Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill now be read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Bondi attack and antisemitism

14 December 2025 will be marked in history as one of Australia's most horrific and most tragic.

Fifteen innocent lives were lost, many more injured, and a national conscience was left forever scarred.

This Thursday, 22 January, will be observed as a National Day of Mourning.

Flags will fly at half-mast, and Australians will pause to honour the victims and reflect on the courage and compassion shown in the face of unimaginable horror.

Australia's many diverse communities are connected through generations by an invisible string that binds them to the culture, practices and beliefs of those who came before them. This vein of history brings richness and a sense of identity but, when confronted with hate, can be a source of trauma and pain of memory.

Australia is proudly home to a significant population of Holocaust survivors.

Many of those attending the Chanukah event survived, or were descendants of those who survived, that darkest period of modern history.

They stood side by side with others who had fled persecution.

They came to Australia seeking safety, a refuge from this most insidious hatred.

Seeking a community that saw their Jewish heritage as a contributor to the richness of the Australian character.

That sense of safety has been shattered.

As a community, as Australians, it is our responsibility to rebuild that trust.

Violent extremism starts with words

The violent terrorist attack we saw in Bondi did not occur spontaneously.

Violent extremism starts with words.

Words of hate.

Spread throughout the community by pernicious individuals and organisations.

This hatred is corrosive to a multicultural democratic society.

This Bill targets those that support violence, in particular violence targeted at a person because of their immutable attributes.

This conduct is criminal, but more than that, it is the seed of extremism.

The roots of terrorism.

It must be stamped out with the full force of the law.

Organisations that proffer these hateful ideologies must be outlawed and their composite members held accountable. Indeed, some of the cowards who spread hate as part of one such group have announced they will be disbanding in anticipation of the effectiveness of these laws.

Those that seek to exploit their position of trust, or radicalise our youth, must be met with serious penalties.

Visitors to our country who espouse these hateful views will be removed.

We must take our responsibility as a Parliament to stamp out hate incredibly seriously.

Government response

The Government has announced a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion to examine the roots of hatred and division, and to strengthen the bonds that hold our society together.

But we cannot wait for its findings to act. Waiting a year gives in to the very people this Bill seeks to target—and leaves the safety of Australians exposed.

Today, the Government introduces the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026—a legislative package designed to combat hate, dismantle extremist networks and prevent violence before it occurs.

Criminal amendments

This Bill will increase penalties for those advocating or threatening violence against groups because of their protected attributes.

It will also ensure even greater penalties are available for those that exploit their position of trust as a religious official or other leader to spread violent extremism, or seek to radicalise children.

The Bill will introduce an aggravated sentencing factor for Commonwealth offences motivated by hatred based on race or national or ethnic origin.

Courts will be required to consider hate motivation when sentencing, ensuring any sentence acknowledges the additional harm to society caused.

The Bill will introduce a new framework to allow certain organisations to be listed as prohibited hate groups where they engage in hate crimes, or support or advocate the commission of these offences.

These groups which seek to spread hate, fuel division, and stoke violence, have avoided criminality for too long. They have no place in our society and this Bill will provide the Government with a mechanism to outlaw them, and to criminalise their activities.

In relation to the definition of a hate crime at subsection (5), the Government confirms that the provision is directed at serious conduct or the threat of serious conduct of a criminal nature.

As noted at paragraph 97 of the Explanatory Memorandum, we are not capturing conduct, or the threat of conduct, that includes being subjected to any force or impact that is within the limits of what is acceptable in everyday social interaction or to life in the community. It must be serious harm to a criminal standard under the current law.

For the avoidance of doubt, this provision does not trespass into legitimate free speech, including the implied freedom of political communication. It does not seek to capture lawful debate, robust criticism, religious discussion, or genuine political advocacy. And it does not target legitimate comedy, satire, or artistic expression.

What it does target is serious conduct of a serious nature, whether occurring in Australia or overseas, where the Director-General of ASIO must be satisfied the conduct would, or is likely to, increase the risk of politically motivated violence or promote communal violence. That threshold is deliberately high. It ensures the definition is tied to security risk and public safety, not mere commentary, and not mere offence.

The line is drawn where it should be drawn: at serious harm—harm of a kind that meets a criminal standard threshold. Harm by an organisation that impacts national security—that is Director General of Security's concern. That is the test. Not discomfort. Not disagreement. Not merely "I didn't like what was said.

Two years ago, this Government introduced offences for the public display of Nazi and terrorist organisation symbols. These symbols are representative of, and are used to convey, ideologies of hatred, violence and racism which are incompatible with Australian values.

This Bill will strengthen these offences and associated police powers to ensure greater operational effectiveness, including expanding the offences to capture symbols of any prohibited hate groups that are listed under the new framework.

Migration amendments

The Australian Government remains committed to protecting the community from the risk of harm posed by non-citizens who engage in hate motivated conduct or offences relating to the spread of hatred and extremism.

The current character framework is a key component of Australia's migration system, protecting the community from the risks posed by non-citizens with criminal histories or criminal intent, as well as non-citizens who may vilify a segment of the Australian community, incite discord or otherwise threaten public health, safety or good order.

The Bill will strengthen the legislative framework in the Migration Act by introducing specific grounds to enable the refusal or cancellation of a visa, if a non-citizen:

These new grounds will expressly capture conduct that spreads hatred and extremism, including in circumstances where a hate crime may have been committed, but there has been no criminal justice outcome.

The Bill will also amend the Migration Regulations so that if a non-citizen is refused a visa on character grounds, they are subject to the same permanent exclusion from Australia that currently applies when a visa is cancelled on character grounds.

Together these amendments will strengthen the character framework and ensure that when a non-citizen is involved in spreading hatred and division, their visa may be refused or cancelled.

Legislation alone cannot combat hate

This Bill did not come together on its own. To that end, I acknowledge the constructive engagement of the Jewish community, legal representatives, members of civil society and other advocates who helped shape the development of this Bill. Your feedback has been thoughtful and considered.

I also acknowledge the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for its scrutiny of the Exposure Draft that led to this Bill, and recognise the tireless work of the secretariat who supported the inquiry.

Finally, I acknowledge the work of the Attorney-General's Department, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel who crafted this Bill with expertise and care.

This Bill should not be a moment for division or political point scoring.

This is a moment for national unity.

The colour of someone's skin or the God they pray to is not determinative of their worth.

Legislation alone cannot rid prejudice from people's minds.

Hate spreads, it fosters, it takes root, every time it is not called out.

It is our collective responsibility to stamp out this hatred out wherever we see it.

Our nation is strongest when we choose respect over division, and we must continue to invest in a community where everyone belongs. Where everybody can thrive.

The passage of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill will be a decisive step forward in achieving this.

It will send a loud and unequivocal message to all corners of this country that we must stand united in the face of racial hatred.

But more importantly, passage of this Bill will send a message that light will prosper over darkness.

