ustralians within the state of Queensland may very well be jailed for as much as three years for sharing social media posts that violate sweeping hate crime laws.
The Criminal Code (Serious Vilification and Hate Crimes) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 proposes harder penalties for many who commit crimes motivated by prejudice on the grounds of race, faith, sexuality or gender identification.
The proposed legal guidelines would enhance the utmost jail time for making bigoted statements from six months to a few years.
Inflammatory social media posts fall underneath the purview of the invoice, which prohibits the vilification of specified teams via “any form of communication to the public,” together with through digital means.
Sharing a Nazi image on social media, or carrying it round publicly, may also end in jail time.
The invoice launched into the Queensland Parliament in March would modify the felony code to introduce a “prohibited symbols offence”. This would ban the show of hate symbols, together with these tied to Nazism and the Islamic State.
As a part of the clampdown on hate symbols, Queensland will ban the show of Nazi swastika tattoos. The Queensland authorities says its hate crime legal guidelines will likely be among the many strongest in Australia.
Displaying a swastika is already unlawful in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW), with Western Australia set to comply with and South Australia additionally contemplating the difficulty. In NSW, it leads to a year-long jail time period or a $100,000 (£81,000) positive.
Like NSW and Victoria earlier than it, Queensland will exempt Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, for whom swastikas are non secular symbols. There may also be an exemption for when hate symbols are used for instructional functions.
The Queensland Law Society (QLS) opposes the elevated most imprisonment for severe vilification. In its submission to the federal government, the QLS urged it to carefully study how efficient and sensible the upper penalty could be.
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has beforehand welcomed bans on the Nazi image in NSW and Victoria. It additionally pushed Queensland and different Australian states and territories to maneuver shortly to undertake related laws.
“These bans are an important tool to deter open displays of antisemitism and further marginalise racist extremists, and will help strengthen communal cohesion and harmony across Australia,” the AIJAC stated in June 2022.
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