THE HON. MARK DREYFUS QC MP
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE
TUESDAY, 19 MARCH 2019
SUBJECTS: Censure motion; parliamentarians Code of Conduct; social media.
PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Mark Dreyfus welcome to the program.
MARK DREYFUS, SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Good to be with you Patricia.
KARVELAS: What are the arguments against suspending Senator Anning from the Senate after his comments about Muslims after the Christchurch attack?
DREYFUS: Lets be clear Senator Anning should be censured for the disgraceful comments that he made after the Christchurch attack. Whether or not he can be suspended is a different question. It seems at the moment that neither the Parliamentary Privileges Act nor the rules of the Senate, the standing orders, allow that to happen. So I think that the better view for Senator Anning is the mainstream parties need to put him last. And they need to put the other racist party in Australian Parliament, One Nation, last as well. And I've been very disappointed today to see that Scott Morrison used weasel words and said only that he would do no deals, that he's not committing to putting them last and worse, that the National Party Michael McCormack wouldn't even do that. He just said it's a matter for state branches. Now, that's not good enough, we need the mainstream parties of Australia to get together and put these racist, far right parties last. Making sure that they are removed from the Parliament permanently.
KARVELAS: Just on the suspension, the Greens say that you can do it and that they have advice saying that. Have you pursued that option? Because they say it is possible and it has happened before.
DREYFUS: Oh believe me, were looking at it. What we want is for Senator Anning to resign from the Senate and put everyone out of their misery because he's not going to be returned by the people of Queensland. And that can be assisted by him, and his party being put last on the ballot paper by all mainstream parties and One Nation as well so that there's not preference flows to Mr Anning who of course was brought into the Parliament by Pauline Hanson.
KARVELAS: Mark Dreyfus you just said believe me were looking at it so you're still keeping that option alive? You're still pursuing it?
DREYFUS: What I've said to you is that on our present advice, it's not open to take that suspension option. The Parliamentary Privileges Act doesn't seem to allow it and the standing order of the Senate don't seem to allow it.
KARVELAS: There's a public perception that standards of conduct are different for politicians, and they are in some respects different there's obviously parliamentary privilege, for instance. Would a suspension motion demonstrate that there's still a line in terms of conduct?
DREYFUS: I think there's absolutely a line in terms of conduct and I think parliamentary privilege carries with it greater responsibilities to use the extraordinary platform that is provided to our members of parliament. Labor proposed back in November 2016, after regrettably Senator Hanson rejoined the Parliament, a repeat of the Parliamentarians Code of Race and Cultural Ethics, which was word for word the same as the parliamentary code that was adopted in 1996 by all major parties when Pauline Hanson was last in the Parliament, at that time in the House of Representatives. Regrettably, after that newly drafted Parliamentarians Code of Race and Cultural Ethics was drawn up and signed by all 69 members of the Labor caucus all 69 members of the House of Representatives and 26 Labor Senators we put it to the government and the government declined to join with us, which was very disappointing. That happened in November 2016. If the Race Discrimination Commissioner is offering to assist, I called yesterday for Scott Morrison to again consider a Parliamentarians Code of Race and Cultural Ethics, and I renew that call. And better still if the Race Discrimination Commissioner is going to join with that effort, lets hope that by the time the Parliament meets again on the 2nd of April, we've got to an agreement on this. Because I think it is sorely needed. We need to have parliamentarians and all of our political leadership accepting that there is an obligation on the political leadership of this country not to use divisive language, not to use racist language, not to use language which singles out any group in our society. Instead what we need from the political leadership is the language of cohesion, language of acceptance.
KARVELAS: As you just mentioned you've been calling for, and now the Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan has told me on ABC News, he would like to work with parliamentarians to draw up a Code of Conduct around racist speech what would that look like though, Mark Dreyfus? Because many people, people who say that free speech is important, say that people should be allowed to speak freely, and there shouldn't be restraint. What kind of restraint would there be around the kind of speech that a parliamentarian could speak?