The passage of this Bill will give us hope that Australia will continue to be a place of tolerance and that our diversity can be displayed with pride.

I commend the Bill to this chamber.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to 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.

Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. On 14 December last year, Australians experienced the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil at Bondi Beach. Fifteen people were murdered by terrorists with hate in their minds and guns in their hands. The impact of that day will stay with us for a very, very long time.

But it must also be a turning point. This attack did not happen in isolation. Australia has witnessed an alarming rise in antisemitism, hatred and extremism in recent years. We have seen this at Bondi and at countless attacks on Jewish institutions, including attacks on synagogues in my home state of Victoria and a neo-Nazi rally in front of the New South Wales parliament.

This bill is focused on a practical package of reforms. It is designed to stop the spread of hatred, disrupt extremist networks and protect social cohesion in our communities. Firstly, the bill will introduce new aggravated offences to ensure that very serious penalties apply to those in positions of influence and authority who commit hate crimes. What leaders say matters. When religious leaders, preachers or other figures of influence use their authority to encourage violence against protected groups, the harm is profound. These individuals, who are trusted by others, and their words carry weight. That's why this bill introduces aggravated offences that specifically apply to offenders who seek to radicalise children. This bill sends a clear message: exploiting young people to spread violent ideologies will be punished severely.

Secondly, this bill seeks to increase penalties for hate crime offences by increasing the maximum penalty of imprisonment for base offences from five years to seven years and from seven years to 10 years for offences which involve an added threat to the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.

Thirdly, the bill requires courts to treat radical or ethnic hatred as an aggravating factor for Commonwealth crimes. This means, if the motivation for the hatred of a group or a member of a group is based on race or ethnic origin, courts must consider that when deciding the sentence.

Fourthly, the bill will create new rules in the Criminal Code that allow certain organisations to be officially listed as banned hate groups. Once an organisation is listed, it will be a crime to run it, belong to it, recruit people to it, raise or receive money for it, support it in any way or take part in training connected to it.

Organised hate groups are dangerous because they recruit, fundraise, train and spread propaganda. Left unchecked, they create an environment where violence festers and is normalised. This bill gives the government the ability to disrupt these groups before they cause further harm. The bill will also strengthen and expand the prohibited hate symbols offences in the Criminal Code to further protect Australians from the significant harm caused by the public display of these symbols.

Finally, this bill will strengthen Australia's migration laws to better protect the Australian community from noncitizens suspected of engaging in hate motivated conduct or extremism. This bill enables a proportionate and targeted response to hate motivated conduct and extremism to safeguard our national security and social cohesion in this country.

There are a number of reasons that I support this bill. But I want to take a moment to also reflect on the missed opportunity that we have had this week, here in parliament—a moment in time that we've had to actually do something that'll protect so many Australians—relating to the antivilification measures that were contained in previous iterations of this bill that were removed.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack at Bondi, the coalition argued that there needed to be stronger laws to combat antisemitism, and we agreed. There should absolutely be stronger laws. We responded with a proposed law that included an antivilification measure which would've criminalised serious forms of antisemitic rhetoric and the promotion of racial supremacy.

I remind those opposite that that measure that was in the bill was recommended by the special envoy for antisemitism, Jillian Segal, and countless leaders within the Jewish community. The coalition cannot claim to stand with the Jewish community on one hand and on the other hand refuse to support laws specifically designed to protect the Jewish community from racial vilification. You cannot do that; it is absolute hypocrisy to see that. But that hypocrisy is not new from the opposition.

We saw the coalition call for urgent action, saying, 'Bring back parliament the week of Christmas,' and then, when we called back parliament in January, apparently we're rushing. We're rushing when we take a couple of weeks to get those laws right. The coalition are calling for the full implementation of Jillian Segal's report, but, when they have the opportunity to actually support it, there are more backflips over there than at the Olympics. The absolute hypocrisy from those opposite is incredible. Why not give Jewish Australians and so many other Australians extra protections?

The coalition owes all Jewish Australians an explanation as to why it called so strongly for the full support, for the full implementation, of Jillian Segal's report and then backflipped like nobody's business when it had the opportunity to actually do something that was going to actually protect them. It's absolute weakness from Sussan Ley—absolute weakness.

Words absolutely matter. Hateful words about someone's race don't just wound an individual; they normalise hatred towards an entire community. I don't know where the coalition think hatred starts. It feels like they think it starts just at the part where you get hatred that turns into violence. But there are a whole bunch of things that happen that lead to somebody ending up being violent, with hate in their hearts, towards another group. It starts with the small things people say to vilify other groups that really normalise that hatred towards another group, and it goes unchecked.

Vilification laws could actually hold some people accountable for the things that they say that normalise that hatred and targeted attacks towards other groups. But you didn't want to do that. You didn't want to do that because you are seemingly okay with the vilification of groups, the damaging attacks on groups of people in Australia—other Australians. As long as it doesn't lead to violence, go for your life. Jewish Australians, like all Australians, deserve to be safe, feel safe and be respected in this country. Antivilification laws would have helped achieve that objective. The Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, and the coalition failed all Australians when you failed to rise to the occasion. Words absolutely matter, but so does action. You had the opportunity to rise to the occasion and you failed. You failed all Australians this week, especially those of us who belong to communities that are targeted and attacked all the time, and we won't forget.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened at Bondi Beach on 14 December last year was an appalling and horrific act of hate and violence that has shattered our Sydney community and the country and no-one more than the Jewish community. We continue to stand in solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters in their grief. Yesterday, in this chamber, we were able to pay our respects and condolences to those whose lives were taken. From today our job as public representatives is to do everything in our power to stop this kind of violence from ever happening again.

The Greens have long pushed for strong gun laws. This is an evidence-based, tried and tested response that reduces gun violence. We were pleased and proud to support the gun reforms that passed today, and we made them even stronger. We will always work to get dangerous weapons off our streets. I have never been silent on what needs to be done to combat hate, racism and extremism. I've spent my political life focused on antiracism and on fighting extremism and the far right, but this bill is not the way to do it. This bill is not a responsible response. The sham process that the government has undertaken on this bill is as appalling as the bill itself. That there wasn't even a pretence of consultation for some of the most extreme changes to our criminal laws shows just how little the government thinks of the community.

From the beginning the draft bill was quickly exposed to be deeply flawed, divisive and dangerous. It was clear that these laws were designed to protect some and not others. With this bill the Albanese government has thrown Muslims and migrants under the bus. After Labor was forced to back down on the dangerous vilification section of this omnibus bill, they made a terrible, last-minute deal with the coalition to make other parts of this awful, rushed bill even more divisive and more dangerous. Labor did a deal with the coalition—the coalition who want the right to be bigots. This bill will have a chilling and draconian effect on political debate, on protest, on civil rights and on people speaking up against human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel or by any other nation-state. This is not social cohesion. This is not unity. This is not equality. This is deeply disappointing but not surprising, and this is not the first time that Labor has betrayed communities.

