Key events
Michelle Rowland says Labor changes to hate speech laws ‘should be above politics’
Daniel Hurst
The federal communications minister, Michelle Rowland, has spoken about the government’s planned laws against hate speech. She told Sky News this morning that the details remained under “active discussion” but the government “will not tolerate … hatred and abuse on the basis of race or religion”.
Rowland said she had received a phone call from a friend whose child attends Mount Scopus in Burwood in Melbourne, a Jewish day school where threatening graffiti was found on the front fence yesterday:
I’ve never had someone on the phone, a friend like that, so distressed about that what’s happened. She said: ‘My grandparents and my husband’s grandparents fled the Holocaust and now we are here in Australia seeing this.’ So it is completely unacceptable.
Again, the counterfactual is for governments to do nothing. We have determined to operate not only within the [attorney general’s] portfolio but there has been strong engagement across the comms sector as well.
I talked about the review of the basic online safety expectations. They also go to hate speech. So your viewers can be very assured that we are operating as a proper functioning cabinet government where ministers work collaboratively with one another on evidence we identify where there needs to be further penalties in place and where they need to be strengthened. And we’re determined to do that. And this should be above politics.
Rowland declined to specify what penalties were on the table, saying they were under “active discussion”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in February that the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, was looking at how to “strengthen laws against hate speech”.
National Sorry Day marked across Australia
Indigenous communities will gather to mark Sorry Day across the country, amid ongoing calls to implement all of the recommendations of a 27-year-old report into the Stolen Generations.
National Sorry Day events are being held today in major capital cities, including in Sydney where Coota Girls Survivors – the former residents of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls – their families and descendants will meet in the Royal Botanic Gardens.
26 May marks the 1997 tabling in federal parliament of the Bringing Them Home report, which examined the history of First Nations people who were forcibly removed from their families as part of the Stolen Generations.
It documented the experience of survivors and made 54 recommendations, some of which have not yet been implemented.
Reconciliation Week also marks the anniversary of the 1967 referendum on 27 May, which allowed Indigenous people to be counted in the census, and Mabo Day on 3 June, which celebrates the high court decision overturning the principle of “terra nullius” and paving the way for native title.
– AAP
Josh Butler
Parents should educate themselves about sexual consent so they can teach their children about it, Anthony Albanese’s government says, with a new $40m national campaign encouraging adults to learn about the issue to address “confusion”.
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, will launch the new consent campaign today. The campaign centres on the message “if we don’t know the answers, how will our kids”, asking adults to inform themselves so they can have appropriate conversations with their children.
“Australians know that sex without consent is wrong, however, there can be high levels of confusion around the definition of consent, and who is accountable in non-consensual scenarios,” Rishworth’s office said in a statement.
The government pointed to statistics showing one in five Australian women and one in 16 men had experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. Women were most likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner.
Rishworth said many parents may not feel comfortable talking to their kids about consent, even as she pointed to research showing the vast majority of Australians thought adults needed to talk about it.
You can read more about the campaign here:
Welcome
Good morning, Elias Visontay here with some of the top stories of the day so far.
Western Australia police are investigating the circumstances of an apparent double murder-suicide after a man looking for his former partner at a home in Perth’s west instead shot dead the woman’s female friend and teenage daughter before taking his own life.
Police were called to a home in the suburb of Floreat on Friday afternoon after reports of gunshots. Detectives said a 63-year-old man arrived at the property about 4.30pm looking for his former partner who was not there at the time.
Instead, the man shot dead a 59-year-old woman who was his ex-partner’s friend and critically wounded her 18-year-old daughter, police said. He then took his own life.
Police arrived to find the two bodies, and paramedics rushed the 18-year-old girl to Royal Perth Hospital where she later died.
The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, is reportedly drafting new hate speech laws that will increase federal protections for minority groups by imposing criminal penalties for serious instances of vilification based on a person’s sexuality or race, gender or religion.
“The Albanese government is committed to promoting and supporting respect, acceptance and understanding across the Australian community,” Dreyfus told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We are committed to protecting the community from those who promote extremism, hatred or seek to incite violence.”
And the Central Coast Mariners are back-to-back A-League champions after striker Ryan Edmondson’s late double clinched an A-League Men championship for the side with a 3-1 extra-time triumph over Melbourne Victory.
It was a historic moment for the Mariners, claiming their third premiership at Industree Group Stadium on Saturday.
