Australia’s left-wing Labor government has quoted a Communist spy who took part in Stalin’s Great Terror in its case against the White Australia Party’s constitutional challenge to its prohibited hate group laws.
The Commonwealth filed its defendants’ submissions with the High Court of Australia on Friday, ahead of a landmark hearing set for early September which will determine whether the government can use the laws to ban rival political parties.
The prohibited hate group legislation was passed by both major parties in response to the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack, and on May 15 was used to ban the White Australia Party (WAP), also known as White Australia, sparking the legal challenge.
The laws have been criticised by legal experts and civil liberties advocates, who have warned the legislation “abolishes liberal democracy” and enables the government to ban any political party, as a group can be banned due to the non-criminal conduct of informal members at any time in the past.
In the documents filed this week, the Commonwealth made submissions on the material facts, the regulations, and the three arguments used by the WAP and Thomas Sewell to challenge the laws and the listing – that they “authorise proscription of a political party by executive designation”, infringe on the implied right to freedom of political communication granted to all Australians, and exclude former WAP members from political life without judicial process.
In response to the first argument, the defendants’ submissions stated that the laws are constitutional because they fulfill Australia’s obligations under international treaties, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which is overseen by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Racial Discrimination Committee).
The submissions stated that the legislation is adapted to an obligation under Article 4 of the CERD to “declare illegal and prohibit organizations… which promote and incite racial discrimination”, and is a valid implementation of the article.
“The CERD was precipitated by a global outburst of antisemitic incidents, including swastika paintings, which a United Nations Sub-Commission described as ‘reminiscent of the crimes and outrages committed by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War’,” the submissions stated.
The submissions then cited a statement from USSR representative Boris Ivanov, who was a Soviet secret agent at the time, to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1964, which led to Article 4 being adopted despite free speech concerns.
“The Soviet Union’s representative said that, before the Second World War, the International League for the Rights of Man ‘had drawn attention to the threat
presented by Hitlerite institutions and had recommended that they should be banned and stigmatized’, which was not heeded by the League of Nations and had led to a ‘catastrophe’,” the submissions stated.
Ivanov served in the NKVD during the height of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge in the late 1930s, when his secret police force carried out mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, and political executions, resulting in 700,000 to 1.2 million deaths.
He was then sent to the US in the 1950s and operated as a KGB spy in New York, including as the foreign intelligence station chief between 1962 and 1964, while also holding his position as a member of the Sub-Commission and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights during the same three years.
Ivanov, who was also described as a “known agent” in FBI documents related to the JFK assassination, went on to twice win the USSR’s highest state award, the Order of Lenin, along with numerous other awards, medals and prizes handed out for his services during the political purge, WW2, and the Cold War.
The submissions then stated that the Racial Discrimination Committee demands that signatories ban political parties, as it “takes the view that … the protection of persons from being victims of racist hate speech serves to prevent the victims’ free speech from being silenced”, and stated that the Committee had previously criticised Australia for allegedly failing to implement its obligations under Article 4.
“The Committee has also specifically commented on the failure of State Parties to prohibit political parties, and expressed concerns about extremist political parties, in numerous countries,” the submissions stated.
Later in the submissions the Commonwealth again referred to the CERD after stating that the prohibited hate group legislation would be “ineffective to achieve its purpose” if it could not be used to ban political parties.
“That [ineffectiveness] is exemplified by the conduct of the Plaintiffs, who perceive that ‘political party status’ will confer legal protection on their hate speech,” the submissions stated.
“It is also consistent with the historical context for the CERD, the travaux and the views of the Racial Discrimination Committee specifically addressing the harms caused by antisemitic political parties.”
During the submissions the Commonwealth also stated that the ideology of the White Australia Party is not “legitimate political speech”, and therefore should not be protected by the Constitution.
Header image: Left, Boris Ivanov. Right, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke (PMO).
