00:14:00.360and if we can help move other countries in that direction then we can save lives
00:14:07.360and that's the most important thing that i'll continue to resort to with
00:14:12.720anti-semitism will continue until israel stops its defensive strikes against tamas that's what
00:14:23.320he's saying there that we cannot combat anti-semitism until there is a ceasefire as though
00:14:29.560targeting Jews in Canada is conditional on Israel's military decisions. That is his belief.
00:14:36.620Quite, quite insane that he was doing this. Now, he has apologized. He says, quote,
00:14:41.760I am deeply sorry about my comment in the House of Commons linking the ceasefire with tackling
00:14:46.400anti-Semitism. We must confront anti-Semitism at all times and without preconditions.
00:14:51.140I want to apologize to all who have been impacted by this comment. I'm committed to repairing the
00:14:56.980harm that was caused. The rise of anti-Semitism in Canada is not a new problem, but the crisis
00:15:02.220in the Middle East has made it even worse. As a leader in my community, I have a responsibility
00:15:07.340to do everything I can to address it. Sounds great. You know what would have been better in
00:15:11.560the first place? Not saying what he said. I don't believe this was a misspeak or a gaffe. I believe
00:15:17.620that this was fully an example of him saying what I referred to earlier, and I'll refer to again
00:15:25.080as the quiet part out loud. This is him being just a little bit too honest about what he thinks,
00:15:31.800that it is actually incumbent on the Jewish people of Canada to bear the responsibility for
00:15:38.360what people may take issue with as far as Israel's decisions as a nation, as a state. Now again,
00:15:44.420I've said time and time again, it is completely fair game to criticize Israel as a country. It's
00:15:49.900a fair game to debate a two-state solution, whether that's effective or viable and what it
00:15:54.360would look like. It's certainly fair to criticize Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a prime minister. He's
00:15:59.620a politician. He is no more immune to criticism than a politician in Canada or any other Western
00:16:07.220country should be. But what's basically at stake here is that Jewish people are seen by this
00:16:18.520increasingly, I'll say increasing in size and increasing in, what's the best word to put it,
00:16:25.620increasing in brazenness group in Canada that believes they are fair game, that believes
00:16:30.920a Jewish person in downtown Windsor is a fair target for your issues with the Zionist project
00:16:39.340in the Middle East. That is what these people are saying. And when I have said to people in
00:16:45.180private conversation, and I've said on the show in the past that anti-Semitism is the new normal
00:16:48.980in Canada, there are a lot of people, certainly Jews in this country, who take issue with that
00:16:53.360because they say, well, this isn't new. This isn't a new problem. You're seeing it for the first time,
00:16:58.340and I think that's an entirely fair criticism. There are a lot of people. I've generally paid
00:17:03.300attention to Israel and Jewish issues. It's always been an interest of mine, but there are a lot of
00:17:07.940people in this country that are completely blindsided by what we've seen in the last
00:17:12.340several months. And I would go and say that I'm not at all by any stretch perfect. I would say
00:17:18.160that I have been astonished by the scale of it and by the breadth of this. And, you know, I probably
00:17:25.420wouldn't have seen if you had asked me before October 7th, that individual businesses would
00:17:32.760be fair game. I mean, I would have never predicted Cafe Landwehr being targeted in Toronto. I would
00:17:37.580never have predicted Mount Sinai being protested. Again, just a couple of years ago, we had people
00:17:42.760saying it's outrageous to protest a hospital when people were protesting over vaccine mandates. But
00:17:47.420when you're protesting it because it has Sinai in the name, and that's just a little bit too
00:17:51.500Jewish for our sensibilities, people are saying that is fine. So this is, to be honest, disgraceful.
00:17:58.420And the Canadian government has a role to play in this. The Canadian government has a role to play.
00:18:03.680They have made their decisions on Israel, but they have been equivocal at virtually every step.
00:18:11.020They have been equivocal in terms of their calls for a ceasefire.
