents of people with disabilities afraid to return to their country of origin because people with disabilities there are abducted and used for organ harvesting.

We need to do everything we can to protect our community and our freedoms. We can only live in a successfully diverse and multicultural state by respecting and celebrating each other’s diversity and by ensuring that we all make each other feel safe and valued and that every person is equal and treated as such, and this law will help do that.

To be honest, it breaks my heart that we even need to bring in such laws because some people fail the basics of respect and think it is okay to make others fearful and unsafe. They hide behind freedom of speech, but freedom of speech is not freedom to harm, it is not freedom to hate, it is not freedom to divide. Hate speech is not free speech; it is hurtful, it is divisive, it is anti-democratic and it is un-Australian, and much of it is imported. The far right from overseas are infiltrating Australia. So many people call themselves proudly Australian yet are so easily brainwashed by ideologies imported from overseas, like the anti-trans movement and the Nazi and white supremacist movements. The far right is using people, making them angry and making them feel like victims. People are getting manipulated and used by bad actors who benefit by undermining the very tenets of democracy.

This ‘divide and conquer’ playbook is as old as time itself. There are even new and made-up things to divide people on, to make them feel angry and that they have missed out. Twenty years ago no-one even knew what generation they belonged to, but now we have got what I think is a pretty hateful, unfair and unnecessary divide between the boomers and the millennials. Bad actors and their bots are using fear and misinformation on a scale we have never seen before, and democracy and harmony are truly under threat.

We saw how well fear and misinformation and harnessing the economic struggle people were facing after the Depression worked in Germany in the lead-up to World War II. It is so easy to whip up fear and anger and direct it to a scapegoat: another. They harness this anger and turn it into blame against someone who is not like them – turn the other into a monster, letting fear harden hearts and letting hate take hold as well as blame. And people do not care about the consequences; they think because they are hurting and because they are angry and scared that they are right and whatever happens is not their fault, it is the fault of the other. As a kid, I could never reconcile how the good people of Germany let millions of innocent people be sent off to the gas chambers just because they were not the same as them, whether it was because they were Jewish, homosexual or had a disability. But we know that bad things happen when good people do nothing, so we are not doing nothing – unlike the Libs. We are strengthening laws that make hate and vilification a crime, so people are less likely to get used by bad actors who want to see an end to democracies, who want corporations to rule the world instead of letting governments govern. We have always been stronger together, and these bad actors know this. They will use anything to divide us – race, religion, gender, even age – to create a sense of injustice between people, to blame each other.

We are better than this. We have one of the strongest democracies in the world. We have got enough generosity in our hearts. Our respect for diversity is so precious and it protects each and every one of us and our freedoms to be who we are and to celebrate each other, whether we are Christian, Jewish or Muslim, black or white, rich or poor, young or old, whether we have a PhD or we left school at 12, whether we are able-bodied or have a disability, whether we are gay or straight, male or female or gender-diverse. We are all human and we all deserve respect and dignity and to be treated equally and, most importantly, to feel safe, and this bill does just that.

It is wonderful that this government supports great festivals and events that celebrate each culture, and I think that is pretty key to what makes Melbourne and Victoria one of the best multicultural and multifaith states in the world.

We also need more multicultural and multifaith dialogue where we bring people together with different life experiences, where we listen to each other’s stories and learn from each other. I want to give a shout-out to the Merri-bek and Hume interfaith councils and thank them for the important work they do in bringing people together for open and honest dialogue and learning from each other. The open mosque days that many of us attended on the weekend offered us another opportunity to ask questions and deepen our understanding and respect for each other. I particularly thank the Islamic Community Millî Gorus mosque and the Fawkner Masjid for welcoming us so warmly. It is through listing to stories of each other that we truly learn and understand each other; sharing cultures, faiths and traditions is the only way to counter increasing discrimination. It costs nothing to be kind – choose kindness. I commend the bill to the house.

Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (16:30): I am proud to rise today to make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024, and I am even more honoured to follow the contributions of the member for Broadmeadows and also my good friend the member for Mulgrave and her contribution about her own traumatic experience. We are a state that celebrates diversity, and your history and your contribution is shared amongst us all. I am proud to be part of a government that recognises that whatever and whoever you are, whatever you believe in and wherever you are from, you deserve to be safe in our state and free from hate. I must admit that I am four days after cataract surgery, so the line between my eyes is actually blurred. But I will try my very best with this very important bill.

Our diversity is one of our great strengths here in Victoria. We come from hundreds of different backgrounds and from all walks of life. As part of that story, I remember my own citizenship ceremony back in 1998. It was such a proud moment for me, and of course my family were very grateful to become citizens of this great country. At the time I did not know much apart from that I somehow got a piece of paper to say I am an Australian citizen, a country that values democracy, human rights, diversity and freedom. Today every time I attend, celebrate and also welcome our new citizens, of course many times with my good friend the member for Mulgrave, it is such a good feeling – it is an understatement to say that it is a good feeling. I worked at a migration legal service. I ran my own practice for hundreds and hundreds of cases and welcomed families who were reunited with their loved ones. Some escaped refugee camps, some waited for a long time to be reunited with family and some came to Australia through skilled migration and call this place home – what else can we call this place where we welcome our migrant community, where we already have the skills shortage in other states.

We treasure and celebrate our diversity. In fact our diversity is essential to the success and vibrancy of our state. Today with this bill we have another opportunity to reflect on the amazing contributions and the amazing stories of many different Victorians and communities and to celebrate our diversity and what makes each of us unique and what makes us one community. These contributions are significant, in terms of not just our culture and tradition but the vital everyday contributions to the community in academia, business, industry, skills and the like. We are so lucky that Victoria is such a vibrant and wonderful place, and we are thankful for all of these contributions and experiences which enrich our state. The Premier in her contribution earlier made it very clear – and I was fortunate to listen to her contribution intensely in the hot seat at the time – that we have Victorians and their loved ones who are afraid to be who we are without being targeted with shame, ridicule or hate. It was such a very strong contribution.

That is completely unacceptable to me as a representative and as a local member, and it is unacceptable to my community, because everyone deserves to be safe in our state and free of hate. All of us here have a responsibility to Victorians to call out hateful behaviour.

I would like to take this opportunity to share my recent experience after I put out my Facebook post about the Pride March. Fortunately many of the comments on my Facebook post turned out to be not from our local residents; they came from somewhere else. There was call-out in the commentary to say, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ It is such a daunting commentary, but luckily we know that these comments are not coming from our local community. That is what we are doing this today: to defend our community and to celebrate our multicultural, multifaith community.

There are several reforms here that go back to the recommendations of the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. I was proud to be a member of that inquiry, sitting on the Legal and Social Issues Committee, and I am here with the chair of that committee. It was a powerful experience, hearing from the community about their experience of vilification and the impacts that hate and vilification have on people, particularly on mental and physical health, on participation in public life and more broadly. We heard from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, African Australians, the Muslim community, the Jewish community, many multicultural communities, the LGBITQ+ community, women and disability advocates. I would like to thank everyone who gave evidence for their contributions to the inquiry. It must have taken a lot of courage and conviction. The legislation that we have here in front of us today is testament to that courage and bravery.

As well as the committee recommendations, the bill delivers on the government’s 2022 election commitment to strengthen the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 to make it easier to prosecute an individual who incites hatred and bigotry based on a person’s faith or skin colour and the government’s public commitment in May 2023 to introduce anti-vilification reform within 18 months. This was a very important commitment to my constituents in the Clarinda district. Our district is one of the most multicultural in the state and is home to a great variety of different faiths. We welcome the commitment and these changes to the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.

In terms of specific changes to the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, we are moving criminal anti-vilification law into the Crimes Act 1958 and civil anti-vilification law to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 and retaining the key features of the RRTA, including protection from racial and religious vilification. There were a lot of important consultations with community leaders, and we acknowledge and appreciate the concern expressed by many that one provision could have been misused or could have potentially legitimised vilifications under the guise of political communication. The Premier said this very clearly in her contribution earlier on.

These are important changes that make it simply fair for all. I would like to conclude with fairness. It is something that we value as Australians and in particular as Victorians. It is something that we value so highly in my electorate and across the south-east of Melbourne, and the same goes for social cohesion. It is something that is extremely important to my community and something that is very valuable to all. It is something that we want to safeguard and promote and celebrate. That is what this bill is all about. I commend the bill to the house.

Ella GEORGE (Lara) (16:40): I rise today to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. I speak in support of this bill and the amendments introduced today by the government. I would like to acknowledge both the former Attorney-General and the current Attorney-General and their respective teams for the tremendous work that they have done on this bill. I also acknowledge that this bill would not be before the Parliament were it not for the contributions of many individuals, organisations and communities from across Victoria. I thank them for their contributions and feedback throughout the process of bringing this bill before the house and in recent days for their feedback, which has shaped the amendments introduced by the government today.

I find it heartbreaking that we need a piece of legislation such as the one we are debating today, because we know and everyone in this place knows that vilification has no place in our community and for most Victorians it does not align with our values or the behaviours that we expect to see in the multicultural, multifaith state that we are so proud of. But unfortunately this is not the case in our Victorian community right now. Recently we have seen an increase in reports of hate speech and conduct in the community. Before I go into my broader thoughts on this legislation I would like to touch on a recent event in the Geelong community that I think speaks of the urgency of this legislation and why it is needed in our community now.

I was appalled to hear of an incident that occurred in the community I represent, an incident that sent shockwaves through Geelong. A picture was shared on social media which is reported to have been taken at a local venue before a soccer match between two local clubs. The image depicted a group who all had digital images placed over their faces performing a Nazi salute. There is no suggestion that this group were players or members of either club, and both clubs who played that night have rightly come out to condemn this behaviour. I do not want to spend too much time on this because I do not want to give this cowardly and disgusting act too much attention, but this behaviour must be called out, because this behaviour is abhorrent. There is no place for this at sporting events or anywhere else in our community, and no-one should stand for cowardly and intimidating behaviour like this. It is shocking that in 2025 in our multicultural, multifaith community there are individuals who think it is okay to perform an act like this. That is why this bill today is important and why we as a government are taking strong action.

At its heart this bill before us is about social cohesion. It is about building a stronger and more inclusive state, something that we on this side are committed to doing and I hope others in this place are too. Along with legislation like what we have before us that offers protections to all Victorians, there are many other ways in which we can commit to social cohesion and inclusivity. One of the best examples of this I can think of is the annual mosque open day event held last weekend, when mosques around the state opened their doors to the Victorian community. I was honoured to attend the Geelong Mosque with my friend the member for Geelong and to be hosted there by the Islamic Society of Geelong. I left the mosque feeling like I had spent an afternoon with good friends who had taught me even more about their faith and the traditions. In fact that is how I feel after any event with our multicultural and multifaith community in Geelong. I am always blown away by the generosity of people who are so pleased to share their cultures, histories, traditions and faith with people from other backgrounds, and I am really proud that this state government supports Victoria’s multicultural and multifaith communities to thrive and to share their cultures with others.

