The Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (Fecca) will set out the case against changes to the Racial Discrimination Act at a last-minute Senate committee on Friday.
The legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee, which must report back by Tuesday, will also hear from the Attorney General’s Department, and has invited the Australian Law Reform Commission, Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Human Rights Law Centre.
On Tuesday Malcolm Turnbull unveiled the government’s plan to remove the words “offend” and “insult” from section 18C of the RDA, and insert the term “harass”, as well as introducing procedural changes to handling of complaints.
The Nick Xenophon Team opposes the substantive changes to 18C in the bill; given the party’s bloc of three votes in the Senate where the bill was introduced, it is expected to fail.
On Thursday, the Senate approved the government’s plan to debate the bill next week, preventing it dragging into the week of the budget – the next sitting week – as Labor had hoped.
Labor and the government were at odds over the need for an inquiry. The Coalition pointed to a freedom of speech inquiry that had already considered 18C and Labor argued that it had not examined the government’s substantive proposal, but rather other reform options.
NXT supported the motion to debate the bill next week, but also supported Labor and the Greens’ push for a Senate inquiry.
The department will appear first at 9am, and the AHRC president, Gillian Triggs, and race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, will also give evidence.
On Tuesday Fecca’s chairman, Joe Caputo, expressed his organisation’s dismay that “the proposed changes … send a strong signal that racism is acceptable”.
“Australia’s international reputation as a strong, successful multicultural and multifaith community is threatened by this proposal,” he said in a statement.
“There has been a palpable increase in hostility toward certain minority groups in Australia which promotes feelings of exclusion and fear in the community.
“The RDA – as it stands – provides protection for vulnerable communities against racial attacks while defending the right to freedom of speech.”
Labor had also wanted the Aboriginal Legal Service to give evidence, but the committee, which is controlled by the government, did not resolve for it to appear.
On Thursday the former prime minister Tony Abbott said changing 18C was “a question of doing the right thing” and the changes would make Australia “a better, safer and freer country”.
“We are a country which has always believed in freed of speech; we are a people who are prepared to engage in pretty robust argument.
“The tragedy of Australia in the last few years is that we’ve had innocent students subjected to lengthy official persecution by the [AHRC].
“We’ve had the immortal Bill Leak subjected to all sorts of harassment, official or semi-official harassment, simply because he produced a tough but entirely justifiable cartoon.”
In its submission to the freedom of speech inquiry the AHRC supported procedural changes to complaint handling.
Race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has said that there is “no case” to make substantive changes to the prohibition on speech that insults, offends, humiliates or intimidates a person based on race.
Triggs has defended the AHRC’s handling of the Queensland University of Technology case and the Bill Leak case, giving evidence to Senate committees that a delay in the former was caused by the belief the case would settle without the students’ involvement, and in the latter Leak’s lawyers had failed to plead the basis for their claim his cartoon was drawn in good faith.
Triggs and Soutphommasane will address controversies about the two cases again at a Senate estimates hearing on Friday afternoon.
