18C protects Muslim criminals, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts says

A One Nation senator claims race-hate speech laws stop 'decent' people speaking out against Muslim criminals.

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts speaks on Brisbane street preachers in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, March 20, 2017. Source: AAP

A One Nation senator claims race-hate speech laws are protecting Muslim criminals.

Malcolm Roberts says Australian Islamists are the real beneficiaries of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, comparing restrictions on race-hate speech to "Stalinist repression".

"If your Muslim Sudanese neighbour is engaging in female genital mutilation or your Syrian Muslim cafe owner is a terrorist building a bomb or maybe just the Afghan Muslims in the public housing flat next to you are molesting small children, chances are that you are afraid to speak out," he said.

"Ordinary, decent people are simply afraid to speak the truth.

"We want to be able to call out Muslim drug dealers, child mutilators, hate preachers , terrorists and perverts."



The senator used a debate on proposed changes to race-hate speech laws in parliament on Tuesday to launch a tirade against Australian Muslims, claiming the community was "bulging" with hate-preachers and terrorist apologists.

None of them had been brought before the Human Rights Commission for race-hate speech, because the laws only applied to non-Muslims, he said.

He likened the Greens to Islamic State for defending the existing laws, claiming they painted those who disagreed with them as wrong and immoral.

"The smug, elitist sense of superiority that infuses these koala-hugging commos appears to leave them without the slightest awareness of the terrible repression which they champion in their pursuit of ideological conformity with their own frankly anti-human world view," he said.

The federal government's proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act would swap the words "offend", "insult" and "humiliate" to "harass and intimidate".

Labor, Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team oppose the changes, meaning the government doesn't have the numbers to get them through the Senate.

The government has moved amendments to the legislation which it says were the product of discussions with Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs.


Share
Published 29 March 2017 3:34am
Updated 29 March 2017 10:12am
Source: AAP


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world