Over the past month, the Bondi tragedy has been politicised by large sections of the media and politicians. The anger, frustration and sadness at the weaponisation of this attack have been reiterated to me countless times by many of my Jewish friends. In what should have been a time for solidarity and kindness, this horrific tragedy was seized upon to clamp down on, demonise and silence a movement of peace and justice. The vile murderers who perpetrated the attack had no connection to Palestine, were not Palestinian and had no link that we know of to the pro-Palestine movement, but politicians and the media saw the perverse opportunity to remove a thorn from their side. There seems to be a concerted effort to force some kind of sick binary, as if one cannot both be against the terror attack at Bondi and show solidarity with Palestine. This is a disgusting lie meant to smear and silence.

Let me say this clearly and unequivocally: standing against a genocide is not antisemitic. Being outraged and protesting the killing, starvation and torture of hundreds of thousands of people is not antisemitic. Calling for this government to combat racism in all its forms is not divisive. Calling for this government to end its complicity in genocide is not divisive. However, it is divisive to pretend to care about international law while inviting the President of Israel, a state committing genocide in Gaza, to this country. It is divisive to design laws that say to all but one community, 'Your safety does not matter.' It is divisive to celebrate multiculturalism and then to introduce laws that blatantly scapegoat and demonise migrants.

We know that these laws are not being introduced in a political vacuum. They come after over two years of Israel's genocide in Gaza, after two years of draconian crackdowns on protestors. The absolute lengths that have been gone to to silence Palestinian and Palestine solidarity voices have been immense, aided by a predominantly right-wing and pro-Israel media and political class and also by the Labor government. This bill is yet another example of the Albanese government's authoritarian crackdown on supporters of Palestine. This censorship was on full display in recent weeks with the Adelaide Festival board uninviting Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers' Week, with her mere existence as a Palestinian apparently a problem for them. This was a racist decision that has resulted in the entire festival being cancelled and the board finally being dragged to issue an unconditional apology to Randa. These are, indeed, dangerous times, when there is a whole-of-government assault on basic human rights.

The laws that we are debating today are flawed, fraught and near friendless. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has said the laws will irreparably damage our democratic and legal system. The Human Rights Law Centre has stated that the bill risks crystallising and perpetuating an invidious public discourse which casts migrants and refugees as a presumptive threat to national security. The Jewish Council of Australia criticised both the process and the content of the bill, noting that the fight against antisemitism is not served by rushed legislation, which is not evidence based and which may lead to the targeting of religious and migrant communities. The Islamic Council of Victoria has stated that the bill risks exacerbating existing patterns of overpolicing, racial profiling and disproportionate public, media and police scrutiny of Muslim communities under the guise of countering hate and extremism.

Community groups and legal experts have been near unanimous in their assessment that these laws are fundamentally flawed. They provide for extraordinary ministerial powers, with limited guardrails and protection. They provide a clear pathway for governments to shut down protest and political dissent. They rely almost exclusively on criminal penalties that decades of evidence tell us do not succeed in combating hate. They unfairly and inappropriately target the Muslim community while at the same time exceptionalising one form of hate for protection and ignoring other forms of hate such as that faced by LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people and other marginalised groups. We cannot work backwards to amend a bill that is so fundamentally messed up.

One of the most concerning aspects of the bill is the proscription of hate groups—the provision by which the minister does not need to provide an individual or a group procedural fairness, dispensing with the rules of law and natural justice. Greg Barns SC spoke today, describing this provision as 'the sort of stuff you get in authoritarian countries'. The retrospectivity of this provision is terrifying—allowing the consideration of conduct that occurred before this bill will even commence, which could result in imprisonment for 15 years, when the conduct at the time wasn't even illegal. The provisions can and will easily be used to shut down protest and political activity that the government does not support. We have seen in the UK the danger and absurdity of misuse of proscription and terrorism laws, with thousands of people arrested for engaging in peaceful demonstrations against genocide and in support of Palestine action. I am yet to find a single legal expert, academic or human rights expert in favour of these provisions.

It is clear from the context of the bill, and the speeches that were made here yesterday, who these laws will protect and who they will target. Some of the things that were said in here yesterday about Muslims and Islam were shameful, disgraceful and vile. Of the faith groups consulted prior to the bill being provided publicly, it was only the Australian National Imams Council that was not shown the bill—knowing full well that Islamophobia has risen drastically in recent years, with Muslims being physically attacked, spat on and verbally abused in public with increasing frequency and ferocity. I know firsthand that this hate has reached new levels for the Muslim community. The government's briefing records very clearly show that the Muslim community has been left out in the cold—but then, we have always been the government's lowest priority.

Extremism in any form should never be tolerated. Exceptionalising one form of bigotry over another does not make anyone safer. My friend, Barbara Bloch, a member of Jews Against the Occupation 1948, told me:

I would like this parliament to mourn the loss of these lives, investigate the circumstances that allowed these heavily armed men to make their way to Bondi, undetected, and commit those acts of savagery. Then, please take a deep breath and also consider the impact of these laws not ONLY on Jewish lives but also on others—and remember that for Palestinians both in Australia and in Palestine/Israel, their struggle is also not over.

At the end of the day, we cannot criminalise our way out of hate and racism. Expanding the carceral system is not the way to keep people safe. We know this system is used against First Nations people. We know how the system has been used against activists and protesters. We know who this legislation is going to target if it is passed.

Discrimination and racism are institutional and structural in our country, and we must root them out as such. It is not just about one individual here or another one there; it is about overhauling the system and changing society. The National Anti-Racism Framework provides a road map to move towards an anti-racist society. It does so in a way that acknowledges the deep roots of structural, institutional and systemic racism, including antisemitism and all forms of racism in this country, and it rightly places truth-telling and First Nations justice at the heart of anti-racism work. This framework has been gathering dust on the government shelves for over a year now while racism has been getting worse and worse. The Prime Minister should today announce funding for the framework and begin its implementation. Combating hate and extremism must be work that is grassroots and community led, with significant commitment to and investment in community to change hearts, minds, behaviours and attitudes.

Let me say this: despite what many of those in here would have you believe, hate and extremism is not some problem that is imported here from afar. We saw that clearly and devastatingly in the Christchurch mosque massacre, where 51 Muslims were murdered in cold blood while praying by an Australian white supremacist who was radicalised right here in this country. Violence, too, is not imported from far away. Australia was built on the genocide of First Nations people, with colonialism and oppression continuing today. We also know that a woman is a murdered by an intimate partner every eight days in this country. The inclusion of migration law changes in this legislation does nothing but demonise migrants and feed far-right, white supremacist rhetoric that migrants are the problem.

