Religious discourse is being offered some protection under the new Hate Crimes legislation published last week.

An earlier version of the bill had offered no exemption to religious speech, but did protect other categories of speech such as artistic or political expression.

The Heads of the Bill published last year would have established a criminal offence for speech with the purpose of “inciting hatred”, or being “reckless” as to whether such speech would incite hatred, of people due to some protected characteristic such as race or sexuality.

It was also proposed that an acceptable defence against prosecution would be if the offending material consisted solely of “a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic discourse”.

The full text of the bill now says it shall be a defence to prove that the offending material consisted solely of “a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse”.