Proposed law change protects questionable pub jokes
Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has defended the Northern Territory government's planned anti-discrimination laws to be introduced to parliament in July.
At an estimates hearing on Monday, she rejected accusations from shadow attorney-general Chansey Paech that the planned laws "watered down" protections for people offended by comments made about them.
Ms Boothby said her government was restoring "fairness and common sense" to laws that went too far when the previous Labor government revised them in 2022.
The proposed laws remove "vague" terms such as "offend" and "insult".
They will be replaced with clearer terms to prohibit conduct that "incites hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule" based on personal attributes such as race, sexuality, gender identity, religion and more.
"It's still a strong measure of anti-vilification, so we don't put up with that kind of behaviour," Ms Boothby said.
"Any kind of hate speech is not acceptable in our community."
The attorney-general said the new laws also restored protections for religious schools, allowing them to hire staff who upheld their faith while protecting against discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender.
Territorians wanted their freedom to enjoy the territory lifestyle, she said.
"It's not just having a joke at the pub that's going to land you in front of a hearing," Ms Boothby said.
"We want something that's more serious than that.
"We still want to be able to tell a joke. We still want to have freedom of speech debates."
It was a case of restoring balance and ensuring the law did not overreach into everyday conversations, religious freedoms, or basic rights to express an opinion, Ms Boothby said.
The government consulted religious and multicultural groups, sex workers, LGBTQI groups, the anti-discrimination commissioner and others on the new laws.
The proposed legislation was in line with changes made in other Australian jurisdictions, the attorney-general said.
The estimates hearing was told the office of the NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner had a budget cut for 2025/26 of $269,000 to $1.65 million.
Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam told the hearing his office received up to 300 complaints a year but only had two complaints officers amid a large backlog of cases.
He said only three of 46 vilification complaints this financial year had been accepted in relation to race, religious belief, gender identity and disability.
Complaints were assessed as to whether they were trivial, vexatious or had no grounds, while those that proceeded were subject to a high-threshold objective standard of assessment, Mr Yogaratnam said.
"So things like your jokes at the pub would not amount to vilification in the context of the way in which we assess it.
"Clearly if that joke is one that incites hatred in relation to one of the 24 protected attributes like race, gender identity, disability, then that would be something we would need to consider."
Any other version of the NT's vilification provision "would be watering it down" because it was the strongest vilification law in Australia, he said.
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