RECOGNISING THE HARMS CAUSED BY HATE: - 5 May 2023 WE NEED YOUR VOICE. EQUALITYAUSTRALIA.ORG.AU

Following the approach taken in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory, we recommend introducing a sentencing consideration into section 9 of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) that allows a court to increase the severity of a sentence for any offence (other than those offences captured by the aggravated offences framework) where the offence is motivated by p. [...] However, we believe the framework in proposed section 52B of the Criminal Code (which is proposed in clause 12 of the Bill) falls short in three specific ways: • it fails to capture all types of hate crimes that those groups it covers are more likely to experience; • it may be difficult to prove a hate crime where the motive for the conduct is mistakenly based on stereotypes, rather than the prote. [...] This may have the effect of rendering the hate crimes framework ineffective the more serious the crime being prosecuted, given the prosecutor will usually select the most serious charge which can be established by the evidence. [...] The difficulty with this may be the disconnect in the available evidence between the offender’s mistaken belief and the attribute of the victim. [...] • First, we are concerned that the drafting of proposed subsections 52B(1)(a) and (b) may fail to protect people associated with other people who have the protected attributes or presumed attributes, and who are also the victims of the hate crime.