The disturbing thing about this legislation is, as far as I can see anyway and please correct me if I am wrong, that I need to be criticising the religion for a religious purpose, in other words for the purposes of proselytism. Why can't I, as an atheist, criticise a religion robustly without fear of being prosectued for vilification?

This quote near the end sums it up:
"The Act as amended still leaves a defendant with the burden of proving that they acted reasonably and for a genuine religious purpose. Even if criticism of another religion can now come within a genuine religious purpose, persons doing that retain the burden of proof to show that they acted reasonably in doing so and that their actions were part of a genuine religious purpose."

What a crock of sh!t
If you look at history over the last 1500 years you would see the score is Christians 9 Muslims 1, there isn't 1 country from Morocco to Aghanistan that the Christians havn't put to the sword at some time or other, Christians and Jews have had a better deal under Islam than the other way around.
There are over a billion Muslims in the world who are mostly decent human beings,who practice widely varying forms of Islam, the radical element is so tiny probably less than 100,00,yet you Christian ratbags lump them altogether,there are lots of nutter Christians especially in the good ole US of A, but nobody is using them as a yardstick to judge Christians, nobody follows the Bible, Koran, Torah or any other religious cr@p to the strict letter it is impossible , they are all full of contradictions.
This sort of nonsense does nothing to foster harmony and coming from a supposedly forgiveness based faith seems more than a little hypocritical.
I think the author needs to take a nice warm bath, a cup of tea, a nice liedown and a good root.

Don’t strawman me. My comments contained no explicit or implicit endorsement of arrests, fines or custodial sentences for CtF let alone provocative criticism generally. Indeed, I twice specifically mentioned that I thought such laws were defective. Maybe should you read more carefully.

In so far as I attacked CtF at all, I simply pointed out the asininity of their victim mentality, and how I thought they shared, with the original article writer, a disingenuous agenda masquerading as a thoughtful critique of Islam and the Hadiths.

"You should be looking in a mirror and examining how these lefty group-think contortions have taken you down this path."

-Generally you actually have to establish some form of malfeasance before you can mount the high horse of rhetorical clichés. Unfortunately for you, you haven’t done any such thing.

This is probably what Runner was getting at, when wondering where the Bob Brown's etc were when the s**t hit the fan. I'm amazed that you still put solidarity with the left ahead of decency.

-For a start they are federal politicians, and this is Victorian issue. The great silence turns out to be a simple matter of political constituencies. So even if there was some inherent connection between habeas corpus and free speech, (and there isn’t), Hicks and Guantanamo Bay are national and international issues which are appropriate to their domain.

Furthermore, to reiterate what I said, there is nothing incompatible between taking the position that these Victorian laws are wrong, yet still rejecting the schmalzy drivel trying to present CtF as some kind of thoughtful intellectual group who were martyred for simply engaging in debate. Indeed, the sensible position is to be entirely out of sympathy with CtF, AND be in favour of the laws being changed.

Not only are these Muslims being too precious by half, but a person like you defending their right to silence their "competition", is puzzling.

-Too precious. Some light-weight pseudo intellectual fundamentalists states a priori that the whole of Islam is incoherent and compatible with modernity, and you think no umbrage is appropriate? What a joke.

I can't believe that their are many that ignore that this has got to do with free speech. The Christian faith is demonized and mocked daily. Our National Broadcasters seem to delight in mocking Christ and His teachings. Thankfully the Lord Jesus Christ is big enough to laugh at the pathetic mockers. His followers don't have to run off to a Court because they are insulted. The Left are happy to apply the principle of free speech only when their philosophies are pushed. They are happy to have opposing voices silenced by legislation.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal posts the 22 June agreement on its website.
http://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/CA256902000FE154/Lookup/Media/$file/media_release_joint_statement_of_the_islamic_council_of_victoria_and_catch_the_fire_ministries_inc_22-06-07.pdf

The Catch the Fire Ministries posts the 22 June agreement on its website.
http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2007/06/22/vcat-media-release-5pm-friday-22nd-june-2007/

The Islamic Council of Victoria says nothing.
http://www.icv.org.au/index.shtml

Alanpoi; All religions throughout history have been ready to kill in the name of God at some time or other and still are. With the Christians it was the people they branded the heretics(evil enemies of God) and now its the Muslims with Infidel(evil enemies of God).

Religion gives them the perfect excuse to commit murder with the blessing of God. They therefore remain good people in their own eyes because they do not face the reality that they kill for darker human reasons of survival and control.