00:18:14.980They've been equivocal in terms of whether they even condemn this, whether they call them terrorists.
00:18:20.460They were equivocal and ultimately took the wrong position when there was misinformation circulating that Israel had purportedly bombed a hospital,
00:18:28.400but it was actually an errant Hamas rocket, an errant Hamas rocket that had landed in the parking
00:18:34.340lot adjacent to a hospital. But this was used to justify anti-Israel propaganda. And the part of
00:18:44.260this that all people in this country need to realize is that this is going to continue. And
00:18:50.320again, it was very difficult to be an anti-Semite on October 7th, October 8th, October 9th, because
00:18:56.840there was so much public support for Israel and the Jewish people in the imminent aftermath of it.
00:19:02.960But the longer it's gone on, the more people have been able to drop that pretend support and let
00:19:08.660their true colors shine through. And many of those true colors are actually just wrapped in keffias
00:19:15.740like the NDP members of parliament were who decided to stand up and vote for something that so few
00:19:21.380people had the courage to say and call out for what it was, which was an anti-Israel motion,
00:19:27.980an anti-Israel resolution. And I know that there are people that in the audience that don't love
00:19:34.300it. I get accused of being a Zionist shill from time to time. And I say, you know, whether I'm
00:19:39.080shilling or not, you can decide for yourselves. But Zionism, it should not be the dirty word
00:19:43.340that so many people have tried to make it out to be. And I played that clip yesterday with
00:19:47.860Anthony Howe's father, and he was saying that very thing, that he is a Zionist because Zionism was
00:19:53.180the way to give the Jewish people a safe haven in the world that they didn't have anywhere else.
00:19:58.400And I think there are far too many Canadians that probably wanted to rest on our laurels as a
00:20:02.700country and say, oh, well, we're a safe place. You can be Jewish here. What's the big deal?
00:20:06.540And well, how's that working out for people? It's been a tragic display, and so few people are even
00:20:12.880now opening their eyes to this. I want to welcome into the program Shimon Koffler Fogel, who is
00:20:17.840is the president and CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Shimon, I know this has been
00:20:23.660such a tremendously difficult time for your community over the last several months now,
00:20:28.420but I wanted to ask you about this resolution, because a lot of the language that the NDP
00:20:34.340used in this, that the liberals ended up using, on the surface lacks the, if you don't know what
00:20:41.500you're looking for, it could look like it's a reasonable motion. Yeah, I think that was the
00:20:48.760intent to make it sound like motherhood and apple pie. But, you know, words have meanings and they're
00:20:56.660code for lots of different things. And this was not a motion that was advanced with a righteous
00:21:05.860spirit. There's an agenda. It includes trying to marginalize and isolate Israel within the
00:21:14.020international community. Israel isn't just a place and Zionism isn't just a movement to find safe
00:21:21.560haven for Jews. It's about repatriation to their ancestral homeland after forced exile for 2,000
00:21:28.380years. Canada saw fit to endorse the idea of the Jewish state. They did it in 1947. Lester Pearson
00:21:36.940was actively involved in advancing it. And all of a sudden, we get to a place I couldn't help
00:21:44.460but you describing some of the MPs in the House. Many of them, our detractors, are also wearing
00:21:52.780these new necklaces that have a map of Palestine on it, which would be fine, except that the
00:22:01.660map that's represented in the piece of jewelry is the entirety of that real estate.
00:22:09.180So it doesn't really leave any place for a Jewish state.
00:22:13.500And I think that that's really the most telling interpretation or understanding of this chant
00:22:21.160that has become their mantra from the river to the sea.
00:22:45.060And oftentimes people in the Canadian government
00:22:48.380will restate the Canadian government's position
00:22:50.220of a two-state solution and, you know, not delving into the weeds on the very, very complex history
00:22:56.220of negotiations and talks over the last few years. A lot of these activists are going very much
00:23:01.720further than that. They want a one-state solution, and that is one singular Palestinian state.
