The words "insult," "offend" and "humiliate" may currently have a more piquant meaning for people in certain communities.
Bilal Rauf, barrister and Muslim community advocate, says this is the case for Australia's Islamic population.
"There certainly has been an increase of Islamophobia and incidents of offensive behaviour and offensive words. The proposed change guts the substantive protection that the legislation provides."
Removing the words "insult", "offend" and "humiliate" from section 18C of the Act and replacing them with the word "harass" could be seen as a minor change.
But Mr Rauf says for communities often subject to such behaviour, the change is significant.
"It really takes a lot of those incidents outside the scope of the legislation as it currently stands because a person would have to show that there's been a repetition in the harassing behaviour, so that it is harassment, but also so that it is directed: mere words on a website, which may be offensive, which may be insulting, will not necessarily be caught by the word harass, as it concerns a group of people, be it the Islamic community, the Jewish community, et cetera."
It's not yet known whether the changes to section 18C will go ahead, but many in Australia's multicultural communities fear if they do, they'll be more vulnerable than they are now.
Peter Wertheim, Executive Director of Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says many ethnic groups share the same concern.
"I've been inundated actually today with emails and phone calls from other community organisations, from the Chinese community, the Arab community, the Greek community, the Armenian community, the Aboriginal community. They are all of the same opinion as us, that section 18C of and section 18D taken together are a very good balance between freedom of expression on one hand and freedom from racial hatred on the other hand and should be left as they are. The real problem is the problem of process and that's what should be addressed."
But others believe the proposed changes don't go far enough.
Simon Breheny is the Director of Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs.
In a written submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights freedom of speech inquiry, the Institute recommended that section 18C be repealed altogether.
"I think it's a really significant problem when you've got a law that catches students engaging in Facebook banter, that catches newspaper columnists, that catches cartoonists and I think a lot of these cases we've seen in recent times have built the case for the reform and repeal of section 18C, those I think represent the most significant problems of this provision."
Professor Mick Dodson, a former chair of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, wants the government to shift its focus to more important issues.
"Why are they banging on about this? There are more important things. From an Indigenous Affairs perspective, the Prime Minister just recently gave the Closing The Gap report: things are going backwards, what are you worrying about 18C for? Our kids are dying."
Share
