Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

What a sorry road we've travelled as a country to this point in time. By that, I refer to the years leading up to the massacre at Bondi on 14 December last year, an event we've talked about in this place in an appropriately respectful way, both in our condolence motion yesterday and, of course, in relation to the legislation that has just passed the House in the form of the firearms laws.

The event on 14 December was not a standalone event. It didn't just happen in isolation. The sorry road this nation has traversed I referred to are the years of antisemitic behaviour that have been allowed to flourish in this country unabated, unchecked and unchallenged, and which resulted in those events in Bondi just over a month ago—events which have changed this nation forever, deeply wounding the Jewish community in a way many of us can't even begin to imagine.

Of course, as a starting point, it's important to remember not only that this is the worst terror event that has happened on Australian soil in our history but that, of course, it was one motivated by hate, targeted at a group of people defined by who they are—the Jewish community. It was a targeted event relating to Jews celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah, the festival of light, that so many people referred to in their condolence speeches yesterday.

As I said before, what led to those events on 14 December was more than two years of failure to stand up against, to stamp out and to challenge the source of antisemitism which has been ravaging our world. We only have to turn our minds back to 7 October 2023, those terrible events, the atrocity in Israel committed by Hamas—again, targeting Jewish people in an act of pure antisemitism where so many people lost their lives. It was the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Two days later on 9 October, we saw those terrible, despicable events on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, where we had individuals revelling in what had occurred in Israel—the deaths of so many innocent people. They were events that went unchallenged, unchecked and unabated and were allowed to occur.

Over the next two years, 2023 and 2024, we saw countless events and incidents of the targeting of Jewish businesses, Jewish schools and Jewish daycare centres. Of course, now we know that, in unbelievable scenes, we have schools and daycare centres with sentries, guards, at their doors to protect the young people inside, who are children—people who are not going to cause harm to anyone else but, sadly, who are a target of harm in our community. In the years 2024 and 2025, there were those despicable attacks on synagogues, places of worship—firebombings while people were inside, graffiti and the like. These sorts of things are not what mark our country or what make it great; these are things that lead to the events we saw occur in Bondi at the end of last year. They were allowed to happen—unchecked, unchallenged, unabated—and here we are today, after years of sad activity which culminated in those terrible events in Bondi.

Inaction by government, even as we reached the crescendo of the antisemitism crisis that's ravaged our country, is what has fed this beast and kept it going. From the very beginning, there's been a failure of response. There has been no response with resolve, no response with strength and nothing in the way of a clear response to the actual events that led to this. There was no attempt by the government to even send a message to those who would perpetrate harm and who would direct hate at Jewish Australians. There was no attempt to show what was right and what was wrong. On so many occasions over the last two years, there was no attempt to take decisive action when it counted. Indeed, even after Bondi, the response was wanting. The initial response was, of course, in relation to firearms laws. To an event driven by hate, driven by ideology and with Islamic extremism at its heart, the response was about gun laws. Can I say that, while reforms to gun laws may well be important, they were not going to be the fix to this issue. That is something that, thankfully, the government heard and altered course on. There were the ignored calls for a royal commission from family members of the victims, Jewish community leaders and members of the entire parliament from across the political spectrum that were finally heeded. Then there was a failure to work across communities and the spectrum of parliamentary parties on the laws.

We had this truncated and rushed process relating to legislation—done the wrong way around. The consultation was not done at the beginning; it was done at the end. Interaction with other members of parliament to gain insights on what might be possible and what should be included in the laws was done at the eleventh hour, after laws had been tabled. We ended up with a mashed-together, hastily-put-together set of laws including gun reforms, which are very distinct from, as per Labor's first attempt, laws to govern speech, laws to deal with hate groups and laws to deal with hate symbols. All of it was a complete hotchpotch, designed in secret with no input, with the Prime Minister and this government saying: 'Take it or leave it. You've got a week to read the nearly 500 pages of documentation, and we're going to pass it.' Here we are, that one week on, having dealt with this.

I give credit to the government for having come back here quickly. That was something we were all calling for—urgent action. But, in addition to urgent action being taken and the urgent recall of parliament, we wanted laws that actually hit the mark and that passed muster, and, frankly, they were fails. What we're doing now, at the eleventh hour, is trying to fix this government's mess—the mess and the attempt to legislate that they got so terribly wrong.

I want to acknowledge the thousands of emails that I and, I know, many colleagues have received over the course of the last few days from members of our community who are very worried about the reach, the scope and the extent of the laws we are debating here today. Their concerns were not unfounded. Their concerns have not been ignored either, I should say. We've heard what's been said, and, as opposition, we have acted.