As parliamentarians we all have a role to play when it comes to building social cohesion. I know that many of my colleagues attended mosque open day events in their communities last weekend, and I encourage anyone who is yet to attend a mosque open day to try and get along next year. It truly is a beautiful day in the community and something that is so important when it comes to understanding one another and building that social cohesion that is at the heart of this bill.

Like other critical pieces of legislation, this bill came from a parliamentary inquiry. The 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections examined the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 – and can I acknowledge the Minister for Small Business and Employment, who was then chair of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, which conducted this inquiry.

This inquiry highlighted that vilification affects many Victorians, including First Nations, Muslim and Jewish communities; women; LGBTIQA+ people; and people with disabilities, and it is often experienced online. It reported that despite existing protections, prejudice and hate remain prevalent in Victoria and that current laws are not as effective and accessible as required. Recommendations from the inquiry included extending anti-vilification laws to protect more groups and improving their enforcement. Since then our government has implemented the initial recommendations by banning Nazi symbols and the salute. Today’s bill addresses a further 15 legislative recommendations from the inquiry, aimed at strengthening anti-vilification laws and improving their effectiveness, particularly in serious cases. These reforms form part of a broader set of measures against increasing vilification and hate crimes, which include prevention strategies alongside legal reforms.

The reforms in this bill have been developed to carefully balance rights, including the right to freedom of expression, equality and freedom of religion and belief. The freedom to engage in robust discussion reasonably and in good faith is an important pillar of an open and democratic society, and these laws are not intended to prohibit this. This bill promotes equal participation in public life for all. It promotes the right to equality and the freedom to live without vilification while also upholding the right to freedom of religion and belief, because we know that every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief and to demonstrate that religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

The religious protections under existing anti-vilification laws will be retained and strengthened by improving how the law operates. The bill repeals the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, moving serious vilification offences to the Crimes Act 1958. It provides for the continued protection against vilification based on race, ancestry, nationality, ethnicity and religion. The bill provides enhancements to serious vilification offences and civil anti-vilification protections, including online conduct. It will offer retention and amendment of civil exceptions to vilifications to balance charter rights and legitimate activities. The bill maintains current terminology to only include seriously hateful, contemptuous or violent speech and conduct.

Anti-vilification protections will be expanded to include disability, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, gender identity and personal associations. Complaints can be made based on one or more protected attributes, acknowledging intersectional experiences of hate speech. The bill introduces new serious vilification offences targeting expanded protected attributes, allowing prosecution for inciting hatred or threats. There will be an increase in maximum penalties, ensuring they are raised to reflect the seriousness of these offences, with incitement offences carrying up to three years imprisonment and threat offences up to five years imprisonment.

I do want to touch briefly on the amendments introduced today by the government. These amendments reflect the government’s commitment to engaging with the Victorian community on the issues that this bill covers, and the amendments reflect the government’s willingness to work with community to ensure that we get this legislation right, because it is far too important to get it wrong. As I mentioned earlier, promoting social cohesion is at the heart of this bill. As the member for Clarinda mentioned, it is also about fairness, fairness for everyone, because fairness does not include vilification. It should absolutely be against the law to vilify anyone, whether that is for their race, their religion, being a woman or being in a wheelchair. Unfortunately there are Victorians and their families who experience this and live in fear of vilification. Sadly there are members of my community in the Lara electorate who also do experience this and have told me about how they have experienced racism. They experience fear of expressing their true selves and facing the possibility of shame, mockery or hostility. It is our duty to support them and support all Victorians by denouncing these hateful actions.

This bill goes one step further and makes it clear that especially in the toughest of times we stand by all Victorians. As parliamentarians we are leaders, leaders in our communities and in our state, and as leaders it is so important to speak up when we see vilification, hate speech and hateful conduct in our communities. We cannot let it go by and not call it out for what it is. With this bill that is exactly what we will do. On this side of the house we are doing that. We are speaking up. We are saying there is no place in our society for vilification. I commend this bill. I wish it a speedy passage through the house, and I urge those opposite to support this bill.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (16:50): I too rise to speak on and in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024, and I speak on this bill of course as the state member for Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West, which is one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse communities in the country, but also as someone who is the proud son of migrant parents who, like so many, came to this country to build a better life following the end of World War II, away from what was at the time Nazi war-ravaged Europe and a war that left Italy, and in particular southern Italy, Calabria and Sicilia, decimated, which was the tragic product and the end result of where hate, fear and prejudice can lead individuals, communities and entire nations if left unchecked and ignored.

That is why it forever will remain incumbent upon all of us as members of Parliament and leaders of our respective local communities to continue saying and doing all that we can to build a better and fairer community for all, to support welcoming and inclusive suburbs for all, whether First Nations people, previous generations of migrant communities or newly arrived migrants. We must continue to always foster and promote social cohesion, peace and harmony by working to bring people together on the things that unite us, not the things that divide us. This is an approach that has long underpinned our story as a successful, vibrant and evolving multiculturally diverse state that has continued to welcome people from all backgrounds, regardless of their race or skin colour, culture, faith, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation or any other aspect of one’s background. No matter what your background is, everyone here in Victoria belongs. With at least 52 per cent of Victorians having at least one parent that was born overseas and Victorians coming from 200-plus countries, speaking 260 languages and following 135 faiths, working to maintain, sustain and strengthen our state’s social diversity and cohesion must continue to remain an ongoing priority for any state government, and it should never be taken for granted.

As Dr Martin Luther King once said:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

However, while here in Victoria we have of course made tremendous strides over many years in building a more diverse, inclusive and resilient community, the reality is, as we have seen over recent times, sadly, we have more to do. With an increasing number of Victorians having disgracefully and unacceptably been targeted with hatred, fear, shame, violence and ridicule based on their race, faith, culture, skin colour and background, we cannot stand idly by and do nothing, like the Liberals and the National Party are suggesting that we do. Whether it is blatant antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, homophobia or any other form of overt vilification through words or deeds that incites hate, these actions have absolutely no place in modern-day Victoria in 2025. That is why we have been working to protect and support our state’s social cohesion by always, above all else, seeking to promote peace, harmony, understanding and respect through our words and deeds when it comes to fostering social cohesion.

In 2022 of course the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee conducted an inquiry into extremism. In 2021 the parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections made a number of recommendations that we have continued to support and implement. I want to commend the chair of that committee at the time, the member for St Albans, for her outstanding work and advocacy. As the first Islamic woman elected to this chamber, her leadership stands the test of time in this space, particularly through previous reforms and these reforms today that we are pursuing off the back of that work. Through that work we banned the Nazi symbol in 2022. We banned the Nazi salute and other gestures and symbols in 2023. In 2024, last year, in November, we launched the first anti-racism strategy in the country to prevent discrimination. We previously introduced the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 under the Bracks and Brumby governments, we moved the Gender Equality Act 2020, we supported the Multicultural Victoria Act 2011 and we delivered the Advancing the Treaty Process with Aboriginal Victorians Act 2018, and of course we continue to invest in and support all of our multicultural and diverse communities. We continue to invest via our equality portfolio in supporting our lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, same-sex – LGBTIQ+– communities of course, and we continue to work and support our incredible disability communities from the cradle right through to age, including through our recent royal commission work over previous years.

But notwithstanding these measures, of course recently we have seen an alarming increase in reports of hate speech and conduct that simply cannot be tolerated or ignored. The 2024 report Understanding Reporting Barriers and Support Needs for Those Experiencing Racism in Victoria recorded a 76 per cent increase of people surveyed who stated that they or someone in their care had experienced racism in Australia.

In 2023 the Victorian Antisemitism Report recorded that there has been a 228 per cent in antisemitic incidences, including the unacceptable firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue established by Holocaust survivors in Ripponlea – totally unacceptable. Since October 2023 the Islamophobia Register Australia has seen an over 600 per cent increase in reported incidents. In 2023 the Victorian Pride Lobby Fuelling Hate report recorded hate as escalating, with 49 per cent of the participants surveyed having experienced online abuse, harassment and vilification and 47 per cent saying they had experienced that in person. The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability of course also sadly heard evidence that people continue to be vilified for their disabilities, and in 2019 the eSafety Commissioner reported that around 14 per cent of Australian adults were estimated to have been the target of online hate speech in the previous year, with LGBTIQ+ communities and First Nations people experiencing online hate at more than double the national average.

In addition to these statewide incidents, we have also sadly seen a number of incidents across my community of Merri-bek that have also sought to sow the seeds of hate and division, sadly. Just last week for example the Greens and socialist Merri-bek councillors voted against a motion for the Merri-bek council to fly the international flag of peace at the Coburg Town Hall. They literally voted against peace. Now we have the Greens in this chamber indicating they will be opposing this bill. It is absolutely shameful that the Greens stand on the side of hate and division and not the side of peace that we seek to. We have seen the Greens and socialist influenced protests regularly and unacceptably target my federal colleague, my good friend Peter Khalil and his office, his staff, his community materials and his billboards, creating regular disruptions for local traders along Sydney Road, including vandalism of his office. That is why, notwithstanding our efforts to date, we need to continue doing more. By introducing this new anti-vilification bill we can better protect all Victorians from vilification, hate and harm.

We need to promote peace and we need to support social cohesion, and this bill will deliver a tranche of reforms to expand and strengthen Victoria’s anti-vilification laws to better protect all Victorians. This includes the implementation of 15 of the recommendations from the 2021 parliamentary inquiry. The bill will expand anti-vilification protections from race and religion to also protect the attributes of disability, including physical disability, mental illness, AIDS status and more – gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protective attribute. The bill proposes to create two new offences of incitement on the grounds of a protected attribute. This refers to conduct that is objectively likely to incite hatred, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule of a group of people or persons on the grounds of their protected attributes. The offences intend to capture extreme and serious public-facing conduct and are not intended to capture merely offensive or unkind conduct. The new offence is punishable by three years of imprisonment. A new threat offence will be established – an offence for threats that threaten physical harm or property damage on the grounds of a protected attribute will also be created. The new offence is designed to largely target the worst and most extreme of those threatening and public-facing behaviours that seek to vilify and physically harm people. The offence is punishable by up to five years imprisonment.

The bill also introduces a new definition for ‘public conduct’ which will apply to only public-facing conduct that seeks to spread hate, vilify or threaten. It includes any form of communication via public speaking, writing, displaying notices, playing recorded materials, broadcasting and communicating through social media and other electronic methods, actions and gestures and the wearing, displaying of clothing, signs, flags, emblems and insignia observable by the public. It also reforms the Bail Act 1977 so that the bail decision-makers can remand a person who is charged with intentionally performing a Nazi gesture, as is already the case for the offence of displaying a Nazi symbol. The Liberals claim to be in favour of stronger bail laws, but here is a bill that actually strengthens bail laws that they are opposing.