00:23:06.920So I think that's exactly right. A two-state solution was attainable not once or twice or
00:23:13.860three times. Five very specific and precise plans had been put forward with the endorsement
00:23:21.960of the Americans, of other segments of the international community. They were rejected
00:23:26.900each and every time by the Palestinian leadership. So there has to be some agency. There has to be
00:23:33.280accountability for the decisions that they make. Their situation is of their own making. They're
00:23:39.820the authors of it, just as Hamas is the author of the misery that is now being experienced
00:23:45.620in Gaza. And I think that there has to be a consistency in countries like Canada demanding
00:23:54.040accountability and recognition of at whose feet does the situation lay.
00:24:03.340your organization has has done for years a lot of legwork on engaging with politicians I know
00:24:11.360you've always prided yourselves on doing it in a very respectful way you don't like being you
00:24:16.100don't like immediately going to these public confrontations and condemnations of these people
00:24:20.420you like to educate and inform and I know you've brought members of parliament from I don't know
00:24:25.420about all parties but certainly from multiple parties to Israel in your conversations when you
00:24:31.140square those up that you've had with people to what you see from them publicly. I'm curious if
00:24:36.560you have a read on whether these are people that are just simply against Israel or whether there
00:24:42.500are people that, you know, that privately they've been on side, but now it's not trendy to support
00:24:46.980Israel or to support the Jewish community. Yeah. So I think unpacking that is a little
00:24:52.780complicated because there are a few things going on. First, there are those that are simply hostile.
00:24:58.940They bought into the anti-Israel narrative that has been promoted by our cousins, but it has also been picked up by the radical left, those who have been promoting this woke ideology, which divides the world into two.
00:25:19.480You're either part of the oppressed segment or you're the oppressor.
00:25:24.700And Israel and the Jewish people, for that matter, are the poster children for that white privilege that, if you can imagine, attaches importance to things like meritocracy and accountability.
00:25:40.000So you have this movement that has been just unrelenting in its attacks on the Jewish community, the Jewish state.
00:25:52.840The second piece, and I think that it was insightful for you to flag that, is that group of individuals who are inclined to be supportive, but who have been intimidated and chilled and are afraid of being targeted themselves and canceled for fear of coming out and expressing their views.
00:26:14.120So essentially, they've been silenced. What they do isn't entirely what they say. And, you know, it's something that we, the Jewish community, may be the canary in the coal mine for, but we had better wake up because this is a challenge fundamentally to Western civilization, to the values that have informed our society here for hundreds of years.
00:26:43.300and they're under challenge by those who espouse this Marxist Leninist view. They got it wrong
00:26:50.720every iteration so far. They've now stumbled over a new configuration that they think is going to
00:26:59.060get them some purchase. One question I have to ask you about Shimon is how oftentimes Jewish
00:27:06.360people are used as a bit of a shield in this debate. There have always been some Jewish
00:27:10.840organizations that have been very anti-Zionist, even though they're certainly a minority of the
00:27:16.180Jewish community. And then you have, even in Parliament, Yara Sachs, who last week was holding
00:27:21.480hands with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and this week voting in favor of this motion, a Jewish
00:27:27.620woman representing a riding with a large Jewish community. And I've seen online that being used
00:27:32.740as, again, I'll say the word again, a shield by people that say, oh, well, even Yara Sachs is
00:27:37.340supporting it. So no, it's not anti-Jewish. Yeah. So I would make a distinction between
00:27:42.660Yarra Sachs and some of those groups. And that's fair. That's fair. Yes.
00:27:49.360Because they're Jewish by accident of birth and they're doing exactly what you just described.
00:27:54.540They are being used to insulate the haters and say, well, I can't be an anti-Semite because I
00:28:01.160have Jewish groups that are joining with me. But nobody is really giving a sense that they represent
00:28:06.480not even a fraction, but a fraction of a fraction of malcontents who don't identify as Jewish in
00:28:14.160any other way except to give cover to those that want to dump on Israel. In the case of Yara Sachs,
00:28:20.620and I don't hold the brief for Yara, but, you know, from her perspective, she comes by this
00:28:26.720honestly. She is absolutely committed to a safe and secure Jewish state, but she positions herself
00:28:35.040on the far left. She has a particular orientation. She's not alone. There are others like that, too.