The utter hypocrisy of the Labor and Liberal parties is here on full display. To pretend to celebrate multiculturalism, praise migrants when it suits them and then propose laws like this is just disgusting. The Bondi attack has devastated the nation. Our response to it should be carefully considered to show compassion, care and solidarity at a time of crisis. We should, as a society, try to achieve the structural and cultural change needed to reject hate and extremism and weed it out at its roots. This legislation definitely does not do that. Scapegoating migrants does not make anyone safer. Undermining the right to protest does not make anyone safer. Criminalising those who raise their voice against injustices is just plain wrong. Saying that one group is worthy of protection while others are not does not make anyone safer. The Greens vehemently and strongly oppose this bill.

Do you know what? This is the last thing I will say. No matter what you try and do, we will not be silent in the face of genocide. We will continue to call out hate and racism wherever we see it, and we will continue to fight against injustice, inequality and an imperial system. (Time expired)

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't know about you, but I'm very happy to support laws that are going to give the relevant minister in this country the ability to actually chuck out violent Islamic extremists. That's actually what the laws that we are looking at tonight, in the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, will do.

But, before I address those laws, let's talk about the journey to get here. Australians should never forget what Mr Albanese tried to do after Australia's largest terrorist attack. Let's be clear. He tried to push through the biggest expansion of criminal speech laws this country has ever seen. What's worse is he tried to do it in less than one week, before Australians had had time to properly read it, understand it or speak up. But guess what? Australians did speak up, and the coalition—the Liberal Party and the National Party—stood firmly with them. So I say this to all Australians: congratulations, Australia. Just like us, you saw what the Prime Minister of Australia was trying to do to you. You saw through the spin, you looked at the substance and—well done, Australia—you stopped the Prime Minister of Australia.

As we stand here tonight and debate the legislation that is now before the Senate, let us be very, very clear, because there's a lot of misinformation out there tonight. Labor's hate speech package—the original package that would have silenced you, Australia—has been abandoned. Well done, Australia. You stood up, we listened, you forced Mr Albanese to take action and that bill has been scrapped. But, I have to say, here's a basic question that all Australian should ask themselves: after 15 Jewish Australians were murdered in the largest terror attack this country has ever seen, on Bondi Beach, why was the Prime Minister's first instinct to rush laws through that would have potentially silenced ordinary Australians while, at the same time, refusing to clearly name the ideology that drove the terrorist attack? Here's the bit that the Australian people can't get past: the package he wanted us to put through ran through hundreds of pages, and guess what? Not once in those 500 pages did it name what actually happened, the real threat—violent, Islamic extremism. Let's be very clear: if you can't name the threat that Australia is confronting, Prime Minister, guess what? You actually can't address it.

Let me say this plainly because, quite frankly, Australians are sick and tired of the Australia Labor Party and the Prime Minister dancing around the truth. Australia must confront violent Islamic extremism, not excuse it, not relabel it—as they tend to do so as to not offend the violent Islamic extremists—and not pretend it is something else. But definitely don't try and make laws around it whilst refusing to name it. Let's be very clear here. This is an ideology that glorifies murder, that celebrates terrorism, that targets Jews first. Australians, wake up and understand this: it is not confined to the Jewish people. They start with Saturday; they go after Sunday. For all of the Christians out there, wake up. You are Sunday. That is what they do. They target the Jews first and then they go after anybody else who stands in their way. This extremist ideology hates democracy and it hates the Australian way of life. That is the threat.

But, sadly, instead of focusing on this threat right from the start, Labor's original approach took a slightly different tangent. They wanted to introduce laws that actually risk chilling lawful speech and worse—I find this so offensive—it built in a dangerous loophole dressed up as a religious teaching defence that the hate preachers would have exploited. Quite frankly, I think the Australian people expect that a law meant to stop hate should never give the hate preachers in this country a roadmap to avoid accountability but that is what the Prime Minister of Australia did. He gave, by the drafting, the hate preachers—the people that we want to stop in this country—a 'get out of jail free' card. As I said, good on you, Australia, congratulations. You saw through the Prime Minister, you saw he was trying to silence you, you had the support of the coalition and we successfully defeated that bill.

Let's talk in plain English about what this bill before us today does, because there is a lot of misinformation out there tonight. First, as I said—and this is why I am supporting it—it makes it easier to kick extremists out of Australia using the visa system. This is the message of the coalition: if you come here to glorify extremist violence, if you want to threaten Australians or radicalise others, I don't care but you should not get a visa. If you are already here and you are doing that, I do think the minister should be given the power to take your visa from you. But I also think that the minister should be able to go one step further, which is what this legislation does. It says, 'Guess what? You are never ever coming back into the great country of Australia.' That is what this bill will deliver. It would give the minister clearer power to refuse a visa, to cancel a visa and to permanently exclude people who, quite frankly, are coming to Australia to poison our community.

I will also say this: to anyone who votes against this tonight, you need to be upfront with the Australian people about what you are doing. A no vote is a vote against refusing visas to hate preachers. A no vote is a vote against cancelling visas where someone is glorifying violence. And a no vote is a vote against keeping these people out for good.

So, amongst all of the misinformation that's out there tonight, let me be clear: I'm voting for laws that make it easier for the relevant minister—Labor or coalition—to throw extremists out of this country and to keep extremists excluded from this country. Why would I do that? I do it because the coalition's position is simple: Australia is not a sanctuary for violent extremists. We will not give people visas when they're glorifying terror or they are trying to radicalise others. And if they are here, yes, we do want the minister to have the power to remove them and keep them out.

The second thing this bill tonight does is in relation to violent extremist hate groups. Again, there's a lot of misinformation out there tonight, so let me be clear. Despite what people are saying, this is not about opinions; this is about organised, dangerous hate groups that recruit, intimidate and create the conditions for hate motivated violence.

One of the issues in Australia is that the terrorist listing threshold is incredibly high, as it should be. What that has therefore done, though, is leave a gap where vile hate groups can operate in plain sight. They are recruiting, radicalising and fundraising and they are intimidating communities, but they fall just short of a terrorism label. People have seen it. They've seen it of late with the Neo-Nazis. These are people who worship Hitler and glorify genocide. They don't just hold vile views; they build networks, they recruit, they threaten and they target minorities to spread fear. This part of the bill helps close that gap. It creates a way to prohibit organised hate groups and makes it illegal to take part in them or help them—this is very important—when they are tied to serious hate-driven criminal conduct.