Along with these measures, the bill also makes provisions for a number of exceptions and defences that appropriately balance the charter of human rights and general rights to freedom of expression, including the usual exceptions for broad civil conduct, artistic, academic, public interest, religious or scientific purposes. The amendment to the bill that was introduced today now adds proselytising and preaching to the civil religious purpose exceptions. The bill provides that only Victoria Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions will be able to commence prosecutions to ensure the appropriate levels of prosecutorial oversight. These two anti-vilification reforms are proposed to commence over two stages, with the criminal reforms from September 2025 and civil reforms by September 2027 or earlier by proclamation.

Finally, the bill imposes a statutory review of the reforms to occur no later than five years after the commencement of all the reforms, with a report tabled in Parliament. That gives the opportunity – it does not stop the Liberals or the Greens from supporting the bill now, as there will be an opportunity embedded into the bill to review these laws and make them better over the coming years. As we have indicated from the outset, we are keen to listen and to work with people in this chamber and the broader community to make those necessary changes to the bill in order to get it passed and to keep people safe now. It is on that basis that I commend the bill to the house. I commend the former Attorney-General for visiting my community to meet with my community members and discuss this bill.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (17:00): I am pleased to rise to make a contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. I do so with the important responsibility that comes from representing a community that has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Victoria, where 40 per cent of residents were born outside of Australia, residents come from more than 135 different countries and they speak more than 80 languages.

When I was thinking about the contribution I want to make today I reflected on the advocacy of William Cooper, who was an Aboriginal man in my community of Footscray. Despite the vilification he himself experienced and that his community experienced, in 1938 he was the only person in the world at the time to lead a protest against Kristallnacht. He marched from his humble house in Southampton Street in Footscray to the German consulate in the city to speak out in defiance of the antisemitism that the Jewish people of Germany were experiencing.

When I was studying at university I was fortunate enough to participate in a course at Monash University, the Holocaust history program, where I was fortunate to spend a great deal of time at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick and to speak with and learn from survivors. Writing my contribution today, I could not help but reflect on the quote that is at the Holocaust museum in Washington, which is the famous Martin Niemöller quote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –

because I was not a socialist.

Then they came to the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

I think about that because I think in the context of this bill – this very important bill – passivity is not an option. To sit there and do nothing, to say nothing, is not an option, because our democracy is so precious and our multiculturalism, our multifaith community, the respect we have for one another and the society that we have built on mutual respect and understanding are so precious. But vilification is sadly experienced by too many Victorians, and this bill responds to the recommendations made after the 2021 inquiry into anti-vilification protections, which made clear that the current laws were inadequate. I am so proud to represent a diverse and vibrant electorate. People of all walks of life call Footscray home, and it is our greatest attribute.

This bill repeals the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, moving serious offences to the Crimes Act 1958 and civil matters to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. The first recommendation made by the 2021 report, and one of the most important, was to expand protections beyond race and religion, and the new protections will also cover sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, disability, HIV or AIDS status and personal association with a person or a group with a protected attribute.

The bill introduces two new vilification offences into the Crimes Act 1958: an incitement offence and a threat offence. The incitement offence applies to conduct that is objectively likely to incite hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule of another person or a group of persons on the grounds of a protected attribute. The offence is intended only to be used against extremely serious conduct. Simply being unkind or making disparaging remarks, as unpleasant as that is, will not land you in jail under these reforms. The bill makes careful consideration not to limit the constitutional implied freedom of political communication. This includes communication about government or political matters so that people, including MPs and the broader Victorian community, can express opinions and criticisms about government policy and decisions. It is important that we acknowledge the difference between expressing an opinion and inciting hatred. I would think it is obvious where this line is, as there is never a reason to express vitriol towards someone for their race, sexuality, faith or any of the other protected attributes introduced by this bill.

The threat offence is where a person threatens physical harm towards a person, group or the property of a person or group on the grounds of a protected attribute. The political communication defence does not apply to the threat offence as there is no circumstance in which violence or threats of violence can have a genuine political purpose. We have all been shocked this week when reading the news that the police are investigating alleged Islamophobic attacks on women at a shopping centre in suburban Melbourne. It is completely unacceptable.

The online offences component of this bill is really important. As the member for Broadmeadows indicated, there are bad actors who are amplifying some of this hate speech. In an age of artificial intelligence this threat is very, very serious and of deep concern to our democracy and our society. During consultation and throughout the inquiry we heard that online vilification is one of the most pervasive and harmful forms of vilification. It is particularly damaging because of its anonymity and its ability to spread quickly to large audiences. As members of Parliament we all cop some pretty horrendous abuse online, and I am sure no-one would disagree that hiding behind a keyboard should not absolve you of criminal responsibility for gutless attacks on people that are different to you. Again, it should be noted that these offences do not apply to disparaging or unkind remarks but to those with the intent to incite serious hatred and contempt.

When I think about the Victoria that I love, where so many people pursue their lives, a place with democracy and freedom, I think about the Vietnamese community in my electorate of Footscray. Just this weekend the Premier joined me and other colleagues at the Tet Festival in Footscray Park. It was particularly special this year because it marked 50 years since Vietnamese refugees first arrived in Melbourne’s inner west at the Maribyrnong hostel, coming off boats – many thousands of them died making that terribly perilous journey to Australia – including our most recent mayor of the City of Maribyrnong Cr Cuc Lam, who arrived on a boat with just a suitcase. The Vietnamese community were wearing T-shirts that said ‘Thank you, Australia’, and they have raised half a million dollars towards the Footscray Hospital project. How poorer we would be if that community had not sought to call Victoria home. This bill is so important. I am so disappointed in the opposition and in the Greens for opposing it. I commend the bill to the house.

Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (17:10): I rise to make my contribution on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. As other members have said, it is a shame that this bill is necessary, but we do not live in a perfect world, and we never will live in a perfect world. I think it is fair to say that over the course of my life we have come a long way, but as many have noted, including members on the other side, we have seen a rise in hate speech very publicly and prominently. If for no other reason but that, this bill is necessary to tell all of Victoria that it is not acceptable. If that was all this bill did, that would be a step in the right direction, but it is not all this bill does.

I listened to members on the other side last sitting week, as many in here did. I would not propose that any member of this house would speak in the terms that we are affecting today. I am not a supporter of guilt by association as a criminal offence, and I do not bandy people together, but I do find it unfortunate that in a piece of law which has gone through many stages of preparation, going back to the committee inquiry that was I believe, from memory, last term a bipartisan result between the member for St Albans, the Minister for Youth and Minister for Veterans, and also the member for Caulfield – if I remember correctly, they put together their report in a bipartisan way. We have made good strides since then with the criminalisation of the hakenkreuz and the banning of the salute.

We are still seeing black-pyjama-clad neo-fascist idiots who are out there spreading their hate and inciting others to join them, and this is not acceptable. I listened carefully to members on the other side and their concerns in regard to the ‘genuine political purpose’ defence, and I was quite content to stand and argue the case of why I did not think that was going to be the end of the world for this bill. I am happy to see that this defence is being removed, that it is not necessary, and I hope that means that members on the other side will vote aye, as I intend to, when it comes to the passing of this bill. I appreciate there are other arguments.

I see that the amendments that have been circulated by the Leader of the House also add the word ‘preaching’ because that was something that faith-based groups were concerned about. Again, whilst I would potentially argue that may not be necessary, this is about trying to find common ground. I thank the Premier, the Leader of the House and the Attorney-General for making changes to try and find that common ground so we can all stand here together and say, ‘This is a good step.’ This will not fix racism. I do not think any of us are silly enough to think this will fix racism, but it is necessary for us to draw this line.

I have great respect for the member for Malvern as a former jurist, barrister, lawyer – probably not jurist; although you never know; there is always time, member for Malvern. He did say in his contribution that one of his concerns is that we were – and I am trying not to verbal you, member for Malvern, but one of your concerns was that we are lowering the bar.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair.

Matt FREGON: My apologies, Speaker, I should know that. I would argue, to the member for Malvern, that we are raising the bar. We are raising the bar to set the standard of what is discourse that this state agrees with, and the leftover is what is not tolerable. I do not care which group or minority group, there are plenty that we are trying to include equally in our society. I am a middle-aged white bloke with an Anglo-Franco history –

John Mullahy interjected.

Matt FREGON: I will take the interjection from the member for Glen Waverley: from the gully. I have not been vilified to my knowledge. The closest I got was probably when I had glasses as a kid. To refer to the interjection again – which I should not do, Speaker, I know, but anyway – I look at when I was growing up in the gully, and slurs to Indigenous people were commonplace in the language in the schoolyard. Homophobic slurs were commonplace in the language of the schoolyard. It was a different time. We do not necessarily judge that time. We do not put the same emphasis on today’s arguments, but it was never right. Maybe we have come a little bit further on in this state in the last 40 or 50 years. Maybe we are a little bit better, and part of the reason we might be a little bit better is because of laws like this that our government brings in to say we are raising the bar. As a collective, with all of the millions of people that we represent, we are saying this is the standard. We cannot solve stupid. It would be nice if we could, but we cannot fix the idiots who are on the steps – not now, obviously, thank God, hopefully, but who were. We cannot fix that. There are always going to be people who have views that the collective majority of the state of Victoria thinks are abhorrent. It would be lovely to get rid of them – it would be better to educate them – but they will exist. What we are saying today is that with this bill, when it becomes law, you are accountable.

Mount Scopus is on just the other side of Burwood Highway from my electorate. To see antisemitic graffiti being put up anywhere near my home breaks my heart. Again, when I was a kid, if people were using homophobic slurs, it was acceptable. It was not right, but it was accepted and therefore it was deemed to be acceptable at the time. If I hear my boys saying anything of the like these days, I pick it up straightaway, and I would presume everyone in this chamber would do the same. They are getting taught; they are in a different world. The mini version of Ripon over there is going to grow up in a different world than I did, and that is such a good thing. I grew up in a very white Anglo school in Ferntree Gully, Kent Park Primary – love ya. My children grew up in a different primary school. They will never know, and that is such a good thing. We have so much to be proud of in our multicultural society, and this makes it better.

I will finish with this. Members on the other side shared their concerns about the bill that we have in front of the house. Those who have already spoken cannot speak again; they are the rules of this house. I am not judging them for that; they are the rules. But it is most likely that on Thursday we will get to say aye or nay or maybe nothing. I will be saying aye. I commend the bill to the house.

Belinda WILSON (Narre Warren North) (17:20): I spend a lot of time in this chamber, and I found interesting the contributions that I listened to last sitting week from the other side. It is not on every bill that a government goes away and looks at the feedback and makes significant amendments and changes to something that is really important to us and really important to this side of the chamber.