00:28:42.180The challenge with Ayara Sachs is that because there are so few Jews in Parliament, there's the
00:28:48.340expectation that she would reflect the views of the vast majority of the Jewish community.
00:28:55.640I'm not sure she always does that or that she's successful in doing that, but certainly you have
00:29:02.080to make a distinction between her and folks at Independent Jewish Voices who are anything but
00:29:09.460independent because they get all of their direction from the haters. Jewish only by accident of birth
00:29:16.400and their voice is really just a platform to broadcast the hate and toxicity that's coming
00:29:23.880out from our adversaries. Yeah, it's very, very well said. And again, my condolences to all that
00:29:29.740your community is enduring. But the one thing I've learned in my study of the history of the
00:29:33.800Jewish people and of Israel has been the story of resilience. So I know that you will get through
00:29:39.320this and you do have allies, even though it doesn't always feel like it. So Shimon Koffler-Fogel,
00:29:43.540thank you for coming on today. My pleasure. All right. Thank you. And I should just say,
00:29:48.820just by way of disclosure, I had the great privilege in 2015 of going on a Center for
00:29:54.480Israel and Jewish Affairs hosted visit of Israel. And it was my second trip to Israel. And I'm very
00:30:00.280grateful for the opportunity. And it wasn't tied to, you know, it wasn't tied to you have to say
00:30:05.720this or believe this or even write about it. It was just an opportunity to expose it. And
00:30:09.400I actually went with Candace Malcolm, who was also on the trip. We went into Bethlehem
00:30:14.280just on our own. We took a taxi and went across into the West Bank and saw the other side of this.
00:30:19.640And it was a fascinating experience. And I think a lot of people who weigh in on this and other
00:30:23.620issue should try to see it for themselves before they do. I want to bring things back home a bit
00:30:29.960more though not that what we were talking about doesn't have a very significant Canadian context
00:30:34.320but you've heard me for weeks now talking about Bill C-63 which is the Liberal government's so
00:30:40.380called Online Harms Act a bill that among other things will introduce a new category of so-called
00:30:45.900hate speech and crack down on anyone who dares to utter it online which effectively means the
00:30:51.960government is going to be the arbiter of what you can and can't say. And as we've seen, they are
00:30:57.320wildly inconsistent in when and how they flex this power. Now, I've often said that to understand
00:31:03.520how bad things are here, we need to take a look around the world and see where things are worse.
00:31:08.840And the UK has been one of the worst examples of this. You have police knocking on people's doors
00:31:14.360if they misgender someone on Twitter. They have this pervasive non-crime hate incident reporting
00:31:21.500system where you can do nothing illegal, but you still have a police record because you've
00:31:25.920perpetrated a non-crime hate incident. And I thought things were pretty bad in the UK,
00:31:30.820but I believe Ireland has come out with the Trump card. I'm not sure if you followed this or not,
00:31:36.360but Ireland has a new law purporting to rein in hate speech online. You have a couple of
00:31:42.020politicians that say Ireland's approach should actually be a model for all of Europe. And if
00:31:46.880that happens, I actually don't think it's going to be all that long before we see that brought
00:31:52.520to Canada. So I wanted to actually delve into what's happening in Ireland in a little bit of
00:31:58.180detail here, because this bill is called the Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offenses
00:32:05.520Bill. And it is one of the most Orwellian and draconian attempts at this so-called hate speech
00:32:11.880discussion i've ever seen uh ben scallon has been on top of this he is a senior or the senior
00:32:17.880political correspondent at gripped which is a fantastic independent media organization in ireland
00:32:22.680and he joins me now ben it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today very good to talk to
00:32:27.000you today andrew how are things good very well thank you although in both of our countries not
00:32:31.960exactly great on the free speech front so for canadians who have not paid attention to this
00:32:37.160at all what's like the the basic primer on what this bill is and why it's been erasing so many
00:32:42.800alarms so in essence if i had to describe why the irish hate speech bill is so controversial
00:32:50.000is it's the incredible vagueness of the text of the legislation to the point where the very serious
00:32:58.500crime of uh you know convicting somebody of a hate offense can be defined as almost anything
00:33:04.560So I'll give you an example. For example, the text doesn't refer to hatred with any kind of specific definition.
