View the recording of this speech here.
Record of Proceedings, 10 September 2024
I rise to make some comments on the Respect at Work and Other Matters Amendment Bill as part of this cognate debate today. I say first up that this bill should be rejected because it creates great uncertainty about freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion, and creates a test for vilification that will essentially mean anybody who feels they have been offended could take legal action against other people, and it imposes on a range of parties the positive obligation, the bounds of which are not set out in law but are subject to ‘guidelines’ to be set by the Human Rights Commission.
Under this Labor government, it is clear that this bill is just the beginning of changes to the anti-discrimination law in Queensland. That much was made clear by the Queensland Human Rights Commission when they appeared before the committee, along with a host of other stakeholders who urged the government to go further and enact even deeper activist changes to these laws. There is only way to stop that agenda being pursued by the Labor government, starting with this bill, but with more to come in the future, and that is to vote for the LNP and to show Labor the door in October 2024.
I opposed the Queensland Human Rights Commission when it was created by Labor in the past and I remain opposed to it now. I warned when it was created that it would become an alternative forum for arguments about the balancing of competing rights when it should be this parliament that has such debates.
The bill provides the Human Rights Commission with powers to investigate individuals and workplaces for compliance with a positive duty being imposed by this bill, even without a complaint being made by anybody that a party is breaching the law. This is a major expansion of power for that unelected commission that has very little oversight and no accountability to the public. It could, for example, investigate an entity for failing to take reasonable steps to ensure ‘equitable outcomes’ in their employment policies, hypothetically, on the basis that not enough people of a particular minority group are being employed by that entity.
Putting aside the uncertainty about what ‘equitable outcomes’ actually means, this provision creates potential for the Human Rights Commission to effectively become the woke police, by either investigating or carrying the threat of investigating businesses who, in their view, are not doing enough to ensure ‘equitable outcomes’, a term that is not defined and which the department was not able to really define in the committee process.
I say ‘in their view’—in the view of the Human Rights Commission—because the bill provides the Human Rights Commission with the ability to issue guidelines for how parties are to comply with their positive duties, and these will, in reality, become not guidelines but rules for how compliance will be met. Fail to meet the so-called guidelines and you could be investigated by the Human Rights Commission. They will be rule-maker, investigator and prosecutor under these provisions. This extension of the power of the Human Rights Commission is just one reason why this bill should be rejected.
However, the uncertainty created by various other provisions is a further major reason the bill should fail. Part 2 of the bill contains significant departures from Commonwealth legislation, recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission and also recommendations made by the former Legal Affairs and Safety Committee. These provisions will give rise to substantial uncertainty about what actions, conducts and words are unlawful, and give rise to litigation against individuals, businesses and community organisations through no fault of their own.
The uncertainty begins with clause 6 which would amend the object of the Anti-Discrimination Act by including, alongside the objective and longstanding notion of ‘equality of opportunity for everyone’—and that is an objective notion—the subjective notion of ‘equitable outcomes’. It is undefined, but the notion is added by the bill to the purpose of every distinct provision aimed to prevent discrimination. Departmental representatives could not precisely and concisely explain to the committee what this term means. When asked what an ‘equitable outcome’ means, a representative of the department said, ‘Equitable outcomes is where everyone is equal under the law.’ Obviously, I immediately thought that this means equal opportunity which is already the law in Queensland, so I queried again, ‘Equal opportunity?’ The reply was, ‘It is more than equal opportunity?’ Again I queried, ‘So it is more than equal opportunity?’ The reply which came out next really does not shed a great deal of light on the matter because in the end the answer was quite circular. It was—
It is more than equal opportunity, yes. Everyone has the same opportunity, but it does not recognise that some people have attributes where they might have been subject to systemic disadvantage and discrimination, so they do not start from the same place, and sometimes they need other measures, including education, for example, from the Queensland Human Rights Commission, to address and raise community understanding about that disadvantage so that you can have equitable outcomes.