The member for Ashwood is of a similar vintage to me and we were brought up in a different world. I may be a few years older than you, Deputy Speaker, but that is okay. We will not hold anyone to that. You did take my baby lines, so I am very upset with you. As a mum of three kids – I will always call them kids even though they are 23, 21 and 19 – they look at the world and look at racism, antisemitic behaviour and Islamophobia very differently to the way we were brought up and the way we looked at it. ‘Enjoyed’ is probably not the right word to use, but I have listened to many of the contributions and the majority of them have come from this side of the chamber. These subjects are very hard for me personally because I worked for over 10 years for two Jewish members of parliament, and especially in the last couple of years I have seen the dramatic increase in absolutely unacceptable behaviour. I guess it is just like the member for Ashwood said, about how things are acceptable and then we let them go and we let them go and they get bigger and bigger. I have seen that frequently.

Most people in this chamber, especially on this side of the house, know the federal member Josh Burns as a Jewish member of Parliament for the seat of Macnamara. I had the pleasure of working with him for three years. One of the things that was my job was to carry a bottle of turpentine and a cloth in my car, and every single day I had to go out to a postbox or a sign or a corflute – this was during the campaign – or a big sign and wipe off antisemitic slurs. Every single day. Some mornings he would call me at seven in the morning and say, ‘Can you head out to this place?’ and I would go and do it. Do you know what? Quite honestly, I never thought much of it. I just sort of did it. It is not until the recent behaviour of so many people in this state that I thought, ‘Wow, this undercurrent has been happening for such a long time.’ I think that sometimes I just go, ‘It’s okay. Look at the brighter side of things,’ but I have seen my friends be treated and have to put up with behaviour and hurtfulness that is unacceptable. As many people on this side of the chamber have said, it is pretty appalling that we actually had to bring in legislation in Parliament really. That is what is upsetting. However, here we are. I think what is upsetting and disappointing is that we do not have the support of the other side. That, to me, is really upsetting and disappointing.

The member for Clarinda was talking about citizenship ceremonies, and in my seat of Narre Warren North we have over 600 citizenship ceremonies a month. It is one of my favourite things to do. We are so proud of our multicultural community. To be honest, Victoria and Australia have always been very multicultural. I know that the member for Monbulk was talking about the Italians and the Greeks, and in my family it is the Irish and the English. We have always been a very multicultural state, and we are so proud of that. I am so proud to stand every single day with so many different cultures in this state.

One of my favourite things on the weekend was visiting with the Muslim community at an open mosque day. I have one very large mosque in my community – a shout-out to the incredible people at the Hallam mosque – but I also have two other mosques that are just outside, one being the Turkish mosque, Emir Sultan Mosque. What was so fantastic about going there on Saturday was that they run a Saturday school, and there were all these magnificent kids there. What upset me on that day was that when I was at Hallam mosque upstairs with the ladies having a cup of tea, they started to tell me about the racism that they experience every single day. They stand at traffic lights, and people look them up and down. These women are very educated women. Some of them teach in my local schools, work in the public service, work in incredible jobs, and they say people look at them as though they cannot speak English because they wear a hijab. They expect that they do not know what they are talking about. They talk to their children and not to them because they think they cannot speak English. It was upsetting. I said to them, ‘I am sad that this happens to you.’ And they said, ‘Belinda, it doesn’t happen to us once a week or once a month; it happens daily.’

I look forward to the day when, as a community, we can be kind. I have an award at Christmas time that I give to my grade 6s – I have over 19 grade 6 classes – and it is called the respect and integrity award. I always say when I present that award that the recipient of this award is not the smartest, but they are the person that can be the kindest, and it costs absolutely nothing to be that person, nothing at all.

I know a lot has been said about the Jewish schools and the signage that has been over the schools and the fences and the workplaces. I parked at this place one day with my family, and we crossed the road to go and have lunch at a Chinese restaurant. My dad is nearly 80 and if I said he was elderly he would probably hit me in the face. He is not at all of course, but 80, if you google it, would classify as an elderly person. My mum is 75. As my dad went to step out of the restaurant into the street, the restaurant owner pulled him back and pulled down the shutter and said, ‘Don’t go out there. It’s not safe.’ There were a whole group of people coming up the street, and they were putting antisemitic stickers all up on the street on the restaurant windows. My kids and I walked along and pulled them all off. But the thought of actually having to do that was just frightening for me.

I have also had many conversations with Paul Hamer, the member for Box Hill. He said his wife and children have never been so scared – scared of going to school, scared of going out. I have had friends say to me that they have never been so scared to socialise in this community. Really? That is frightening. That is not our state. That is not who we are. We are a state of kindness, and we are a state of inclusion. As I have said, I am sad that we have to introduce this bill, but I know it will make a difference, and it is going to be up to each and every one of us to make this change happen. We have no room in this state for hate. We have no room for antisemitic behaviour. We have no room for Islamophobic behaviour. We have no room for Nazis. We have no room for Nazi salutes. We have no room for the swastika. We have respect. I know that the member for Footscray also spoke about the Holocaust Museum, a place I have visited many, many times. I encourage every single Victorian to go and visit there. It is the most moving and incredible place you will ever, ever visit. It is touching. It is moving. I always want my friends, no matter what country they are from – whether it be from Israel, whether it be from Afghanistan, whether it be from Palestine, no matter where they are from – to feel safe in this incredible state. I would like to commend the bill to the house.

Josh BULL (Sunbury) (17:30): I rise to make a contribution on what is a very important piece of legislation before the house this afternoon, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. Before I go to the specifics of what is, as I mentioned, an incredibly important bill for the house, I want to acknowledge the commitment, the determination and the passion of the Premier in bringing this on again in her contribution earlier this afternoon and indeed demonstrating to both the house and all Victorians that hate and vilification are not in any circumstance okay or acceptable within our state.

This stands, sadly and unfortunately, in stark contrast to what we have heard this afternoon from those opposite, whereby we had in this place a scenario where just last sitting week those opposite had expressed concerns by both the Jewish and Muslim communities and other groups about a ‘political purpose’ defence, and that defence now, as all members know, is no longer part of the bill. But what we have again seen – and I say disappointingly and incredibly sadly – from those opposite is of course choosing ideology yet again over people. I have listened intently to many contributions from this side of the house, and these contributions from a number of members that have been made throughout the journey this afternoon have reflected on both personal circumstances and stories of those members and indeed their families and those of constituents and friends and others that have expressed some in many ways heartbreaking stories of personal experiences that had been shared with members. Yet again we see ideology take hold of those opposite, gripped by division, as per usual, and the loser, as always, is of course the Victorian community.

This bill goes to the very heart of what both our community and our state and of course we each and every day as members of this side of the house coming in here should be working towards – creating a fairer, better, more just society and community. We know that all of these hallmarks, all of these characteristics that make up the Victorian community are something that we value but we do indeed need to fight for. These are not a given; it is always about going in and listening to communities but addressing these instances and these issues when they occur.

I have had the opportunity – the great privilege, I should say – of being the Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs, co-chairing the anti-racism taskforce in its infancy and indeed learning about working with multicultural communities but also learning about experiences that I have not had, that I took the opportunity to listen and to learn about. In so many instances I have felt a profound sense of sadness and that the experiences that have been shared in those forums and that have been shared by other members in their contributions this afternoon or this evening indeed must go to making sure that we need to work harder every single day to protect those in our community who experience all sorts of hate. Many of those have been canvassed today.

What I will say is there is a fragility to social harmony. Those values that I have spoken about earlier are in stark contrast to the dark, dangerous and destructive forces that exist within our state and within every single local community. Sadly, again, what we are seeing from those opposite is a complete ignoring of that in the choices that they are making.

There are of course those within our community who choose hate. There are those who target people of a certain race, there are those who target people of a certain religion and there are those who target those with a particular disability. There are those who target others because of their sexual orientation, and frankly, there are those who target other people just because they can. In every single instance and in every single way we have an obligation and a responsibility as members of Parliament to come into this place and to fight for those people, and if we do not and we are not, then we may as well hang up the boots and head out the door, because that is the most important thing we can do in this house. When those who spread hate and fear and division – many of the groups or the instances, multiples, a series of behaviours or patterns – are empowered, that is when of course it spreads and it grows. There are countless examples of history, and I have heard so many of those spoken about so passionately in this debate this evening, and of course we all know where that ends up.

Through this bill the government is sending a message in the strongest possible terms that enough is enough. It gives effect to those 15 recommendations that were set out in the report from the Legal and Social Issues Committee into the anti-vilification protections. I want to do as others have done, and that is of course thank all of those members of the committee that participated in that important work. Indeed it has been said in the course of the debate that the work of parliamentary committees is incredibly important, and this is a prime example of that. I want to acknowledge the current Minister for Small Business and Employment, Minister for Youth and Minister for Veterans in particular for chairing that work but extend that of course to all committee members.

The acceptance of those 15 recommendations from the 2021 report and the amendments that have been made today go to what this government stands for. It should not matter what your race, your religion or your background is; every single Victorian deserves to feel safe in their community. Every single Victorian deserves to move about our community, to go to school, to go to work, to live and to enjoy their life free from vilification and hate, and by beefing up and ensuring the relative changes that are contained in this bill that relate to those 15 recommendations from the original report, we of course stand with those who have in so many instances – particularly, as others have mentioned, in recent times – been subject to the cruellest of behaviour. We on this side of the house will continue to work with all of those communities each and every day, right across our portfolios, to ensure that they are supported and of course they are protected.

As others have done, our message to those that want to spread fear and division and divide and harm people is of course that we will throw the book at you, because it is never acceptable, Acting Speaker Mercurio, to behave in that way. The vast majority of people within my community, I am sure in your community and communities right across our great state do the right thing, support one another and want to look after each other. But we know that there are those dark and dangerous elements within the community that we have seen particularly in recent times, with global conflicts and other matters, that have wanted to harm others and make statements of fear and hate, and that is why this legislation is so important. My final message to those opposite is that history is always the best judge of these matters. It is time to get on board, and with those comments I commend the bill to the house.

Jackson TAYLOR (Bayswater) (17:40): It is a pleasure to rise and speak in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. At the very outset can I thank everyone who has been involved in this, in particular many members of our community, many Victorians, many stakeholders, as many people have detailed, and I will go into some of that detail of the parliamentary inquiry and the important work that members of the government – members of this place and the other place – have done working with the Victorian community to get this right and to make sure it is a good piece of legislation that will go a significant way, as the member for Sunbury detailed, to making sure people can go about their lives free of hate and free of vilification. That is why it is a great pleasure to rise and speak in support of this legislation.

We know that following those further consultations that occurred after the introduction of the bill into this place, the government is moving two amendments to strengthen the anti-vilification and social cohesion bill. One is to remove the political purpose definition to the criminal incitement offence and the other is adding proselytising and preaching into the civil religious purpose exceptions. Including the ‘genuine political purpose’ defence to the incitement offence which was intended to ensure consistency with the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication; it was never intended to expand that protection. Government has continued conversations with community leaders. We also fully acknowledge and appreciate the concern expressed by many that the provision could have been misused and potentially legitimise vilification under the guise of political communication. As such, we will remove that provision. Doing so will not affect the operation of the offences. Existing general statutory and common-law defences such as self-defence, duress et cetera will apply to the offences, and that is consistent with the current law.

