Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2017

The majority voted against Government amendments introduced by Liberal Party Senator George Brandis. The amendments related to amending section 18C.

Senator Brandis explained that: "The purpose of this amendment is to clarify the meanings of the words 'intimidate' and 'harass' in section 18C as it would appear, assuming the bill is passed."

Read more on ABC News.

Motion text

(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 25), after item 4, insert:

4A Before subsection 18C(3)

Insert:

(2C) For the purposes of subsection (1), if an act done by a person consists of:

(a) making a statement; or

(b) making a comment; or

(c) making a remark;

(whether orally, in a document or in any other way), then the making of the statement, comment or remark may be reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to harass another person, even if the statement, comment or remark is not made in the presence of the other person.

(2D) For the purposes of subsection (1), if an act done by a person consists of:

(a) making a statement; or

(b) making a comment; or

(c) making a remark;

(whether orally, in a document or in any other way), then the making of the statement, comment or remark may be reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to harass a group of people, even if the statement, comment or remark is not made in the presence of one or more members of that group.

What does this bill do?

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.

But as you can see from this division, this change to the wording of section 18C is controversial and there is a lot of opposition to it.

According to the explanatory memorandum, the bill 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