Still, there was no real outline of what ‘equitable outcomes’ are, except that we need to have them. That is because the definition is subjective. It can mean different things to different people. The comments from the department clearly show that the door is opened to social engineering projects, in this case through the state-backed Queensland Human Rights Commission. The uncertainty of this term creates a level of uncertainty and unknowability about the extent of this legislation. People will simply not know what the bounds of the law are. Worse than that, it arms the Human Rights Commission and the government with the tools to determine what version of equitable outcomes is the so-called correct one, the politically correct one, what outcomes of anti-discrimination law are the right ones, even though in society many of these issues have been and will continue to be hotly contested debates—for this place, not for the commission.
The answer also alarmingly shows that it is the view of the department that people require education from the Queensland Human Rights Commission about these matters, a most insulting thing to suggest to Queenslanders. It also lays bare the power being given to the QHRC to determine what is going to fly in terms of ‘equitable outcomes’ and the concept of discrimination and the positive duty to prevent discrimination.
In relation to the bill’s amendments to the vilification provisions, they exceed in significant respects the recommendations of the LASC. Proposed section 124C manipulates the objective test by confining the question of whether something is hateful, reviling, seriously contemptuous or seriously ridiculing to a person or group with a protected attribute to whether a ‘reasonable person’ with that protected attribute would find it so. The question should be considered by asking how a ‘reasonable person’ in the community at large considers such conduct under section 124C. Section 124D introduces an offence for conduct ‘likely to incite’. This term is uncertain. What is likely to incite for one person will not incite at all for somebody else. This term is so prone to different interpretations by different people. It is not an objective test and nor does it create a factual question at law. It creates significant uncertainty about the bounds of that provision in contrast to the existing provision.
The existing provision, it seems, is already generating some ridiculous outcomes because of the Human Rights Commission. I highlight today reports that Dave Pellowe, from an organisation called Church and State Ministries, has had a complaint made against him and accepted by the QHRC because he pointed out to another person the difference between Aboriginal traditional religion and Christianity. It is reported that this is alleged to be racial humiliation and vilification. Since when is it unlawful? Since when is someone taken to the Human Rights Commission for expressing support for the essential tenets of their religion and pointing out differences between that and others? Why should a person of faith answer to a complaint of vilification simply for professing Christianity? This is an alarming development under the present vilification laws as overseen by the Human Rights Commission. There is only one way to stop this, and that is to vote to show Labor the door in 2024.
If the bill is enacted and the test of what is vilification is watered down even further to the point where anyone who finds something personally insulting or humiliating can make a claim against a person at the QHRC, what impact does that have on people engaging in religious discussion? What impact does that have on a political discussion? It will lead to a curtailing of all of these things by self-censorship or by the threat of people taking you to the Human Rights Commission because they feel offended by something you have said. People will engage in self-censorship or be subject to the enforcement of ‘guidelines’ from the Human Rights Commission.
The bill does not expressly limit these freedoms, but these limitations are cloaked in the threat of confusing, subjective and ambiguous provisions being enforced to litigate against parties by the Human Rights Commission or other parties.
I table a news report in relation to that matter I spoke about in relation to Mr Pellowe.
Tabled paper: Article from skynews.com.au, dated 16 August 2024, titled ‘Christian preacher to be dragged before Qld Human Rights Commission over opposition to Welcome to Country ceremony’
It is the role of parliament to state with certainty what the law is, and this bill is not doing that. We should not be providing the Human Rights Commission the role to play as a quasi-legislator as well as a quasi-judicial function. The impact of uncertainty is that parties may face legal action, or complaints made against them to a state-run body, for allegedly failing to comply with the law that it is impossible to know the bounds of. The only people empowered by this bill are the QHRC. Uncertain laws are bad laws, and this is a bad law when it comes to upholding those freedoms in Queensland that we should all treasure very dearly. It should be rejected.