The bill also strengthens the civil anti-vilification protections with incitement and harm provisions, and existing exceptions are retained. The religious purpose exception had minor amendments to make the language consistent with other legislation protecting worship, observance, practice and teaching. But we heard concerns the revised language could have had the effect of narrowing the exception; that was not our intention. Therefore we will add the words ‘proselytising’ and ‘preaching’ to make that crystal clear. The exception is necessary to balance rights and ensure legitimate activities are not against the law, and the government stands by Victorians who wish to genuinely practise their religion.

This bill will deliver a tranche of reforms to expand and strengthen Victoria’s anti-vilification laws to better protect all Victorians from the serious harms of vilification and hate conduct. As stated previously by other members, it includes implementing 15 of the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. The bill will expand the vilification protections from race and religion to also protect the attributes of disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protected attribute. It will repeal the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 and move criminal anti-vilification offences to the Crimes Act 1958 and civil anti-vilification protections to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. It will improve how serious vilification offences operate, including by introducing new serious vilification offences; improve how civil protections operate, including by modifying the civil incitement-based protection; introduce a new harm-based protection; and retain the civil exceptions with minor amendment. It will retain the key features of the RRTA, including protections from racial and religious vilification. It will also make a technical amendment to the Bail Act 1977 to ensure that bail decision makers can remand a person who is charged with intentionally performing a Nazi gesture. This government listened to our community on this piece of legislation, just as we listened to the community when we recently passed legislation in this term of Parliament to ban Nazi symbols and to ban the Nazi salute, which is absolutely in line with community expectations to do so.

This is ultimately a bill, as the member for Sunbury detailed so eloquently in his contribution, to ensure people can be who they want to be, be free of hate and be free of vilification. I think not just of the entire Victorian community; I think of the community that I am very lucky and privileged to represent. Particularly as we have seen a lot of the vilification directed towards our proud and beautiful multicultural communities across our state, I think of the wonderful multicultural communities I am very privileged to have in my electorate.

I think of the people at the Sri Vakrathunda Vinayagar Temple in The Basin – beautiful, beautiful people and a great temple that I know the member for Glen Waverley has visited a number of times, a number of times with me as well. I think of the wonderful people at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Boronia. I think of the wonderful people at the Hindu Satsang Mandal Temple of Victoria, who I just visited recently, and of course one of the reasons we were visiting was as part of the investments we continue to make as part of our commitment to strengthen those communities and invest in infrastructure but also this type of legislation to continue to support those communities.

I also think of the Chinese Association of Victoria, based in Wantirna, a very proud, beautiful community. I have been visiting them since my time, even before Parliament, in local council, and they are wonderful people. I think of the very sad and tragic times we are currently dealing with, but also the sad times we dealt with during the COVID pandemic in those early days with some of the horrible stuff we saw directed at our Chinese and Asian communities. That absolutely abhorrent behaviour from a small minority of our community is hurtful, it is impactful. We need to continue at every point in time in this place to stand together, to come together as a community, to work with Victorians through all the avenues of inquiry we could possibly have, including parliamentary inquiries, to make sure we call out that behaviour and we codify it into law to say that it is unacceptable.

Parliament’s intention through this legislation is very clear. It is saying that that behaviour is entirely unacceptable, and it is criminalising it even further and making sure that we do exactly what people should expect in Victoria, ensuring that they can be who they want to be, live the life they want to live and love who they want to love, and that is nothing short of what every Victorian should expect.

I have been very privileged to be in this place and listen to some of the wonderful contributions from colleagues on this piece of legislation. The member for Mordialloc spoke about thinking of the consequences of inaction and what that would mean and what the stark consequences of doing nothing would be. Sadly, it would appear that some in this place do not want to support this legislation. If that is the case, if you do not want to support this legislation, at the very least get up and explain to the Victorian people, to your communities, why you will not be supporting this legislation if that is indeed the case. The member for Mordialloc articulated that point extremely well, I thought.

I remember listening to the member for Box Hill’s speech and hearing about the horrible, horrible acts of antisemitism in his community, hearing about the important work that he has done working with his community, the Jewish community, working within government, particularly as it pertains to this legislation. I am very proud to be a colleague of the member for Box Hill. I sit next to him. He is a lovely chap, and I am very proud of the work that he has been doing and of his contribution on this particular legislation. The member for Albert Park, who is not in this place at the moment, detailed again – and it is really sad to have to say this over and over – the horrible acts of antisemitism in her community, and we are hearing it too often. Enough is enough. I am really proud for those reasons and so many more to speak in support of this legislation. And of course we also had the Premier in here on her feet speaking in support of this legislation, talking about the importance of inclusivity, of social cohesion and a welcoming Victoria that we all know and love for everyone. It was wonderful to see the Premier in here talking on this bill.

I am very lucky that I grew up in one of the most multicultural places not just in Victoria but in the country, in Dandenong. It taught me to never judge someone unless you walk a mile in their shoes. It taught me to love everyone. It taught me to treat everyone with kindness, fairness and equity. I am very proud of my upbringing and I am very proud of the experiences I had as a result of it and all the different people and cultures I have met from right across this world. I will never stop learning and I will never stop listening. I am very proud of this legislation, and I am very proud that Victoria is a proud multicultural society. We have to keep on that tradition, and I commend this bill to the house.

John MULLAHY (Glen Waverley) (17:50): I too rise today in favour of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. This bill represents a significant step forward in our commitment to creating a safer and more inclusive Victoria, and it aims to expand and strengthen our anti-vilification laws, ensuring that all Victorians are better protected from the serious harms of vilification and hate conduct. I would also like to thank the other members from our side for their contributions – the member for Monbulk and the member for Narre Warren North for her excellent contribution there as well. I would also like to thank the former Attorney-General in the other place for the work that she undertook to get this bill to us before this place, and I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by the member for Box Hill last sitting week. He always makes a wonderful contribution when it comes to serious matters like this that are before the house.

The need for this bill is clear and urgent. The 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections highlighted the pervasive and harmful impacts of vilification on many Victorians. The inquiry found that existing laws are ineffective and inaccessible, leaving many individuals and communities vulnerable to hate speech and conduct. Recent increases in reports of hate speech and conduct further underscore the necessity of these reforms. This bill will implement 15 of the legislative recommendations from the inquiry, addressing the gaps in our current laws and extending protections to more Victorians. It is a comprehensive responsive to the inquiry’s findings and a testament to our commitment to fostering social cohesion and protecting the rights of all individuals.

The Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill introduces several key reforms. It expands anti-vilification protections, and it extends the protections beyond race and religion to include disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protected attribute. This expansion is in line with the recommendation 1 of the inquiry and aims to protect the individuals and communities most at risk of vilification. It also repeals the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (RRTA), and the criminal anti-vilification offences will be moved to the Crimes Act 1958. Civil anti-vilification protections will be moved to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.

This bill introduces two new serious vilification offences, an incitement offence and a threat offence. The incitement offence will apply to contact that is objectively likely to incite hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule based on a protected attribute. This offence is punishable by up to three years imprisonment. The threat offence applies to threats of physical harm or property damage based on a protected attribute, and this offence is punishable by up to five years imprisonment. Both offences capture intentional and reckless conduct and apply to both public and private conduct, including online conduct. The bill modifies the civil incitement-based protection and introduces a new harm-based protection, and these protections will continue to apply only to public conduct, including online conduct. The current civil exceptions have been retained, with minor amendments to balance charter rights and ensure legitimate activities are not against the law. This bill retains key features of the RRTA, including protections from racial and religious vilification. This bill makes a minor technical amendment to the Bail Act 1977 to ensure that bail decision-makers can remand a person charged with intentionally performing a Nazi gesture.

We are proud to deliver on the government’s commitment to expanding and strengthening Victoria’s anti-vilification laws, and this bill will give effect to 15 recommendations. As the inquiry found, vilification is commonplace for many Victorians, and its harmful impacts are real and pervasive.

Recently we have seen an alarming increase in reports of hate speech and conduct. The member for Bayswater just brought up the hatred and vilification that was brought up during the period of the COVID-19 response. I was working for the member for Ashwood at the time, and I remember that it had been unleashed on the Chinese community in our district. We saw signs going up around the neighbourhood. We saw kids being spat on on buses. We saw them being vilified just because the federal Liberal government at the time decided to attack China and the Chinese government without any nuance at all, and unfortunately that unleashed this vilification of the community that I am so proud to represent now. That is why this bill is so important.

In line with recommendation 1 of the inquiry, anti-vilification laws will be expanded beyond race and religious belief or activity to also protect the attributes of disability, including mental illness, HIV or AIDS status; gender identity; sex; sexual orientation or personal associations with a person or group with a protected attribute. This bill only extends the attributes to the extent identified as necessary by the inquiry to protect the individuals and communities most at risk of vilification. The existing definitions under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 apply to the expanded protected attributes.

Existing general statutory and common-law defences, such as self-defence, duress and defence of mental impairment, apply to the offences. This is consistent with the current law. The incitement offence includes a genuine political purpose defence to ensure the anti-vilification laws, which aim to protect individuals and groups from hatred and discrimination. These laws help to create safer, more inclusive environments by providing legal safeguards and encouraging social harmony. Some of the primary benefits include the prevention of hate crimes. Anti-vilification laws serve to prevent hate speech and actions that can escalate into violent crimes, protecting individuals from physical harm and emotional trauma. They also provide safety and dignity by criminalising offensive speech and actions that target individuals based on inherent characteristics. These laws promote the safety and dignity of those who might otherwise be subjected to harassment or violence.

It also is for the promotion of equality. Equal treatment, which these laws promote, will ensure that all people, regardless of sex, race, religion, gender identity or disability, have the right to be treated equally and with respect. They help to dismantle systemic discrimination by holding individuals and institutions accountable for harmful behaviour. It also combats discrimination by outlawing vilification. These laws aim to combat the social structures that support discriminatory practices, helping to level the playing field for marginalised groups in areas like employment, education and housing.

It also encourages social cohesion and inclusion, including fostering social harmony, as anti-vilification laws send a strong message that hate speech and discrimination are unacceptable, promoting a more inclusive and harmonious society. They create a social climate where diversity is valued and individuals feel empowered to contribute to society without fear of prejudice or exclusion. It also builds empathy by recognising and addressing the harms caused by vilification. These laws can help to foster greater understanding and empathy between people of different backgrounds and identities, improving community relations.

Many other members of this house have described the vilification they experienced as a young child or the fact that they have not really experienced things of that nature. I just remember back to when I was in primary school, and I remember having a little bit of an Irish accent. I remember going to these schools, and I must have picked up from my parents the thick west of Ireland Mayo and Roscommon brogue that they had. I remember being targeted by other kids in class because I spoke a little bit differently, and although you can laugh those sort of things off, that is the experience that people experience on a daily basis. That is what this bill is about. It is about ensuring that we foster social harmony and that we build empathy. I commend this bill to the house.