That takes me to a group that, quite frankly, I can't wait to see listed. That is Hizb ut-Tahrir. Let's be very clear about what this organisation is. For anyone who wants to vote no tonight, this is an extremist Islamic organisation. It rejects democracy, it rejects Australian law and it openly pushes for a global Islamic caliphate run under sharia law. I'm sorry, but to anyone who's saying, 'Oh, this legislation goes too far,' I can tell you right now that I don't think that is just a slightly different opinion to what I might have. Their whole agenda is to replace the Australian way of life, and, quite frankly, I want that stopped.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's message is a simple one: Australia's system—our parliament, our courts, equal rights for men and women, and our freedom to choose our religion or, alternatively, to not have any religion at all—is illegitimate and it must be replaced. Sadly, this group doesn't need to set a bomb off to be dangerous. Their danger is their vile, extremist ideology—the propaganda that radicalises, that spreads hatred and that tells young Australians that our democracy in our great country is the enemy. I don't know about others in this chamber, but I have no desire to see groups that want a global caliphate under sharia law, like Hizb ut-Tahrir, operating in Australia. Quite frankly, if you come here to undermine our democracy and replace it, you should not get a platform. You should not get protection and you definitely should not be allowed to organise—like they have done, and will continue to do if this legislation does not pass tonight—in the great country of Australia. Here's the reality, again, for those colleagues who will vote no tonight: if you vote against this hate group regime, you will need to explain plainly why you are prepared to let Neo-Nazi organisations and Hizb ut-Tahrir keep operating freely in Australia, because that would be the practical effect—more space to recruit, more space to radicalise, more space to intimidate and, what is worse, more poison in our communities.

Many out there—again, there's misinformation—are claiming this is an attack on free speech. It isn't. That was the Prime Minister's original bill. That was the bill that Australians said no to and we successfully killed off. What we are voting on tonight is entirely different. This targets organised extremist groups that fall just short of a terrorist listing but still cause real harm. It is important that the minister, whether they are from Labor or the coalition, has the power to act against these vile extremist organisations. Here is the line, and it is the right line.

This is not about outlawing unpopular opinions. It is not about shutting down robust debate. It is not about religious discussion, genuine political advocacy, comedy, satire or art. And it is certainly not about the police knocking on your door because of a harsh Facebook post or because you criticised the government. The coalition would never support that. This is directed at serious conduct of a criminal nature and serious harm of a criminal standard under existing law, and it only applies where the Director-General of Security is satisfied the conduct would or is likely to increase the risk of politically motivated violence. That is a high bar, and it should be a high bar. So, for anybody out there thinking that we're attacking free speech, the test is not whether someone said something offensive; it is whether what someone said increases the risk of violence—not of discomfort, not of disagreement, not of, 'I didn't like what was said.'

Australia is a free country, but it is not a sanctuary for extremists, and it should not be a safe operating environment for vile extremist hate groups. Australians want to see Islamic hate preachers gone, they want to see the minister given the ability to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and they want Neo-Nazis off our streets. These laws will achieve that, and that's why I'm supporting them.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. These laws come at a tragic time for our nation—14 December 2025 was a day when Islamist inspired terror came to Australia's shores and when terrorists with ISIS flags murdered Jewish Australians celebrating the first night of Hanukkah and others enjoying one of our most iconic beaches. It was an antisemitic attack—an act of pure evil—and it was the deadliest terrorist attack in our nation's history. They murdered 15 innocents and injured dozens more men, women and children. It was an attack on a community, on a nation and on every Australian. That day, the two attackers came with hatred in their minds and with lethal weapons in their hands. Today, this parliament is working to address both the motivation and the method of the attack, and we are sending a powerful message that there is no place for antisemitism in this country, there is no place for spreading hate in Australia and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia.

This legislation continues our commitment to implementing the recommendations of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. However, this legislation does not reflect one key recommendation of the special envoy. Ms Segal recommended that the government strengthen federal, state and territory legislation addressing antisemitic and other hateful or intimidating conduct, including with respect to serious vilification offences and the public promotion of hatred and antisemitic sentiment. But, colleagues, these laws will not include racial vilification laws, which the Labor Party has long supported and which the government sought to bring forward. Those opposite have walked away from a key ask of the special envoy and a key ask of so many in the Jewish Australian community at this time.

I want to quote from my friend the member for Macnamara's speech earlier today. He said:

… after the Leader of the Opposition came to my electorate, last week, stood up in a synagogue and said that hate needed to be confronted and that there needed to be consequences. She said that if she were the prime minister, there would be. Within hours, the Liberal Party refused to support laws in this place that would do exactly that.

The Leader of the Opposition demanded that the government implement the Segal report in full, yet the Leader of the Opposition is blocking the government from doing precisely that. The Leader of the Opposition demanded hate speech laws, and then opposed them. The Leader of the Opposition demanded the return of parliament and then, when parliament was recalled, was against it.

Yesterday in the Senate we heard these words:

This parliament has a responsibility to ensure Jewish Australians can live freely and securely in the weeks, months and years ahead, to ensure community institutions are protected, to ensure threats are taken seriously, to ensure the law is enforced and to ensure that those who incite hatred—

those who incite hatred—

and glorify violence are met with consequences.

That was Senator Cash yesterday, and, Senator Cash, on this we agree. But, of course, we are not able to pass reforms which are directly targeting those who incite hatred because the Liberal and National party senators will not support reforms to combat racial vilification. They will not support them. And to even consider today's important legislative reform, we have narrowed the scope of the legislation at the coalition's request. So, it will be for the coalition to answer to the Jewish Australian community when instances of vile hate face no consequences.

Australians want their leaders to lead. They do not want self-interest. They do not want politics. They do not want division. And Australians want to stand with and behind the Jewish Australian community at this time of profound grief. We saw this unity in previous national crises like Port Arthur, the Bali bombings, the Lindt cafe siege. But not for Bondi. Instead of reaching for that higher ground, for national unity, the opposition sought to drag us down with division. But Australians see what the Liberal and National parties are doing. They see through it.

We know that the attackers at Bondi targeted Australian Jews because of who they are, and we know they were inspired by hateful, violent, intolerant and extreme ideology that has no place in our country. We will not give the terrorists what they seek, which is a divided nation turning Australian against Australian. For Jewish Australians, particularly those that came to Australia seeking refuge, their sense of safety, their sense of security has been shattered, and the trust they had in this country, in an Australia that values Jewish contributions to a multicultural society, needs to be rebuilt, and it is our collective responsibility to rebuild it.

So tonight, in this Senate, is the next step in ensuring that we work to stamp out the violent and hateful ideology that inspired this attack. The new laws being debated here specifically target those who seek to spread hatred, including those who seek to disrupt social cohesion in our community. The laws also create a regime for listing organisations that engage in hate speech or promote violence or racial hatred. The bill amends the Migration Act to introduce new grounds enabling a minister to refuse and cancel visas on the basis of hate motivated conduct and offences relating to the spread of hatred and extremism, and this is as it should be.

Organisations that proffer hateful ideologies must be outlawed and their members held accountable. We know one such group has already announced an intention to disband in anticipation of the effectiveness of these laws. Our Senate, our parliament, can send a strong message to a grieving nation tonight, and we must. We stand together against hate, and, together, light will prevail over darkness. I commend the bill to the Senate.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, comes as part of the Labor Party's response to an appalling antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach that took the lives of 15 Jewish members of our community. This parliament, barely an hour ago, passed laws that directly respond to critical elements of that attack by addressing some of the loopholes in our national firearms laws that allowed hate to be armed that day. Whilst it wasn't unanimous, we did get the majority needed, and that was good work to make the community safer.