Thankfully, of course, Labor's hate speech laws, which were part of this, the racial vilification laws, were dumped. They were an appalling approach for how to respond to this issue. The unintended consequences of those laws as drafted, with seven days to try and understand what these laws would do and what impact they would have on people's capacity to exercise that loved element of our society, freedom of speech, were impossible to determine. Officials at the committee inquiry into this, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry, could not give clarity around what the impact of those laws would be. So they've been dumped. They're gone. They're not part of this, and that is, thankfully, a very good outcome. We could never support laws of that nature with such a wide scope.

What's left in the laws? There is the new aggravated offence for religious or spiritual leaders who advocate or threaten violence. The opposition has been able to agree with government on some changes to what was originally proposed, and that included the tightening up of the definitions of who would be included as a religious official or a spiritual leader. This is to end doubt and to ensure that there is a clear cut-out for who would be impacted by this. The application and operation of those laws would be reviewed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security after two years.

It is important to point out that these laws don't create a new penalty. The existing criminal code provisions apply to people as they did before these laws passed. It is not catching new people out. It is not applying new laws to people that didn't apply yesterday. If people want to threaten violence and use their position as a religious leader to do so, they will have an increased penalty. That's what these provisions do. I think they're sensible, and, sadly, some of the misinformation out there around what these provisions do has confused a lot of people. This is not about restricting freedoms or unduly penalising people. This is about dealing with people who use their position as a religious leader, as we've seen with some of the hate preachers, to incite violence in the way that they have.

It increases penalties for using a postal or similar service to menace or harass, increasing that penalty from two to five years. It introduces aggravated grooming offences for adults radicalising or recruiting children. Again, I think that's a very sound measure to have in place. There is a sentencing aggravating factor for hate motivated offending. It strengthens the hate symbol offences that we passed at the beginning of last year, lowering the fault element to recklessness, and it extends the bans to symbols of prohibited hate groups—which I'll talk about in a moment. It gives police stronger powers to remove and seize symbols, and, again, the opposition sought a two-year review of these provisions because altering fault elements, lowering thresholds and reversing evidentiary burdens is a significant measure. Again, after a period of operation, we want to make sure this is operating properly and not unduly impacting on people in a way it should not.

The one that has of course garnered most interest is the one relating to the establishment of a hate group listing regime. There are several elements to this which I think are important to point out in the limited time available to me. So there is no capacity for misunderstanding, we have sought to update the definition of a hate crime that would constitute an offence against a provision of the law under the Commonwealth Criminal Code and, related to that, a number of state and territory provisions. We have insisted that there is a consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Security and Intelligence review this provision after two years. That is on top of the fact that the director-general of intelligence has to make a recommendation to the minister who then can only list a hate group by way of a legislative instrument which is disallowable. The thresholds in law are incredibly high—and for the most serious of offences—for a hate group to meet them and be listed. This is not about targeting pro-life groups. This is not about targeting people who might be seeking to advocate for a particular cause. This is about people who are targeting a group identified by ethnic, national or racial origin and are seeking to harm them in a violent way as stepped out under the Criminal Code. There is to be no mistake about that.

Of course, there are other provisions around the immigration laws and changes to the Migration Act around refusing visas to those who do spread hatred and extremism in our country, including involvement in a hate crime, hateful public statements or links to terrorist and prohibited hate groups. Can I tell you, that is an important part of these laws. We have dealt with the concerns that have been raised through the information that I have offered to the Senate tonight—by making amendments, by tightening definitions and by putting in place review mechanisms to ensure that we minimise risk and that this does not unintentionally catch groups of Australians who should not be caught. This is about dealing with those people in our community who hate Australia, who hate the way our country operates.

If you don't vote for these laws, the net effect is that we will be left with a regime where groups like Hizb ut-Tarir will be able to continue to operate in this country. Let me remind you that Hizb ut-Tarir would not be listed as a prohibited hate group if these laws don't succeed through the parliament. In 2017, a video was uploaded to Facebook by Hizb ut-Tarir. It involved two panellists who stated that men are permitted to hit women, preferably with a scarf or a piece of fabric or a short stick. One panellist refers to being hit by a man as a beautiful blessing. This group also went on to talk about women being segregated and argued for women being seated in the back of a room in public meetings. This is something journalist Alison Bevege successfully sued Hizb ut-Tarir for—for segregating her at a meeting. This group defended a man in his 20s who tried to marry a 12-year-old girl in 2014. This is a group that wants to take down Western norms. They're a group that spreads hate. They're a group that is linked to insidious individuals overseas. If we don't want to have a regime in place to deal with groups like this who have no place in our society, then voting against these laws is what you should do.

Voting against these laws enables people who come here to spread hate to stay here on a visa. We can't deal with them. They can come in. We can't stop them. That's why these laws are important. It's important to take back control of this situation so we can actually deal with the hate these people have brought here.