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (18:00): Can I start by saying from the outset that it is an absolute privilege to be in this place. It comes with great responsibility, and so it is a real privilege to have the opportunity to speak in full support of this bill, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. This bill is about delivering a tranche of reforms to expand and strengthen our Victorian anti-vilification laws and better protect Victorians from that serious harm of vilification and hate conduct. This bill is the result of a lot of work over many, many years – of hard work and deep commitment to that policy engagement and development that has led to this bill before us that we are now debating.

I would like to start by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to those community organisations, individuals, faith-based groups and Victorians who shared their lived experience. They contributed to the development of this bill through the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. It was heart-wrenching to read some of the submissions, but vilification, unfortunately, is very commonplace for many Victorians. It has harmful impacts and real consequences, and recently we have been seeing an alarming increase in reports of hate speech and conduct. That inquiry examined the effectiveness of our laws and did explore ways that we can strengthen protections against hate speech and discrimination, and it certainly showed an ugly side of our community. Like I said, we have had growing incidence of vilification and its harmful impacts in our communities. I want to thank the people who gave their brave testimonies. People from affected communities emphasised that emotional, psychological and social toll that vilification has on victims, and marginalised groups and individuals have described how the negative impact has impacted their wellbeing. I want to recognise that it takes a toll to participate in those processes, so I thank them for speaking up.

I believe we stand at a critical moment in our society, and it is about shaping what kind of society we want to be. I believe that we need to have a society – and I think a majority of people want to have a society – that values respect, dignity and unity. This bill is not just another legal reform; it is that fundamental step towards ensuring that all people, regardless of their background, regardless of where they come from, are protected from hate, discrimination and harm. For too long we have seen devastating consequences, whether it is racism, religious intolerance or other forms of hate speech that divide communities and that fuel violence. Words are powerful, and when they are used they can incite hate. They have real-world consequences.

This bill is about strengthening our laws. It is about ensuring that we condemn those behaviours but that they are also met with serious legal consequences. When vilification is more than words and it is a deliberate act of harm, it seeks to dehumanise, isolate and inflame division, and it is poised to spread fear. It undermines our social harmony, and if it is left unchecked it can lead to real-world violence, and we have seen this. There is nothing harmless about vilification, because it is not a mere expression of opinion or simple disagreement; it is about attacks on individuals and on communities. No-one should have to live in fear because of their race, their religion, their gender, their sexuality or who they are.

We must recognise that vilification does not appear out of anywhere. It is often driven by fear – fear of difference, fear of change or fear of the unknown – and there are those who seek to exploit that fear. They use it as a tool to divide us, turn communities against each other and spread misinformation for their own gain. History has shown us that when fear is weaponised, it can be catastrophic. We have seen political movements and media campaigns blaming others for societal problems. When it starts with words – hateful slogans, false accusations, divisive narratives – we know that those words can have consequences. Beyond law, this bill and our government send a very clear message: we will not tolerate hate in our communities. We will not allow people to be targeted simply for who they are. We will stand together to protect that social cohesion and build a safer, more inclusive society.

To those who question the need for stronger protections, I am going to ask you: what kind of society do we want to leave, for now and for our future generations? One where hate and division go unchecked or one where we have respect and inclusion, which will define us? By supporting this bill our government is reaffirming our commitment to fairness, justice and the idea that everyone deserves to live free from fear. Together we can ensure our communities are places where diversity is celebrated, not attacked, where communities can stand together, and we are not divided.

There are some elements to this bill where there are some new offences, and I will just quickly go through those. The bill does introduce two serious vilification offences to the Crimes Act 1958: an incitement offence and a threat offence. The incitement offence applies to conduct that is objectively likely to incite hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule for another person or group of persons on the grounds of a protected attribute. The offence is intended to capture extreme serious conduct, and that is punishable by up to three years imprisonment. There is a threat offence which is punishable by up to five years imprisonment as well.

But I just want to say that this bill is not about punishment, actually, it is about prevention. It is about sending that strong, powerful message that hate has no place in our society. It reaffirms that our commitment to free speech does not extend to speech that seeks to destroy the very freedoms that we cherish. Some may argue that laws cannot change attitudes, but I believe laws can set standards and they set expectations about how we treat each other. They protect our vulnerable, hold hateful people to account and make it clear that our society stands for that justice. At its core, this bill is about who we are and who we aspire to be and whether we will accept a culture of division or whether we will demand something better – and we must demand something better.

In conclusion, I would just like to end on maybe a more positive note about our future here in this state. I think that this bill and the conversations that we have seen today in this place on this bill are about a shared, fundamental, collective belief that we need respect for each other and that our diverse communities and the values that define our society are around respect for each other, because when we stand together we embrace our diversity, and it is a source of strength.

Victoria is home to many people from all around the world. We are shaped by migrants and our First Nations people, generations of communities who have brought their languages, cultures and traditions and woven them into the fabric of our society. That is what makes us stronger. This bill ensures that every Victorian, regardless of where they were born, what they believe or who they are, can walk down the street without fear and that they can live, work and contribute to a society where they know they are valued and respected and protected.

There is no greater strength in society than its people standing together, united not by a sameness but by our shared values and a commitment to looking after each other’s wellbeing. Social cohesion is not that lofty ideal. It is actually the foundations from which prosperous communities are built. That is the Victoria we believe in, that is the Victoria that we will fight for and that is the Victoria that we will protect. I commend the bill to the house.

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (18:10): It too gives me great pleasure and indeed pride to rise and to speak to this bill, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. In doing so I would like to acknowledge a few speakers and of course the speaker before me, the member for Bellarine. It is really terrific that she mentioned the core values of what actually makes us Labor. We speak to Labor values always in this place. When we speak to respect, when we speak to dignity and when we speak to fairness and through notions of collectivity and sticking together, we are speaking our Labor values. That is why each and every one of us has been rising to speak to this bill. It is also demonstrative of the fact that we have consulted so widely on this bill to ensure that we get the bill right before it passes or goes through the lower house in this Parliament.

The bill, as we have heard, will deliver a tranche of reforms to expand and strengthen our anti-vilification laws to better protect all Victorians from serious harms of vilification and hate conduct. It includes implementing 15 of the legislative recommendations of the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. The bill will expand anti-vilification protections from race and religion to also protect the attributes of disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protected attribute. It will repeal the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 and remove criminal vilification offences to the Crimes Act 1958 and civil anti-vilification protections to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. It will improve how serious vilification offences operate, including by introducing new serious vilification offences. It will improve how civil protections operate, including by modifying the civil incitement-based protection, introducing a new harm-based protection and retaining the civil exceptions with minor amendment, and retain the key features of the RRTA, including protections from racial and religious vilification. It will also make some technical amendments to the Bail Act 1977 to ensure that bail decision-makers can remand a person who is charged with intentionally performing a Nazi gesture.

I mentioned before that there were some speakers in this place who I would note. I really appreciated the contribution that the member for Clarinda made before. He spoke quite beautifully as to his journey to this place. Indeed it is a terrific story of migration, a story of migration that many in this house have shared. He also mentioned the difficult and quite often devastating effects that go with racial disharmony and the effects of being told, even lately as his is an MP in this place, to go back to where you came from. These are words which weaponise. They are words of hate. But we all know communities such as the Cambodian community and such as the Indian community, as with the member for Mulgrave, who also made an excellent contribution, and our fantastic Italian comrades, if I can put it that way, of the member for Monbulk and the thousand words a minute that came from the member for Pascoe Vale.

All of their contributions spoke to what it is to come to this great country, to be able to make contributions in a harmonious and very socially cohesive and indeed beautiful way as opposed to being in a place of division and hate. That is why we all speak to this bill. I did mention the extensive consultation that has taken place to see where things could be improved, and again I am proud to be supporting the amendments that have been put forward by the government to the bill. These two amendments will remove the political purpose defence to the criminal incitement offence and add proselytising and preaching into the civil religious purpose exceptions. This includes a genuine political purpose defence to the incitement offence. When we said that would be in the bill, that was to ensure a consistency with the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication. It was never intended to expand that protection, but we have listened, and so we have made that amendment.

The government has continued conversations with community leaders, and we fully acknowledge and appreciate the concern expressed by many that the provision could have been misused and potentially legitimised vilification under the guise of political communication, and as such, as I have said, we have removed that provision. Doing so will not affect the operation of the offences, and existing general statutory and common-law defences such as self-defence, duress and the defence of mental impairment apply to the offences, and this is consistent with the current law.

Indeed it is now up to the Liberal Party and what their views are, given that we have made these amendments, because when we were here a fortnight ago these were the crux of the opposition as to why this bill would not be supported. I understand now that we are informed that they are still opposed to this bill. None of them have even risen to speak to that opposition, but we are somehow led to believe that it is due to a technicality, really, in that somehow the test that would be there for anti-vilification is a subjective test in law to determine whether hate speech is constituted as a civil offence. Subjective tests are held all the time in many laws that have passed in this place and indeed in the state of Victoria; subjective tests are always applied by the courts to determine where the law stands. We in this place have a tremendous privilege to be able to create laws and to be able to pass them and to then have those laws interpreted and indeed declared by the judiciary. It is the function of any proper democracy; it is a function of a democracy that ensures that we have a harmonious place to live, that people from all over the world, from different lands, can come to this great place, this great state of Victoria, to live and to be able to contribute and to not be vilified due to their sex, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation or their attributes of disability.

That is why I stand here very, very proudly in support of this bill. I commend the ton of work that has gone in to ensuring that this bill is ready to pass this place. I commend the work of the Attorney-General, and I commend all members on this side of the house. I commend the bill to the house.

Luba GRIGOROVITCH (Kororoit) (18:20): Thank you to my colleague who just spoke, the member for Narre Warren South, and to everyone in this house who have made so many heartfelt contributions. It genuinely is appreciated, and the silence from the opposition is absolutely deafening. I think it is so important that we get up and speak about it as much as you possibly can, because as the previous member said – and many others – it is a privilege. It is a privilege of ours, as local members of Parliament who have been elected to represent communities and represent Victorians, to get up and have our say about legislation. If someone in this chamber disagrees with a piece of legislation, that is okay – you get up and you have your say. And if you agree with it, you also get up and have your say, so I commend the many members on this side of the house who have got up and had their say.

I rise to speak about the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024, which we were hearing about a fortnight ago and now today. We are hearing about it because it is so important to all Victorians irrespective of their culture, their religion, the faith they believe in. This bill aims to deliver a tranche of reforms to expand and strengthen Victoria’s anti-vilification laws. This bill is designed to protect all Victorians from the serious harm of vilification, hate speech or hate conduct.

This comes from the recommendations of the 2021 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into anti-vilification protections. It is my honour to be able to speak about this bill and speak in support of this bill. I bamboozled that those opposite have indicated that they will be voting against this bill. I would like them to reconsider these actions; however, as I said earlier, it is not just your vote, it is also your silence which is deafening. The hypocrisy from those opposite is absolutely astonishing. Those opposite often talk the talk, but this bill and their silence prove that it is clearly just a show.