Much of this bill, however, includes scapegoating migrants and attacking peaceful protests and protest groups, and it's not a legitimate response to the Bondi attack. It wrongfully conflates caring about international law, protecting the vulnerable and having a conscience about world events with the cruel ugliness of antisemitism. The Australian Greens have deep concerns about the politicised content included here. We do not have any comfort that it is going to substantially address any form of hate in this country, and that includes antisemitism. We're also concerned that the amendments to the migration laws are designed to directly place migrants in the frame in this debate and to blame migrants and multicultural Australia for the failures of intelligence and security agencies.

Again, we see how failures at ASIO and our security agencies are being used to weaponise against multicultural Australia and then to give those very agencies more and more secret powers. This parliament should be coming together now to make laws that bring communities together and that have their confidence and support. Instead, we have a last-minute major-party deal to create laws that can criminalise large segments of the community who are following their conscience and their hearts to stand up against genocide. I know who I am with in this debate and I'm proud to be with them. We will not sit quietly in the corner while these parties try to make it a crime to stand against genocide and for a free Palestine. We will remain in solidarity with the community—peaceful, principled and proud.

I want to say thank you to the thousands of people who made submissions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Of course, it's part of the club; it's populated just by Labor and the coalition, but the community engaged. This whole process was a stitch-up between the Labor and Liberal parties with committees like the PJCIS, but I want to thank the people who still took the time to ensure they were heard and that their detailed concerns about the proposed laws were on the record. I note the large number of Palestinian, LGBTQI+ and refugee organisations who raised strong concerns about the divisive and dangerous proposals in these bills. At all times, the timeframe for consultation was grossly inadequate. We genuinely appreciate every group who still made themselves available in these last few short days to talk with us about the proposed changes.

Every stakeholder we spoke to, every single one, raised new and more detailed concerns about these laws. The overwhelming response from all of them is that the original Labor Party proposal was too flawed, too politicised, too biased and too divisive to be fixed. I agree with them, my party agrees with them and millions of Australians agree with them, and we thank them for their time. With their collective help, we have prevented broken vilification laws passing that were biased in their application, broken in their reach and dangerous in their politics, and I want to thank all of those Australians who joined with us in that.

I note in particular the difficulty of this proposal for the many communities, including but not limited to the queer community and the disability community, who have long waited for this parliament to take their concerns about hate attacks against them seriously. This government brought them into this parliament, gave them encouragement and then just dropped them, like they've done so many times before. This government has again let down diverse communities in this process. They are more than disappointed with this government today. I want to let all of those vulnerable and diverse communities know—you have our word as Greens that we will keep working to ensure a comprehensive suite of measures are adopted, funded and resourced to reduce hate, provide support and make this country safe for all.

I thank the Law Council for their insightful analysis of the draft and the final laws, including in the few short hours we had them today. Likewise, I thank the Justice and Equity Centre, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Hindus for Human Rights and the Arabic Council, as well as lawyers from the Australian Lawyers Alliance—among many, many others—for their guidance. They have spoken with one voice. Indeed, they've been stronger than that. They've spoken with a diversity of voices. From multiple different perspectives, from multiple faiths and multiple communities and multiple parts of this country, they have said, 'Don't support these laws, for the damage they can do to society.'

In the last 24 hours, the bill has become even worse. The coalition amendments, far from the nonsense we heard from Senator Cash about 'limiting their scope' and 'saving people from overreach'—what nonsense! What rubbish we heard. What facile defences she's trying to build for whoever's in her perceived support base. Let us be clear about this: the coalition amendments expand the reach of Labor's already dangerous crackdown on legitimate free speech and political expression, and they do so in unprecedented ways.

Far from narrowing these laws, these changes expand the law to expressly cover conduct that falls far short of violence. The rushed changes expand the conduct that can lead to organisations being banned and their members—including 'informal members', whatever that means—going to jail for 15 years. They include references to seven different state and territory laws. That raises multiple constitutional issues and significant uncertainty as to how these laws will apply across the Commonwealth. That didn't narrow the scope of these banning provisions and proscriptive provisions; it massively expanded them. It massively expanded the thoughts and the speech that can be covered by these laws.

This Labor and coalition deal may lead to organisations being banned and people being criminalised across the country if they ridicule or express contempt for a group or a person. These laws cover much more than threats of violence; they extend to economic, social and psychological harm and are enforced not by courts but on secret reports from ASIO and the opinion of the Home Affairs minister. Labor and the coalition are expressly intending to capture acts and statements done in the past, with retrospective operations of these laws. Groups could be criminalised; people could see their actions criminalised. They could face lengthy jail time for actions or words said before these offences were even created. What was a rushed process last week, with poor process, excluding critical consideration, has now become a farce. Unprecedented legal changes are being made law without even a cursory review by experts or the community.

As Greens, we have used some general principles to analyse these changes. Laws that seek to protect only select parts of the community and expressly exclude protection for other vulnerable parts of our community are bad laws. They're divisive laws. Rushed, complex criminal laws are terrible process and risk criminalising conduct nobody would want to see people going to jail for—well, nobody except for their political opponents, that is. Removing procedural fairness from decisions that could potentially put people in jail for years or over a decade is plain dangerous. And let's be clear. Anything that Labor and the coalition agree on in a late night meeting with the toxic politics that they've been discussing in the last few years, especially when it comes to criminal law, is likely to be terribly compromised at best and downright Trumpian at worst.

We've spoken in the last hours to a number of lawyers and experts on the change to prohibited hate group laws. They had a long list of questions, a long list of concerns about the provisions, and they show that they are very far from clear and possibly completely unworkable. Is that how laws should pass through this parliament, on a wink or a nod, on the vibe of Senator Cash, on the nod of the Prime Minister, on the hope of the Attorney-General, on the toxic politics of whichever part of the coalition agreed to this?

We start by noting, as the law council points out, that the banning powers rely in part on underlying conduct that is in part already criminalised and in part has never before been used as legal tests. That will see the home affairs minister relying on secret advice from ASIO about potential future conduct of an organisation before banning them without any pretence of natural justice, without ever considering procedural fairness. In this case, the discretion given to the home affairs minister means the courts will not consider a listing and there's no independent oversight. The listing can occur on the grounds where the minister has reasonable belief that a person has engaged in a hate crime, and that can be satisfied by a range of state based vilification offences that only require a person to be critiquing or ridiculing. Again, I repeat that all of that is done by ASIO with a secret report never seen by those being targeted, never seen by the parliament, never seen by the public and by a minister who doesn't even have to tell the organisation he's thinking about doing this.

