The Victorian anti-vilification laws are for headlines and Instagram tiles, not for the trans community
We're the best at protecting ourselves, and that's exactly what we'll do.
Victoria is set to get new shiny anti-vilification laws! These have been heralded as a massive win for queer and disabled people, and it’s easy to see why. These “anti-vilification and social cohesion laws” will expand the current protections given to victims of racial vilification, and include victims of queerphobia and ableist vilification too.
Here’s a simple run-down. Currently, anti-vilification laws only protected those who were attacked on the basis of racial vilification. These changes will expand it to include queer people and disabled people, and also lower the threshold of responsibility not just when someone is being threatened on the basis of a protected characteristic, but when a statement is considered “inciting hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule” on the basis of a protected characteristic. Offenders risk up to five years imprisonment.
To quote the law itself, it intends to: “Protect more Victorians from vilification – which is the worst kind of hate speech or conduct that profoundly hurts people and undermines social cohesion”.
Sounds great! But you might be thinking “wait… social cohesion… why does that sound familiar?”.
That’s probably because the Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan used that term only recently whilst threatening a pro-Palestine protest outside Melbourne’s Myer Christmas display. Jacinta Allan, as with her predecessor Daniel Andrews, has routinely defended Australia’s support of Israel’s war crimes, and accused those protesting it of stoking antisemitism, division, and general “hatred”.
For example, in the aftermath of the protest against the Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition, in which police were accused of extreme levels of brutality against peaceful protesters and journalists, Jacinta Allan stated “hate will never win” and “violence will never win”. Aside from the chilling irony of stating “violence will never win” whilst defending a militarised police force and a weapons expo, the Premier also conflated the act of protest, and retaliation against police brutality, with hate crimes on marginalised communities. She used social justice language as a shield to protect her own political interests in a public statement that follows on from much of the rhetoric that surrounding the genocide in the Middle East this year, which incorrectly suggests that any expression of solidarity with the victims of genocide is inherently hateful and antisemitic.
This raises the question: if the Premier is shamelessly using the language of anti-vilification to silence criticism of her government, could these laws also be exploited against journalists and protesters? How will these laws be enforced anyway?
Ah, you’ve already hit upon the catch in these laws, and the reason why this article exists!
Why these laws won’t work
There are two ways these laws can be employed. If you happen to have won the lottery recently, you can hire a lawyer and take the offender to court. Or, if you don’t have a pretty decent Porsche collection, you can theoretically press criminal charges, which you can do through the famous queer allies, Victoria Police. Oh no…
The current federal anti-vilification laws have been used on a few, rare occasions. We saw them play out earlier this year when the federal court found that One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson had racially vilified Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi in a tweet that stated she should “piss off back to Pakistan”. This was celebrated a win for racial cohesion and migrant Australians, but it took two years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and certainly hasn’t done anything to slow down Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant sentiments or racially charged commentary, nor is Senator Hanson the only high-profile political figure to be accused of racism. The federal Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, has been accused of many racially charged statements over his political career, including characterising two children of asylum seekers as “anchor babies” back in 2019, but the parents of these children never took Dutton to court. I don’t think asylum seekers have the capacity to sue one of the most powerful men in the country.
The other approach is lodging a criminal complaint. This is the route that involves taking the issue to Victoria Police, who have also been empowered by these new laws with the threshold for police to bring criminal charges being lowered. Omg cops slay!
These laws mean that if neo-Nazis unveil their “DESTROY PAEDO FREAKS” banner again, we can press charges for vilification and Victoria Police might actually arrest the neo-Nazis this time instead of pepper spraying trans people in the face. Of course, it doesn’t guarantee it. Police can do what they like, they resist any attempt at accountability, and they are well-known for not handling trans people with respect. Victoria Police refused to assist the search for missing trans woman Bridget Flack when her sister was desperate to find her in 2020. It’s hard to believe they would ever assist us in arresting someone who said something gross towards us on Twitter. Again, they literally pepper sprayed us while neo-Nazis were publicly calling for our mass-murder. Do you think many of us are ever thrilled about going into a police station?
At least we might be able to take the neo-Nazis to court I guess. Anyone know an incredibly rich trans person with two years to spare?
