AMELIA MOSELEY: Whether sharing their favourite foods, helping tie hijabs,
or creating body art, kids all around Australia
came together on Harmony Day
to celebrate different cultures.
My group's a Bollywood group, we're doing Indian stuff.
We're making kites out of straws and paper.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, kites were really popular.
But on the same day,
there wasn't much harmony in Australia's Federal Parliament.
MAN: ..the Member for Goldstein will resume his seat.
So this is the Australia the Labor Party believe in.
So what was all this arguing about? Well, it was all to do
with Australia's Racial Discrimination Act.
Let's go back in time to find out what that is.
You probably know that racial discrimination
has been a big problem in Australia.
For a long time, Indigenous Aussies were treated really badly.
They weren't even counted as citizens until the 1960s.
There was also something called the White Australia Policy,
which stopped many Asian and African people from entering the country.
I think there's no two ways about it,
we'd soon become outnumbered here if we allowed Asiatics in.
But in the 1960s, more people started speaking out against discrimination.
There were big protests to get equal rights for Indigenous Aussies
and people from other cultures.
WOMAN: What are you here for?
OTHERS: To let our people free!
Then in 1975, the Federal Government
introduced the Racial Discrimination Act.
It made it illegal to treat someone unfairly
because of their race.
20 years later, in 1995, another part was added to those laws,
called Section 18C.
It made it illegal to offend, insult,
humiliate or intimidate
a person based on their race.
In recent years, that part has caused some controversy.
Like in 2011, when a newspaper columnist
was found to have broken 18C in two articles he'd written
about Indigenous Australians a couple of years earlier.
Some people thought the ruling was unfair and campaigned to change 18C,
but it never happened.
..believe that Australia as a nation....
That brings us up to date.
PM Malcolm Turnbull says now
his government will have another go at changing it.
Section 18C has lost its credibility.
It lost it a long time ago.
He wants to scrap the words 'offend', 'insult' and 'humiliate'
and replace them with the word 'harass'.
The idea is to make a clearer line between someone feeling threatened
or just having their feelings hurt by comments about their race.
The government says the change will help protect free speech,
even if it's the kind of speech that some people don't like,
so only the more serious cases would be taken to court.
We are strengthening the race hate laws.
These are stronger laws, more effective laws
because they are clearer laws.
A whole range of ethnic communities from the Jewish...
But some politicians are incredibly worried about that change
and say it could make people think it's OK to say racist things.
Children all around Australia are turning up to their classrooms
wearing orange for Harmony Day and they're talking about harmony.
The liberal and national politicians in this building
are here talking about making it OK to deliver racial insults.
If people think that racial discrimination is not an issue
in this country,
then they should stand in the shoes of people from a migrant background
and they should stand in the shoes of Aboriginal people.
The government still has to get enough support in parliament
to get its changes through,
so it doesn't look like there'll be harmony
on this controversial topic anytime soon.