The second limit of the test requires that the minister is satisfied it's reasonably necessary to protect a part of a community from harm. That harm could include not just physical harm but also economic, psychological or social harm. Under these laws, the anti-apartheid movement would have been captured. Under these laws, federal ministers in the 1960s and 1970s could have threatened thousands of anti-apartheid activists with jail and banned their organisations because of their strident, correct and pointed criticism of the South African government and its hateful apartheid policy. They're people we now celebrate as proud human rights campaigners. In 2026, cross out 'apartheid' and write in 'free Palestine', and you'll see what these parties are trying to do.

Can I point out that in the short time that we've had these unprecedented proposed changes, lawyers have said to us that roping in the criminal offences of seven different state and territory laws, defining them as hate crimes and saying they apply under Commonwealth legislation creates immeasurable legal uncertainty. Does a test that used to only apply in Victoria now apply across the whole country? Are there seven different tests across the country, depending on where you live, for what you say? None of this has been answered by the government. It's chaos. It's bad in principle. Even with those laws, the government goes out of its way to say that only three categories of offensive conduct will be covered by those laws, writing out protections for other religious groups, for the LGBTIQ community, for gender and intersex. How have we got to this point?

Can I finish with this on migration. This bill dangerously lowers the threshold for visa cancellations from requiring a person would engage in hateful conduct to merely that they might. That's not a test. I want to thank the ASRC for their continued positive engagement with this. When the government says they need these changes to ban hate preachers from this country, they know that's false. Every single one of those could already be banned under the character tests. There are two separate legal provisions under the Migration Act that would fully cover all of the conduct that's covered in these migration law changes, and the government is lying when it says otherwise, and the coalition is covering itself with pretend political cover when it says otherwise. We won't accept those lies. It's a false narrative. At the core of the narrative on the migration changes, they want to blame migrants for the violence and failures of security agencies, for the gaps in our gun laws. We won't let them scapegoat migrants, we won't support these changes to the Migration Act, and we won't support the rubbish politics that is trying to give them cover when they do it.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At Bondi, on 14 December, two evil men, drawing on a perverted distortion of Islam that is the foundation of the terror organisation ISIS, committed a terror attack on our shores. For the record, ISIS is funded by Iran. Every part of its existence is to be abhorred. No Australian who shares in our nation's vast democratic success, shares in our collective wealth, which thrives in the fertile environment that is enabled by our democratic values, and benefits from our laws and the peace they bring can ever support ISIS or any organisation that harbours support for ISIS in any form. I don't think there would be any dispute here in this chamber or around the nation of the moral righteousness of that statement.

But it is a fact that one of the antisemitic, ISIS inspired gunmen—one of those evil men—who shot 15 fine citizens that afternoon, Sunday 14th, in Bondi was born and raised here in Australia. He was known, in some glancing way, according to reports, to the intelligence agencies of this nation. The other man, his father, was not a citizen of this country. Their actions and the actions of others like them tell us that something is wrong with our current laws. We must learn from Bondi that threats to our society come from both within and outside our nation and our population. That father-and-son act of terror demands that we face the reality of the country we are today.

We have to confront, through the myriad horrific images of people in Bondi on that fateful Sunday evening in December, the reality of our time. It's horrifying. People are scarred at a distance from media engagement, just by looking at the images of what happened in Bondi. There's a massive national provision of support for the mental health of the people who watched those images. But we have to look. We cannot turn away. It's horrifying for me that, in the moment when we could have confronted and responded to this challenge of our time, acted in unison, protected the best of what we are and been clear that we align together against the malign actors who would take this nation into the darkness of hate, there has been wholesale failure here in this parliament by too many who have not read the signs of these times.

I listened to many of the speeches yesterday on the day of condolence for the loss of life in Bondi. One of the words I heard very frequently in the speeches was well-intentioned and said by people who cared, who shed tears as they spoke. I don't doubt the sincerity, but how many times did people say Australians 'should' be able to do something? You 'should' be able to walk down the street; you 'should' be able to do this. Our job is not to wish and ponder and hope. Our job is to legislate, not to decry the reality and wish it were otherwise and do nothing. 'Should' isn't going to cut it. We actually have to do stuff, and the stuff we have to do here is to legislate. And we need to do it in a timely way in response to the challenges we face.

Reality must be faced, and our laws must meet that reality. We live in a time when foreign countries are involved in the attacks on our way of life. We can't just let that reality pass us by. It's part of the emboldening of the two gunmen on Bondi. The firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue, according to our ASIO public reporting, was advanced by Iran and their proxies, who they funded in our country. The Iranian ambassador was sent home, persona non grata. That is a serious diplomatic act. It was an extraordinary historical moment, but these are extraordinary times, and it gives shape to what it is that we're doing here tonight and why we have to do it. Senators, we cannot continue to do business as usual in a world that has changed.

That is why we need legislation that gives powers to this parliament and the parliaments that follow to protect the good people of this nation from the evil ones, be they born here or born somewhere else. These laws are needed to protect us from the ones filled with hate, from the ones spewing their vile hatred into our community. That is why I speak in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 this evening.

The bill before us is about addressing what became obvious to every Australian as we watched those images. Action is required now—not next month or next year but today. I noted the contribution of Senator Shoebridge just prior to my rising. There were many principles in there. He's a lawyer and a barrister, who obviously cares about the law—and I see Senator Scarr over there with the same respect and regard for the law. There's a degree of caution that we always want to apply, and we need to apply that. But there's application in a time of peace, order and long-term consideration, and there's action required in response to what we saw in Bondi. That's no time to sit back and navel gaze. This is a time for leadership, and the place where leadership has to happen for our country, this democratic nation, is right here in Canberra in this place. That is what this bill is about this evening.

It's vital and it's necessary that we pass this bill to tackle hateful groups. We cannot keep waiting while the next extremist individuals start or continue brewing a concoction of fear and hatred that targets decent, ordinary, law-abiding Australians. We've seen, under the current structure of laws, malign groups that have strategically flouted the law by staying just—ever so marginally just—under the current test of criminality. We cannot allow that to continue. Sadly, the resistance that we're seeing to the necessary change to protect the people of Australia, surely our first responsibility—we've seen members in this parliament seek division, find division, push for delay. I said yesterday:

… if not now, then when?

Hate will only spread and further entrench itself throughout our community the longer we wait in calling it out and the longer we wait in bringing about the legislative changes necessary.

The criminal amendments that are located within this bill will combat hate. They will dismantle extremism. They will ensure that violence clearly intended against individuals or groups based on race or national or ethnic origin is prevented before it starts. These amendments will include aggravated offences for leaders who promote or threaten violence against protected groups and for adults who radicalise children. It's got to stop, and it has to stop with legislation that needs to be passed in this place—and passed tonight.

