Submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission inquiry into Serious racial and religious vilification

PIAC’s submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission inquiry into serious racial and religious vilification, particularly in relation to the offence of threatening or inciting violence in s93Z of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), includes five recommendations to improve hate speech protections in NSW, with a focus on improving consistency between the Crimes Act and civil vilification prohibitions in the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW). These include:

• Replacing the protected attribute of ‘religious belief or affiliation or religious activity’ in the civil vilification provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act, with the protected attribute of ‘religious belief or affiliation’ as defined in s93Z of the Crimes Act;
• Ensuring bisexual people and non-binary people are included in civil vilification provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act;
• Replacing the protected attribute of ‘intersex status’ with ‘sex characteristics’ in s93Z of the Crimes Act, while also explicitly protecting people with innate variations of sex characteristics in the civil vilification provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act; and
• Adding disability as a protected attribute for the purposes of both the criminal offence of threatening or inciting violence in s93Z of the Crimes Act and civil vilification provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act, in line with the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission.