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The Effects of Civil Hate Speech Laws: Lessons from Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Katharine Gelber  and
Luke McNamara
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Abstract

This article examines the effects of hate speech laws in Australia. Triangulating data from primary and secondary sources, we examine five hypothesized effects: whether the laws provide a remedy to targets of hate speech, encourage more respectful speech, have an educative or symbolic effect, have a chilling effect, or create “martyrs.” We find the laws provide a limited remedy in the complaints mechanisms, provide a framework for direct community advocacy, and that knowledge of the laws exists in public discourse. However, the complaints mechanism imposes a significant enforcement burden on targeted communities, who still regularly experience hate speech. We find a reduction in the expression of prejudice in mediated outlets, but not on the street. We find no evidence of a chilling effect and we find the risk of free speech martyrs to be marginal. We draw out the implications of these findings for other countries.

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Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 631 - 664
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

We acknowledge funding from the Australian Research Council (DP1096721), and ethical clearance from the Univ. of Queensland (2011000341). We thank Jess Todhunter, Dave Eden, Sorcha Tormey and Ellyse Fenton for research assistance, and acknowledge the important work undertaken by Cultural and Indigenous Research Centre Australia (CIRCA). We are grateful also for the assistance of the relevant authorities and community organizations from whom we obtained data.

References

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