Rightwing thinktank joins backlash to Queensland’s ‘vague’ proposed hate speech laws | Queensland politics

There is growing backlash against Queensland’s antisemitism laws in all areas of politics; Right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is the latest group to raise free speech concerns over the “vague” bill.

Margaret Chambers, a research fellow at the IPA, said the bill would give a single minister extraordinary powers to “censor and criminalize views and debates” on the basis of a subjective standard without oversight from the courts.

Constitutional scholar Anne Twomey said: laws were being “introduced in extreme haste”The seven-day public comment period ends Tuesday.

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Under the proposed legislation, the state’s attorney general would have the authority to ban a particular expression if he or she finds that it is “regularly used to incite discrimination, hostility, or violence” against a “concerned group” identified by “race, religion, sexuality, sex characteristics, or gender identity.”

The attorney general’s power to interdict can be overturned by a vote in parliament, but Queensland’s unicameral parliament is almost always controlled by the government of the day.

“These proposed laws are so vague and broad that even the language used by the no campaign against the parliamentary voice supported by more than two-thirds of Queenslanders would be outlawed,” Chambers said.

The government announced its intention to ban two phrases: “from river to sea” and “globalizing the intifada”.

The state’s premier, David Crisafulli, said on Sunday that the government would not seek to ban additional expressions such as racist and anti-Semitic slurs.

Twomey said the state’s list of relevant groups was much broader than recent Commonwealth legislation, which only applied to “race, colour, or national or ethnic origin”.

“A prohibited expression could be, for example, one that is perceived to incite hostility towards people who have transitioned,” he said.

Crisafulli said the opposite was true: “It was the original federal bill that was so broad, and that’s what caused the parliament to melt down.”

The legislation would make the public reading, public distribution, publication or public display of a prohibited statement an offense punishable by two years in prison if those acts “could reasonably be expected to make a member of the public feel threatened, harassed or offended and the defendant has no reasonable excuse.”

The government spent more than a month preparing the law, which was tabled on Tuesday. The document also discusses arms reforms developed by the national cabinet following the bondi beach terror attack last year.

Seven days were given to present the law to the public.

Asked if the process was rushed, Crisafulli said the time frame “strikes the right balance.”

“Before Christmas, before New Year’s Eve, I was getting criticized for not doing it fast enough,” he said. “We really took the time to get it right.”

The 17-day investigation carried out by the parliamentary justice, integrity and public safety committee will end on February 27.

Chambers called on the state’s conservative government to “abandon what is in many ways a carbon copy” of the federal government’s hate laws, which were passed with opposition support last month.

“The standard is so low that Queenslanders could face up to two years in prison for using banned language that ‘incites hostility’, even if there is no victim or proven harm,” he said.

Asked whether an offended person would need to attend a protest for the law to come into force, police minister Dan Purdie said: “We don’t want people at protests or elsewhere to be chanting slogans like this that incite hatred.”

Purdie said the government supported the right to peaceful protest legislated in Queensland, but “what we are doing is destroying hatred, people calling for genocide for a particular religion or belief.”