00:33:13.220It says that hatred means hatred on the basis of X, Y and Z characteristics, which is obviously a circular definition.
00:33:20.880So how is that to be defined? I guess it's up to the courts or the police or whoever happens to be offended by your remarks at the time.
00:33:30.340so people have been saying this is so open-ended it could potentially catch anyone and everyone in
00:33:36.660its dragnet if we're making a very benign statement another example would be the fact that
00:33:42.080according to the legislation it's seeking to protect genders other than that of male or female
00:33:47.740but it doesn't enumerate what those are and when I asked our Taoiseach which is like the Irish
00:33:52.800Prime Minister how many genders are there in your view because previously the leader of our Senate
00:33:57.980said that there were about nine genders so that could be about nine they don't even have the
00:34:03.060definitive list exactly it's it's a ballpark figure you know thereabouts and so i asked how
00:34:08.480many genders are there and what is covered by this legislation and he said well we don't have
00:34:13.480an official position on that and i'm sure that'll all be figured out during the debates and they
00:34:17.080haven't been still that was months ago so that that should kind of give you just a sense of
00:34:22.100why people are so concerned about this kind of thing they're trying to protect genders they can't
00:34:26.420even define against hatred that they can't define. And it seems like the entire implementation of
00:34:33.420this legislation would just be totally up in the air. And how do you stay on the right side of a
00:34:37.720law that is so vague and nebulous? That's effectively the main concern that people have
00:34:41.960with it. There are a lot of people that are not familiar with the evolution of Irish politics over
00:34:48.240the last, I don't know, half a century that are probably perplexed by Ireland's descent into
00:34:52.880wokeness when this used to be this you know traditional catholic uh society and country
00:34:57.760i mean where did things all go so wrong because i mean even like you look at refugee policy in
00:35:02.160ireland for example and i this has been a very very strange uh decline in a lovely country
00:35:10.000i think there's a few factors going on i mean of course as you say ireland has always been a very
00:35:14.720historically deeply catholic conservative country there's the kind of old trope of catholic families
00:35:20.640with, you know, 50 kids running around and an icon of the Virgin Mary on the wall.
00:35:25.880And that's sort of the image that most people have had of Ireland
00:35:32.000But I think obviously things like the the abuse scandals
00:35:36.800in the Catholic Church did enormous damage and hurt trust with a lot of people.
00:35:41.280And so that that hurt religiosity and mass attendance.