DREYFUS: Our laws and our system are already full of restraints on speech in a whole lot of ways. We have laws, defamation laws which restrict the way in which we can speak. We have consumer laws which restrict the way businesses can speak. And I think it's very important that notions of freedom of speech not be confused with the idea that speech should be absolutely free. It's already not, we already draw lines, the debate is about where the lines are to be drawn. We had in part that debate over the section 18C abolition that this government posed twice, and we had to fight twice to keep some basic laws to stop vilification of people because of their race. We've got other laws already in the criminal law that make it a criminal offence to incite violence. So lets not have any of this confusion thrown up by, usually, people from the right of Australian politics saying I can engage in whatever racist speech I like, I can engage in whatever dog whistling I like, because it's my right to speak with absolute freedom. Well it's not there are lines that have already been drawn, and we need to maintain the lines. My concern is that we've had a blurring of those lines over recent years, we've had a shifting of those lines over recent years. And I think we've had a wake-up call, which is that while not all extreme right-wing hate speech leads to violence, pretty much all extreme right wing violence started with race hate speech. And that's why it's important. Words matter, words hurt, and words can lead to violence which is why we draw lines. So I get a bit exasperated when I hear people say that because of free speech notions we have a right to say whatever we like. The answer to them is no we don't society already draws lines and we need to maintain those lines.
KARVELAS: But people are going to want some kind of clarification, and detail in terms of what a code of conduct around race and speech would look like. What it would allow, what it would try to restrict. Because obviously the Parliament is where laws are made, where big debates are had for our nation. People want to know what kind of parameters would be put around it. Do you have any detail around how it would look?
DREYFUS: Yes, the Code of Conduct is detailed, it's quite short, it's got ten provisions in it, the first of it starts with requiring Australian Parliamentarians to speak with respect in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these are known principles. We know that it is wrong and unhelpful to a cohesive society to speak in ways which vilify particular groups in our society on the basis of the colour of their skin or their religious faith, or any of their beliefs. We know that it's not conducive to the kind of diverse, rich and diverse society that Australia has become to single out any groups. And that s what these principles are directed to. It's an encouragement to parliamentarians to speak in a respectful and accepting way. I'm very happy to send you Patricia, and you can put it up on your website, a copy of the Code which we signed back in November 2016 which the government regrettably wasn't prepared to come at.
KARVELAS: OK so what would happen for instance if Pauline Hanson violated these rules?
DREYFUS: That might lead to a censure of Pauline Hanson because of the way in which she has breached that Parliamentarians Code of Race and Cultural Ethics.
KARVELAS: And what does a censure really mean? Because this is the thing, Fraser Anning is about to be censured. You've agreed to that with the government. And yet he doesn't seem very fazed by it, he says he's pretty relaxed about it all actually.
DREYFUS: Well that's the kind of contempt that this right-wing Senator has shown for our system of government, and indeed I would say the kind of contempt that he has shown for our community. It's why he deserves to be thrown out of office if he even stands for office at the next election. And for him to thumb his nose at a censure of the Australian Senate is just what I would expect from him but I don't think that's a way to measure the very serious nature of being censured by the House of Parliament of which you are a member. Might I say that we used to have, under our constitution, the ability for the House to expel one of their members when the Parliament passed the Parliamentary Privileges Act in 1987. We removed that power and I think that's an appropriate thing, because I don't think that you should be able to use simply a majority of the members of Parliament to expel what would almost certainly be someone who was in the minority. However the Parliament retains the right to censure and I think that's a very serious step. And again this right wing Senator is just showing how unfit he is to be a member of the Senate that he is thumbing his nose at a censure.
KARVELAS: Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants social media platforms to do more to take down violent extremist content like the Christchurch attack. Is it a difficult process? Have they failed to meet community expectations?
DREYFUS: I think there has been some failure on the part of the social media platforms to meet community expectations. We know that the platforms have a whole range of digital technologies and algorithms available to them to identify content, to identify who users are, that's of course what they use to sell their product which is information to advertisers. Raising billions and billions of dollars of profit and I think they need to do more to make sure that these tremendously useful social media platforms do not become a force for evil in being used to broadcast this appalling kind of content. And I commend Mr Morrison for his invitation to the Japanese Prime Minister to put this on the agenda at the next G20 meeting. That's a good thing. And I'm going to be looking in coming weeks and months for the social media platforms to be doing a lot more. If they don't have current algorithms they need to build new algorithms that will enable them to remove this kind of content and as I have said publicly and as the Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten has said publicly, if they haven't done something in pretty short order we need to be looking at whether or not Australia needs to legislate to compel them to do so.
KARVELAS: Mark Dreyfus thanks you for joining us.
DREYFUS: Thanks very much Patricia.
ENDS