I am not ashamed to say that I love how multicultural Victoria is. I love that we have more than 300 ethnicities here in Victoria. I love that we speak 290 languages, and I love that we have and celebrate over 200 faiths. We are blessed to be able to experience the many wonderful events that come from being so accepting and so multicultural. Whether it be Lunar New Year, Ramadan, the Holi festival, Eid or Diwali, the list is just endless, and I know that many members in this chamber have gone to a number of those events. We get to day in, day out celebrate cultures from other countries here in Victoria as proud Victorians and proud Australians and as part of our community.

The Allan Labor government not only supports but well and truly gets behind every single multicultural community, because the very good majority of these communities are proud Australians and treat each other with dignity and respect. But for the small minority that do not, we need this legislation in place, and we need legislation like this to be there. Hate and vilification in this state is not okay, and this bill is about speaking up. This bill is about being a leader against racism, and we should come together with things that unite us, not divide us. Antisemitic graffiti at Mount Scopus or anywhere is unacceptable. Antisemitic slurs are completely unacceptable. The vile antisemitic videos that we saw last week of those two New South Wales nurses are completely unacceptable. It is not our Australia, and I commend the Minns government on their swift action and for standing them down right away.

Both the Jewish and Muslim communities are our friends, and they are Australians. Many, many – the vast majority – of them are very good Australians, and they make the tapestry in Australia, in Victoria, what it is. Similar to one of the previous members who spoke, I also have an end-of-year award that I give out, the Kororoit leadership award. For this award I make the criteria really clear: I want it to go to a student that leads with respect and treats others the way that they want to be treated.

Isn’t that what we all want from our youth? Isn’t that what we want from Australians and from Victorians? And I know in Kororoit, in Sydenham, in St Albans, in Melton, in Point Cook, in Melbourne’s west, we lead and we advocate daily for respect and for love, and we preach respect as local members because that is what we are there to do. We are there to unite our communities together, to lead with respect and to bring people together. I see that day in, day out in Kororoit, whether it be the Sri Durga Temple, which I visit quite frequently, the largest Hindu temple in the Southern Hemisphere. Now I have got to say that it is a community that well and truly shows Australia how to be Victorian, how to be Australian. They unite like there is no tomorrow. They bring their community together and they always help out. No matter what is going on in Victoria, they are there.

The Qaim Foundation, I want to make mention of them, also in Kororoit. Last year a few members of their executive came to me and said, ‘Oh, Ramadan is coming up; we would love to have an interfaith community celebration for Ramadan. Do you think you could help organise it?’ I did assist organising it, Minister Stitt from the other place came along as our special guest of honour and it was an absolute triumph, and I am really proud to say that we will be doing that multi-faith celebration again this year. There are so many places of faith in Kororoit; it is a melting pot of multiculturalism, but there is no place for racism. Respect, dignity and fairness in each of our communities makes our great state.

The member for Glen Waverley and the member for Ashwood both spoke about vilification towards our Chinese community during the COVID-19 times. I am sorry that your communities which you each represent experienced that, and it actually triggered my memory. During that time of COVID-19, I was the secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, and I will never forget that one day one of my members who is a station officer down at Flinders Street station came into the office and he was absolutely mortified. There was a passenger waiting to get on a train and then there was another passenger and one of the passengers was of Asian ethnicity. This passenger went up to this other passenger and started spitting at him and yelling at him, blaming him and China for COVID-19. My member, the station officer, did not know what to do. But it is those acts of racism that are not okay. It is those acts of racism that we should not allow in Victoria, we should not allow in Australia. I really commend the Allan Labor government for taking action against that and for doing so much research into this piece of legislation.

Similarly to many in this chamber, I have also had the great honour of visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. A remembrance centre which is dedicated to preserving the memories and echoing the stories of survivors of the Holocaust and honouring them, its main aim is education – photos, documents, personal artefacts. To me, it does not matter which religion you are or which culture you are – none of that matters. What matters is that we teach, that we treat each other with respect and we treat each other with the dignity which we all deserve. Hate speech is simply not okay. It is not okay anywhere. It is not okay behind closed doors, it is not okay out in the streets or in a bar when you are hanging out with your friends, it is certainly not okay in this place and it is not okay in Victoria, and that is what the Allan Labor government is saying with this piece of legislation.

In concluding my contribution, I want to reiterate that I commend this bill to the house, and I state how very proud I am of the Allan Labor government for the extensive consultation that has taken place in this bill. Respect, dignity and fairness are what Victoria is about and what Australia is about. It is what every local member in this place should be advocating for on a daily basis, because if we do not have respect, if we do not have dignity, if we do not treat each other with fairness, then why are we here? We should be here to serve our communities with all of those values and to treat each other the way we want to be treated. I commend this bill, and again, I urge those opposite who have been absolutely silent to come forward and speak. If you are against this legislation, tell us why you are against this legislation. At this point in time, you are not doing that and to me that is cowardly.

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (18:29): I rise to speak on and support the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. I am surprised to be following the member for Kororoit, because usually I follow on from a member of the opposition. It is quite confusing for me when there is a bill before this place that is opposed by those opposite and they decide not to speak on it. It is Labor member after Labor member talking about exactly why they support this bill, rather than those opposite living out their values through their voice in this place. Each of us are elected to provide our voice in this place, and after having two weeks with this bill in front of the house, it is quite astounding that not everybody is using their voice to speak on this bill.

I also follow on from the member for Narre Warren South before that. The member for Kororoit did say something that really struck me, which was that there is no place for racism. There is also no place for vilification and no place for discrimination in the state of Victoria, and we should be working every day against that. That is part of the reason that we have been bringing bills like this to this place, amongst many other bills, to make Victoria a safer and a fairer place, because it is important to have a safe community to live in, to be safe, to feel safe, to not feel threatened, to not feel discriminated against and to not feel vilified. I also follow on from the member for Clarinda, my chamber neighbour, who made an extraordinary contribution; from the member for Mulgrave, who did exactly the same; and many other members on this side of the house.

We have been spending, as a Labor government, some time listening to the community’s concerns about a bill that was presented late last year and now into this year, and we should take the time to listen. I was at a community forum just yesterday in fact, and the member for Gellibrand Tim Watts gave a very good quotable quote that I thought was a great one. It is that we have got two ears and one mouth, and we should use them in that order and in that proportion. We have taken the time to listen to the community and we have come up with some amendments. No piece of legislation is ever going to be perfect. We are going to revisit legislation from time to time. That is the process of government. It is seeking that perfection in this state of Victoria; it is seeking that perfection in the laws that we seek to pass and amend from time to time.

I want to talk a little bit about the community that I represent, the community of Point Cook. I have said this before, and despite what others might say to disagree with me – and I tell them they are wrong – Point Cook is the most multicultural community in all of Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics tell us so. I would never choose to disagree with them. Those who seek to shrug, shake their head or do otherwise are disagreeing with the premier statisticians across the country. What it means to be the representative for the most multicultural community in all of Australia is to have the complete enjoyment of learning and understanding communities that are not my own and that are not the Finnish and English traditions that I have grown up with.

Recently we celebrated Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year in particular for the community that I represent, because 14 per cent of the community do have Chinese heritage or were born in China themselves. I say to them: gōng xǐ fā cái and kung hei fat choi. My pronunciation is never going to be right, but I will try. Members on this side of the house try all the time. That is the important thing: trying.

I want to make an acknowledgement to Larry Zhao and all the team that put that festival together. They brought 15,000 members of our community to a suburban shopping strip to celebrate the Lunar New Year festival. I want to acknowledge Bob Fairclough, the former mayor of our community, who passed away recently and who was the biggest advocate for that event. His son Jason got up and delivered an amazing acknowledgement of his father, and he delivered half of it in Mandarin, because his dad had spoken to him about the importance of language and using that to understand a community and be part of a community. I am jealous of many people in our community who do speak a second language. I speak little bits of French and little bits of Turkish – enough to get me around and enough to talk to people sometimes in the ALP – but beyond that I do struggle with languages. I want to acknowledge Sara from Kaleidoscope Festival, who is putting on a 10-week festival in the pop-up park in the community that I represent. It started last weekend with the Bunurong welcome to country – a community with 65,000 years of continuous connection to culture and country in the community that I represent.

We had a smoking ceremony and dancing performances. It was all held on the Rainbow Serpent mural, which is carved across a road that has been closed so it can be a community space, a pop-up park. That was done by the artist Fiona Clarke. For those who have not read her wonderful book Minkgill Chases the Rainbow, I encourage you to do so. It is a terrific book that I give to all our kindergartens and childcare centres that I visit. It is something that I read to my own son. You know how children are when they are growing up – they have got different favourites at different times – but that was often on repeat.

Next weekend is the Philippine Fiesta. Today we had the Consul General Maria Lourdes Salcedo in the Parliament, and we were honoured to have her here. She is finishing up soon and has done a great service in bringing our Filipino Australian community together. We had Florence Dato, and I thank her for bringing along the Pasko sa Melbourne organising team. It was great to see different members of this place: the member for Cranbourne, who was here, the member for Kororoit and the Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the other place. The soon-to-be member of Parliament for Werribee was able to attend that as well, which was terrific. They talked to us about the concerns of the community and how we might be able to respond to them and some of the things that are happening in their communities, which are actually the same things that are happening in every community. Their concerns were our concerns, because we are one great multicultural community. It is our greatest strength – our diversity is our greatest strength.

We will be having Latino fiesta. It is just around the corner. I say to people who have not been to Lola Melona, which is a cafe in Saltwater in Point Cook, that arepas are the true answer to cheese toasties and are far superior. You are welcome to quote me, but you are also welcome to join me there and demonstrate that that is a truth.

It will be followed by Bolly Holi. Seventeen per cent of the suburb of Point Cook were either born in India or have an Indian background. Holi celebrates spring, love and new life. We all know that being in the Southern Hemisphere it is a time of autumn, but we celebrate all the same. I know that many people on this side of the house and also those opposite will be pleased to celebrate with the Indian community their holy festivals. They are not actually willing to celebrate all parts of the Indian experience and some of the important figures within Indian history, but of course they are happy to throw the colours when it comes along, so I hope that they can embrace other aspects beyond the festival.

The Pasifika community is a growing community in the south-west of Melbourne. We will be celebrating with them on 23 March. The Greek festival follows on the 5 April. Many people are accustomed to it in this place, and the member for Northcote is nodding along with that. You are always welcome, of course. It will be followed soon by Harmony Day.

I am running out of time, so I am just going to run through them – Eid festival for the growing Islamic community in the area of Point Cook. They are so large now that they are filling the library every week on a Friday for Friday prayers, and they need more space. Wyndham council, if you are listening, they need more space. Religious facilities have not been accommodated in the community that I represent. Temples, mosques, churches, gurdwaras – we need some of those across all of our community.