00:35:45.440And so I think in our our haste to escape
00:35:50.640the church and and to try and bury that part of our past because of all the scandals and
00:35:56.160controversies that came out of that i think people have overcompensated and gone too much the other
00:36:01.120way i think also um ngos have played a big role in the liberalization of society i don't know how
00:36:08.400many people know this but ireland is a country of only about five million people the republic
00:36:13.760of ireland anyway and yet we have about 30 000 different ngo organizations not even employees but
00:36:21.680different groups and these groups are heavily state funded most of them uh in fact some of them
00:36:27.440they receive 96 of their funding from the government so it's a strange kind of non-governmental
00:36:33.680organization that's almost entirely reliant on state funding but there you go so um these groups
00:36:39.680are there mainly to promote uh lgbt rights or immigrant rights or women's rights or whatever it
00:36:48.100might be but in many cases uh that leads to problems because if you're an organization
00:36:55.000that's set up to fight the boogeyman of racism let's say for example the problem is ireland
00:37:00.820isn't that racist of a country we're actually a very tolerant country and so you're out of the
00:37:05.300job in this in the same way if you don't have leaky pipes and you don't need a plumber if you
00:37:09.500have a racist society that you don't need professional anti-racist campaigners and so
00:37:14.220these groups have had to try and manufacture the idea that ireland is this horrendous place where
00:37:21.500women are treated as second-class citizens and gay people are seriously oppressed and everyone's a
00:37:26.700racist when that's not the case but they have to do that in order to perpetuate their existence
00:37:32.460and so we have this kind of multi-billion euro ngo board conglomerate that exercises a lot of
00:37:39.260of power over our discourse and our politics. And I think that also has played a big role
00:37:43.260in the liberalization of this country. Well, and to bring it back to the hate speech bill,
00:37:47.780those groups you just mentioned are the ones that have skin in the game under these sorts
00:37:52.860of regimes, because they're the ones that typically will systematize and weaponize these
00:37:57.420complaints processes, where you're going to have one of these NGOs just trolling Twitter
00:38:01.140for hours and hours every day, finding, oh, this person misgendered someone. And
00:38:05.620from what i've read that could actually be a violation of this law well uh the justice
00:38:11.220minister has said that it won't i asked her can she guarantee that nobody will be convicted for
00:38:16.300misgendering and she says oh absolutely that'll never happen that's not what the bill is intending
00:38:20.380to do whether she's correct or not whether people believe her is up to them i won't i won't weigh in
00:38:25.580on that that's what she's claimed we've seen how these laws have been implemented in other
00:38:28.980jurisdictions but she would probably say oh those are different pieces of legislation and we're
00:38:33.300going to do it properly and yada yada but the defense is basically just trust us you just have
00:38:37.540to trust that the government won't abuse this power effectively yeah and and i think as well
00:38:43.080um you know one of the interesting things about it you said that it's in these ngos interest to
00:38:49.400try and promote this the government did a public consultation i think in north america you guys
00:38:55.020might call it a comment period where this was several years ago they floated the idea of hate
00:39:00.860speech laws. And they said, hey, you know, Joe Public, we want to know what you think,
00:39:04.820weigh in with your thoughts. And they received thousands of responses from individuals and from
00:39:10.100groups. And then very shortly afterwards, they came out and they said, you know, we've received
00:39:15.080the feedback and now we're going to be going ahead with this legislation. Well, I actually,
00:39:19.560in a journalistic capacity, read through every single one of the responses, thousands of them,
00:39:25.640It took me hours and hours to do. And at the end of this research, I found that 73 percent of individuals had said that they didn't want it.
00:39:34.840It was they were negative responses saying, don't do this.
00:39:38.020The overwhelming consensus was mostly, of course, if somebody is engaging in violent rhetoric where they're calling for the public to attack an individual or a group or race or something like that, of course, that should be illegal.
00:39:50.640And that already is illegal. You know, in Simon, the violence has never been covered under free speech.
