Daily London
The federal government’s hate speech law package devised in response to the Bondi Beach terror attack appears set to pass parliament after early opposition.
With the Greens likely to support the gun control laws, the government has now reached an agreement with the opposition to pass the free speech laws.
Despite demanding a swift response to the Bondi attack, many senior Coalition figures balked at the laws, saying they had been devised too swiftly and citing free speech concerns.
Nine newspapers reported this morning that some Labor MPs were worried about the government’s decision to drop racial anti-vilification elements from the legal package in order to get it through parliament.
“When the government put forward those laws, we heard all kinds of free speech advocates say, oh, but what if it captures this kind of language and that kind of language?” The Age and Sydney Morning Heral chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal told Today.
“So the government’s pulled that section of the bill.”
Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth said the government was focused on passing workable laws.
“We need to get laws through the parliament. It’s a numbers issues,” she told Today.
“And so if you have both the opposition saying that we will not support racial vilification laws and the Greens not supporting, then you can’t bring it into law.”