Easter festival will follow that. I invite all members to join me at the second annual Easter egg hunt. You will have to be quick, because it took about 30 seconds to soak up several thousand eggs. It was about 30 seconds and it was wonderful. That was shared by all of our community again, because that is the wonderful nature of the communities of Victoria – strong communities, vibrant communities, communities that should be free from discrimination, communities that should be free from vilification.

If that basic hurdle, that very low hurdle, cannot be supported by everyone in this place, what are we really doing? It is a low bar, not to vilify people. To those who are opposite who cannot speak to their values in this place, I say: you have got time to get up and tell us why you oppose this bill. We have been listening and making changes for that reason. I commend this bill to this house.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (18:39): I stand up here to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024, and I think I have to say, along with others that have spoken today, that it is a sad time when we actually do have to debate and pass legislation like this in order to protect Victorians from the incredible harm that can result from vilification, hate speech and racism. It is also a sad day of course when there is not bipartisanship in passing this legislation in order to protect Victorians from the worst of such vilifications and terrible behaviour by, still, a minority of people. We know that laws alone do not completely stop this sort of behaviour, but that is of course why the Allan Labor government has introduced along with this legislation many other programs and policies and education to address racism, prejudice and hate. But of course you also need legislation that will ensure that it is not just about raising awareness, changing people’s minds and creating understanding; there also need to be repercussions, and people need to be accountable and responsible for the actions they take in treating others in some of the most appalling ways.

I spoke earlier today about a recent incident at the Pacific Epping plaza involving a terrible – well, violent – assault against two women who were just going about their normal business. One works there and was on a lunchbreak minding her own business, only to be set upon in such an awful and terrible way. I think it does not help when the federal opposition leader and the way he behaves really give licence to people to act in this hateful and awful way, enabling them to stand up as if it is okay, because in many a way the federal Leader of the Opposition is trying to create this division and hatred of others in order to fulfil his party’s own political ambitions and goals.

Much of the legislation, really, that we are talking about today comes from the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into vilification protections, which was in 2021, and it was the member for St Albans who was the chair of that committee. I know at the time I was here in this place and there was great admiration for the results of that inquiry – the recommendations and the findings. At that time, as I recall, the majority – in fact I think it was unanimous, all members – of that inquiry were supportive of the recommendations, including Liberal Party members. Here we are as part of this legislation wanting to enact or bring into being at least 15 of the recommendations from that inquiry, and here we have a case now where the opposition are opposed to this legislation, which enacts many of the recommendations from that inquiry.

The inquiry found that existing laws are not necessarily effective and are often inaccessible and recommended extending anti-vilification law to protect more Victorians and also to strengthen how the laws operate and make them more clear and also easier to implement. Fifteen of the inquiry’s recommendations will be given effect, as I said, with this legislation, and at least one of the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability is also incorporated into the bill.

In general terms, the legislation will extend anti-vilification protections from race and religion to also protect the attributes of disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, sexual orientation and personal association with a person who has a protected attribute.

It will, as has been mentioned before, repeal the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 and move the criminal anti-vilification offences into the Crimes Act 1958, where they belong. Then of course there will be the civil anti-vilification protections in the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 – again, putting these offences in the places where they will best be able to be implemented. It also will improve how serious vilification offences operate, including by introducing new serious vilification offences. It will also improve how civil protections operate, and there will be technical amendments to the Bail Act 1977 to ensure that bail decision-makers can remand a person who is charged with intentionally performing a Nazi gesture. This, again, came from previous legislation we introduced. Often it is the case that legislation is in a way a living thing, and as society changes, trial and error, things happen, laws are used, sometimes it is determined that they could be done in a better way. There is a little bit of that in this legislation, as well as new offences and a new piece of legislation.

In saying what we are doing with this and talking about hate crimes and vilification, I would just like to give a really big shout-out to the residents of the Thomastown electorate and even the City of Whittlesea overall, because we talk about these things, and there are also a lot of good people and a lot of good in the world. I look at some of the organisations in the area that I represent, and they do so much good work in a sharing culture, trying to bridge any misunderstandings, inviting people from different faiths and cultures and backgrounds into a safe place where there is a celebration of some sort and then exchanging different food. We also have quite formal organisations, like interfaith groups that meet regularly, as well as all the different societies and organisations that celebrate their own cultures and faiths but also are very, very happy and generous in sharing that culture and faith with others as well. I know as a member of Parliament it is a great privilege to be in a position like this where you can learn so much from other people in the area, and also of course indulge in the most delicious of food. This is what makes society so vibrant and exciting and caring, when we have not everybody the same but lots of differences and we respect those differences and we enjoy those differences.

When it comes to things like hate speech and vilification we also need to ensure that those behaviours, which we all know are not okay, have to have serious consequences in order to protect the good people in Victoria. I have seen cases of racism and misunderstandings and some pretty offensive language and behaviours. I was pretty shocked, I have to say, when just last weekend – coming to why we need legislation like this – it was open mosque day on Saturday. This is an event that is held every year where people of Muslim faith open up the mosques in many areas – and I know many members from this side of the house would have been visiting many mosques on the Saturday – to show others that are not of that faith what goes on in a mosque and what the teachings are about, and also to invite people in to increase that understanding. I started off at the Islamic Council of Victoria, then went on to the Alawi Islamic Social Centre and then to my good friends at the Thomastown mosque. When I went in it was all about love, generosity, peace and harmony, and then sadly when I posted about this event I got some of the most horrific and appalling comments.

Pauline RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (18:50): I am very pleased to have the opportunity right at the end of the day to contribute on an extraordinarily important piece of legislation: the Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Bill 2024. What an extraordinary honour it is to be able to make a contribution alongside my colleagues, following after the member for Thomastown, whose credentials in care and concern and the deep relationships that have been built in her electorate are perfect examples and exemplars for so many of us across the chamber, actually, but certainly an exemplar for people in the Labor Party. The member for Point Cook is always experiencing and showing the generosity of that incredibly diverse community as well. I feel like I am doing the float up and down. The member for Footscray was one of the many people who talked about the importance of diversity in her electorate. I feel like we all talk about the importance of the diversity of our electorates and the way that it strengthens us, and I think that does say something about what we see as being so important, and it really does impact the fabric of our community and our role,

And of course the member for Clarinda – I am going to talk a little bit more about the member for Clarinda’s contribution, because I thought that the insights that member made were particularly pertinent. I do want to reflect a little bit more on how important it is to have, again, somebody of the member’s calibre but also somebody with the member for Clarinda’s background, to be able to really demonstrate to us those important elements of justice and what it means to be able to contribute to our community in a way that speaks to the rights of workers and people who have experienced incredible trauma in being able to get to Australia, as so many in the member’s community have.

And the member for Box Hill – I went back through Hansard to refresh myself on the contribution made a fortnight ago by the member for Box Hill, always thoughtful and always important and worthy of going back to. How grateful I have been to be able to reflect on that depth of contribution and the cautious but really considered way that the member has spoken about the experience of antisemitism and the consequences in our great state. I am going to pay credit as well to Naomi Levin and other members of our incredible Jewish community in Victoria. I have experienced their hospitality, but more than that, I have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to talk through and think through the real consequences, where it can be seared into the soul of a community when people are experiencing antisemitism who are direct descendants of people from the Holocaust. That does put a different complexion on this legislation, and it does put us right into the centre of why we need to act, what is important to us as legislators and why we need to also listen and consider some of the needs to even make house amendments, as we have seen today. I feel that those contributions are worthy of real reflection, and I do implore anyone to actually take the time to go back and have a look at some of those earlier contributions that were made, including at the last sitting.

The member for Clarinda spoke a little bit about a Facebook post about something that was celebrating a great element of our state, celebrating our diverse community, and the consequences when a group of trolls then started to head onto the Facebook page and write things that were unacceptable. Something similar has happened several times – not a lot, but several times – on my Facebook page.

I had a young engineer who speaks Dari offer to provide a little bit of information in Dari, recognising that I have had a look at the languages of the people born in Cranbourne, and many people who live in Cranbourne speak Dari. What a generous offer it was for somebody who is multilingual to be able to speak in her mother tongue in a way that other people can listen to and understand. I was shocked by the Islamophobia and sheer, vile racism that people thought was acceptable to put on my Facebook page. I did have a quick look and noticed that many of the people – and in some ways this was a comfort – who were making the most outrageous and vile comments did not live in Victoria. They certainly lived north of the Murray in New South Wales and Queensland, and some over in WA, but in fact there were very few people who had made these particularly vile comments who were from Victoria. I choose to believe that our community and our state is strengthened by our diversity, and this bill will actually strengthen it.

It is a privilege to make a contribution to this bill. The anti-vilification and social cohesion bill is a bill about protection. It is about dignity, and it is about the promise of a safer Victoria for all. I think that we have seen that demonstrated so often in the way that we have heard the contributions that have been made. I do also want to make mention of the member for Mulgrave and the heartfelt way the member spoke about her own family’s journey and again the generosity of the way people share their stories. This is about ensuring no-one feels unsafe because of who they are, where they come from or what they believe in. It is about saying loudly and clearly that we will not tolerate hate in our community, no matter where it comes from or who it targets. It does come at a time in our society when vilification is not just a distant issue, it is an everyday reality for far too many.

As the member for St Albans has joined us, I take the opportunity to pay credit to the member for her role in chairing the 2021 inquiry into anti-vilification. So much of this work has come from the deep and considered policy work that was undertaken at that time. This is important work that has its genesis in a great passion and consideration from the Minister for Veterans, the minister at the table, and how grateful we are to the minister for the role that she has undertaken.

[NAMES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

This bill is incredibly important, because we are not just legislating change, we are sending a clear message that we will not tolerate hate in any form. In Cranbourne this message resonates deeply. Like so many have mentioned – and I love the way the member for Broadmeadows talked about how she could spend one week journeying through so many of the different faith and religious organisations in her electorate. Last Saturday I was very fortunate to go to Open Mosque Day. I still have the result of that beautiful henna done at the Hallam mosque, where I was with the member for Narre Warren North and the member for Narre Warren South. The member for Narre Warren North and I spent a couple of hours at the Hallam mosque. It was the extraordinary hospitality and the samosas that might have kept us there. I want to thank the Albanian mosque as well. I was very lucky to be at the Albanian Sakie mosque as well, and I want to thank Amir for the way he welcomed us. My own Cranbourne mosque was not open, but I have spent a lot of time having cups of tea with Sister Nazra and Sister Nishana, and I look forward to many more cups of tea in the future. On Sunday night BAPS celebrated the arrival of their great guru His Holiness, and what an amazing opportunity it was with the member for Narre Warren South, the member for Greenvale who represented the Premier, Mr Tarlamis in the other place and Ms Watt in the other place.

Every day I see how we are strengthened in the community that I represent and serve. The Sikh volunteers are providing food at every opportunity, and I wish that the new Leader of the Opposition and the member for Berwick had taken the opportunity to contribute, along with many other of his colleagues. It would have been good to hear him supporting or explaining his opposition to this legislation. This is important work. I pay credit to it. I commend it.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.