Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2017

The majority voted to agree with the main idea of the bill. In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read for the bill for a second time. This means that they can now discuss the bill in more detail.

What is the bill's main idea?

The bill was introduced to:

• amend section 18C, which prohibits offensive behaviour based on racial hatred, to replace the words ‘offend’, ‘insult’ and ‘humiliate’ with ‘harass’ (resulting in the formulation ‘harass or intimidate’); and
• provide that an assessment of whether an act is reasonably likely to harass or intimidate a person or group of persons is made against the standard of a reasonable member of the Australian community.

According to the explanatory memorandum, it would also:

amend the complaints handling processes of the Australian Human Rights Commission (the Commission) under the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (the AHRC Act) and ... make minor amendments to the AHRC Act sought by the Commission to enhance its operation and efficiency