00:39:55.040that's clearly not what we mean when we say free speech. And so that's already done. But other than
00:40:01.360that, if somebody is just merely expressing an offensive opinion that hurt somebody's feelings,
00:40:05.680tough luck, we all get offended. Sometimes that's not something that the government should be
00:40:08.880legislating. And that was the general sentiment of the responses. And yet, the government went
00:40:13.920ahead with it anyway, despite the fact that one of the groups they cited, they said, Oh,
00:40:18.560we got some positive responses. It was from these state funded NGOs. So effectively,
00:40:23.520the people that you pay who that's like me saying uh i'm the most handsome man in ireland because
00:40:28.640that's what my granny says you know it's not really the most persuasive of sources you're
00:40:33.040using there that uh you're appealing to people who you pay their salaries and fund them and keep
00:40:38.880them in existence and lo and behold they just so happen to agree with you and your policy agenda
00:40:43.280amazing how that works i i mentioned in in the intro uh sinead gibney who i i think is the she
00:40:49.600she's running as the MEP, I think it's the Social Democrats. And she is saying that she
00:40:54.240wants to basically export this to all of Europe. And I think it would probably be an easy sell to
00:40:59.720do that. Yeah, I think, I think that's, she said when I was interviewing her earlier in the week
00:41:06.020that she would be willing to support any legislation similar to the hate speech bill
00:41:11.500at a European wide level. And we already have something like that, the Digital Services Act,
00:41:15.920which many people will be familiar with well and that was the model of of what canadian government
00:41:20.300officials were kind of using which when i heard them say they were going to look to europe for
00:41:24.060best practices i was like oh please don't yeah that's uh that's not what you want to hear
00:41:28.820definitely with uh the current state of european politics where um the the amount of people who
00:41:34.980are willing to argue against some of these policies on principle are few and far between
00:41:40.460that's a big thing that i think is missing from this debate as well is that even some of the
00:41:44.960politicians who will speak out against the legislation will speak out against its uh
00:41:50.560practicalities they'll say that you know it'll be very hard to implement and uh logistically
00:41:56.640i don't think it'll work so on that basis i'm opposing it and i'm thinking how about it's bad
00:42:00.640because it's wrong to censor people in general you know maybe maybe we should start talking about
00:42:05.280even if you could get the wording exactly right and hammer out this beautiful piece of legislation
00:42:11.200that covered all your bases maybe maybe we still shouldn't do it even under those circumstances
00:42:16.560because it's actually wrong to put people in jail for their opinions even when their opinions are
00:42:21.840not uh views that you or i would necessarily find palatable but that doesn't seem to come
00:42:26.880up during any of this discussion so obviously irish people as you mentioned were against this
00:42:32.960when it was floated to them but i haven't seen mass outrage in the more recent months
00:42:39.280There have been there were some protests, but have people just generally gone along with it or do they just not care enough?
00:42:44.760Why has there not been or has there been maybe I'm wrong?
00:42:47.520Why has there not been a major pushback to this?
00:42:51.660And the reason we know that is because several government politicians, some of them who are veterans who have been around for years,
00:42:58.320have said in our Senate, basically, that they've received more correspondence about the hate speech bill than any other issue or piece of legislation in their political career.
00:43:07.660so it's obviously something that people are really incensed and energized about and uh it
00:43:13.180hasn't been mentioned so much in the last couple of months only because it's being supplanted by
00:43:17.500other controversies like immigration and we have a huge immigration crisis at the minute in this
00:43:22.220country and a massive influx of asylum seekers we have tent cities popping up in the capital
00:43:27.660city because there's nowhere to put uh uh some of these individuals who are arriving and there's
00:43:32.300more arriving every day. We had a couple of progressive referendums there a couple of weeks
00:43:37.400ago, which were defeated. The government side of that debate was defeated comprehensively. So
00:43:42.720there's been other chaotic things happening that may have taken attention away from the hate speech
00:43:49.080bill, but the government have not pursued it, which I think is sort of an indication that they
00:43:55.140know they're losing momentum on it. They meant to pass it last summer. They didn't do that. Then
00:44:00.340they said oh we'll pass it after the summer they didn't do that and then they said oh we'll pass
00:44:03.600it by the end of the year and we're now in march and still no sign of it so they keep kicking the
00:44:08.140can down the road hoping the pressure will alleviate but i think if they tried to sneak
00:44:12.400it through people might have something to say about that especially with upcoming elections
00:44:16.460later in the year well let's hope they will keep kicking and kicking and kicking and eventually
00:44:21.420it'll just be lost forever uh ben scallon with gripped great to have you on and demystifying
00:44:26.540this for those of us across the Atlantic thank you so much thank you so much great to be here
00:44:30.980all right that does it for us for today we'll be back with no we won't be back tomorrow but I will
00:44:36.260be on off the record tomorrow with Candace Malcolm and Harrison Faulkner then back with another
00:44:40.440edition of the Andrew Lawton show on Monday so thank you God bless and have a great weekend
00:44:45.140thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show
00:44:48.060support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news