Category: Jewish

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry submitted a response to the Senate Committee inquiry on the Exposure Draft of Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012.

All submissions to this Senate inquiry are online here.  The submission by the ECAJ is available on the Senate site (#242) and the ECAJ site.

The following paragraph on page 6 of the submission (emphasis added) is of particular relevance:

Whilst there are good, evidence-based policy reasons to have legislation in place which prohibits conduct that offends, insults, humiliates or intimidates others because of other attributes, especially sexual orientation and gender identity, we believe that this should take the form of anti-vilification, not anti-discrimination, legislation and such legislation should include the same objective element as applies when the protected attribute is race. If, as we believe is the case, the Commonwealth lacks the constitutional power to enact anti-vilification legislation to protect attributes other than race, then it should be left to the States and Territories to do so, and the focus of government should be to achieve uniformity in such legislation across Australia.