The anti-vilification laws theoretically grant us another trick up our sleeve we can use to keep us safe from the growth of far-right hatred. In practice, however, it’s highly unlikely it’ll actually change anything about the lives of most queer people at all. It doesn’t empower us in any real, tangible way. It does, however, empower police, and its a convenient scapegoat for the Labor Party to use whenever they need to pretend that they’re supporting our community when, actually, they’re not.
In all likelihood, queer people will deal with vilification the same way after this bill as we’ve done for decades. We don’t have the money or time for a court proceeding, and we don’t trust cops, so we’ll just shake it off and move on.
High-profile figures have vilified our community openly in the media for years now. J.K. Rowling has launched tirades against trans women to her millions of followers. Graham Linehan has blamed us for the loss of his career, marriage and self-respect. Here in Australia, a federal Liberal candidate stated that half of all trans women are sex offenders while a state Victorian Liberal MP described the creators of the Safe Schools program as “pedophilia apologists”. I’d love to believe that Victoria Police would arrest Moira Deeming if she said something like that again after this bill is passed, but somehow I doubt it.
Real protection comes not from begging politicians to help us, but from us protecting ourselves. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: when police failed to help Bridget Flack’s sister, it was the community that came together and made the search happen. The transgender community is so tight-knit and protective because it has to be. When neo-Nazis threaten us online or on the streets, it’s up to us to protect each other and ensure it doesn’t impact the welfare of our most vulnerable.
When the UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently anncounced a ban on puberty blockers, the amazing Trans Kids Deserve Better began an encampment outside his office. When trans rights are under attack, we stand up and fight back.
They’re another cheap opportunity at generating headlines, at our expense.
The real concern is how Victoria Police might use these laws to further legitimise their brutality. Jillian Segal, ardent Zionist, the Chair of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and the Labor Party’s pick to be the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, used the language of the new laws themselves when calling for pro-Palestine protests to be “pushed out of the CBD”: “social cohesion has frayed and antisemitism has escalated and become more violent”.
Human rights groups, including the Jewish Council of Australia, have called on the government for months to show support for Palestine, and yet the government’s attempt to rebuild ‘social cohesion’ is to encourage police to break up protests through laws ostensibly aimed at protecting marginalised communities. Bweh :(
So these laws function in two key ways: they’re an opportunity for the Labor Party to fill headlines claiming they’re working for queer community, whilst sneaking in a law that will enable police to break up pro-Palestine protests, all in one red-hot go. In the meantime, how are things actually going for queer people? Well, uh… as with the rest of the poorest in the country, not great.
Sure, in the last ten years, we’ve had marriage equality, self-ID and bans on conversion therapy in several states, and a bisexual Bachelorette, all of which were lavishly covered in the media. But how much do these things actually impact the lived reality of queer people? When Queensland’s former Minister for Women was posing for photos in Queensland Parliament House celebrating herself for legislating self-ID, how many trans people were actually paying attention, and how many were just panicking about where their next meal was going to come from? While Jacinta Allan was posing for group photos inside the Victoria Pride Centre, how many queer people were outside those walls, dreading another night sleeping rough on the street? Neighbouring Albert Park and Prahan are in the Top 20 homeless suburbs, funnily enough. And how many of us can even afford a frickin wedding anyway? Certainly not most of my friends, who are trapped on various types of welfare that would be taken away if they got married.
I’m deeply disappointed to see queer NGOs Equality Australia and Transgender Victoria spruik these new laws too, but I wish I could be more surprised. As with the government, these organisations appear much more heavily invested in fighting for the next Instagram tile than anything that would actually improve our living standards. It might be easier to swallow, if it didn’t mean selling out our community to the police.
I wish I could say that activism is a unified struggle, but it’s not. As with all aspects of society, there’s a class hierarchy that exists within it, and that class divide is getting larger. We need to recognise this, or else we allow our community to be sold out to the police even further.
Natalie Feliks is a writer and activist originally from Adelaide, now living in Melbourne. She's written for the likes of Junkee, Crikey, and Overland, and spends her time listening to pop music and eating chocolate.
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