This legislation offers increased penalties for existing hate speech offences involving the advocacy or threat of force or violence, because that needs to happen. This legislation has requirements for courts to consider hate motivation at sentencing and to consider the designation of organisations that fuel violence or hatred on the basis of race, nationality or ethnic origin as prohibited hate groups. 'Your time's up'—that's what this legislation says. 'You've played a dastardly game. The cost is a permanent stain on the history of this nation, but your time's up'—that's what this legislation says.

This bill will increase protections for our community from the risk of harm posed, particularly by noncitizens who engage in extremist conduct. Yet this parliament must acknowledge that this bill is not all of what was requested from the Jewish community, who urgently seek our response and protection. This bill, which was offered in one form last week and has been changed through amendments and agreements, doesn't contain many of the elements that would provide people with stronger protections from groups that want to spread hate.

The laws that tackle racial vilification have long been an ambition of many in our parliament. This would have occurred in this parliament if the coalition and the Greens had done what was really being asked of them by this nation in this most horrific moment: the largest terrorist massacre of Australians in our history. Of course, we have to continue to tackle hate at its source, and I urge the coalition and the Greens to look to their hearts and deeply consider whether they will continue to allow the filth to be espoused on our streets.

What we know is that hateful words metastasised into violence and into destruction. In our social media, these tropes, this hateful speech and the invitation for people to write hateful responses has turned what once was a source of connection into a social sewer. We're all swimming in it. That has got to change, and we can all do our part with regard to that.

In closing, I want to refer to a piece of correspondence that I received from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. A lot of the resistance to this antivilification that led to that section of the bill being removed is arguable but not defensible in this historical moment. I received with this letter a copy of Pope Leo XIV's first papal document. It's called Dilexi te. In Catholic theology, the term 'option for the poor' is for people discriminated against or suffering in any way. The Pope said:

… God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.

This legislation could have been absolutely a choice, a radical choice, in favour of the weakest. But it is weakened and, mark my words, we will need to return and attend to the racial vilification dimensions of this legislation that were so abruptly ripped from it because of inexplicable political resistance that should belong in another time.

Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Antisemitism has no place in Australian society. I condemn the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi. The murderers who carried out that atrocity have terrified Australia's Jewish community. Australians, no matter who they are, where they come from or who they pray to should feel safe and be safe to assemble and celebrate a religious holiday without fearing for their lives. The terrorists have also jeopardised the lives of Australia's migrant communities, who have already been subject to increased discrimination and abuse.

I support measures that will restrict access to firearms and reduce hate in our communities. Support for the latter is conditional on those measures being very specific and targeted at addressing hate, and reasonably appropriate and adapted to achieve that goal in line with the Lange Test adopted by the High Court in determining whether a law unduly burdens the freedom of political communication implied by the Constitution.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the class that proved itself most unable to rise to the occasion has been the political class. The politicking that occurred in the wake of the Bondi shooting has been sickening. On the night of the attack, the Leader of the Opposition offered the government her full and unconditional support in responding to the massacre. In the days that followed, the Leader of the Opposition, Ms Ley, moved away from this principled and decent position. She began to echo Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's suggestions that our Prime Minister and our government bore soul responsibility for the attack. At a time of national crisis, she chose to divide Australians. It was not long until openly bad-faith statements were being made, such as demanding that the Prime Minister recall parliament before Christmas, despite knowing full well that drafting, let alone giving proper consideration to such complicated legislative measures in that time frame, would be impossible. Now that the parliament has returned, she has decided that everything needs to be slowed down. It was wedge politics at its worst. Not long after the attack, the member for Canning, Mr Hastie, in the other place began making statements that immigration was the cause of this attack. No doubt it was the influence of Mr Hastie and others like him that pushed Ms Ley to politicise this issue. The conduct of Josh Frydenberg was similarly beyond the pale. Some of the people now calling for stronger hate laws were arguing a decade ago that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act needed to be repealed.

Australians will not forget how the Senate and the parliament responded to this crisis. The politicisation of this issue has extended far beyond anything that could be reasonably connected to this horrific attack. The New South Wales government has abolished freedom of assembly; instead, making the right to protest a privilege that it can dole out as it sees fit. The idea that Australians protesting against a genocide bear any responsibility for what happened is so cynical, so offensive. The adoption of a definition of 'antisemitism' by the federal government that sees no difference between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews is a decision that will further weaken social cohesion, not strengthen it.

The Australians who have marched against genocide are on the right side of history, and I will never apologise for calling for a Palestinian state, which was an action that ended my career in the Labor Party. It saw me hounded out of the party that, in recognising a Palestinian state last year, conceded that I had been doing the right thing all along. In the media, the campaign for a royal commission was as bad faith as the Prime Minister's struggle against it. The avalanche of open letters became farcical when a collective of Australian sports stars offered their opinion on whether letters patent should be issued.

At the same time, the Prime Minister dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. He said he did not need input from the families of the victims of Bondi and that he was listening to actual experts. This remark was so disgraceful—as were all the other meritless excuses offered during the fight against a royal commission. This was only succeeded by the utter goal of, after backflipping on a royal commission, pretending it was always the plan of his government. The Prime Minister saying, 'This hasn't been done up this morning; we have been working on this for weeks,' will be remembered as the 'we have always been at war with Eastasia' of this period. I sincerely hope that Commissioner Bell is able to hand down a report that will have practical effects in reducing antisemitism hate in this country and addressing flaws in our national security frameworks.

If you look at the draft Senate program that was published last week, it says that this chamber would be debating the 'Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026' today. We heard from the Prime Minister that nothing would be dropped and the bill would not be split. Since then, the highly contentious racial vilification offence has been dropped and the bill has been split. We have seen that the government will not move forward with proposals that do not have the coalition's support. Once again, as with the migration amendments in 2024, as with the electoral reform and as with the mandatory sentencing, the Liberals are governing from the opposition.

I have a range of concerns with these bills—some of which I outlined in my submission to the needlessly and dangerously rushed PJCIS inquiry—and, to summarise, there are a few points I'd like to raise. Much of the hate speech changes are window dressings, through increased sentences for existing offences and new aggravating factors for existing offences. The changes to the Migration Act would allow the minister to cancel or deny visas to people who might incite division. Stopping hatred is one thing—and it's a good thing—but kicking people out of Australia based on speculation is quite another.

Visa holders in Australia should be able to engage in peaceful protest as freely as Australian citizens can. The proposed prohibited hate group framework hands an unprecedented amount of power to the executive in a manner, as others have noted, that is similar to the Menzies government's ban on the Communist Party, which was rejected by the High Court and the Australian people in a referendum. If these powers to declare organisations fell into the wrong hands, the results could be catastrophic. I found it much easier to support reforms to our firearm laws, but I still have concerns with the broad drafting of the new firearm material offences. These provisions, like both bills, were rushed through parliament and through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which means that the deficiencies of the reforms will not be known until they become law.

Section 51 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that, as elected representatives of the people of Australia, we have the power—and I would argue, the duty—to enact laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth. It is the responsibility, however, of the entire apparatus of government to ensure that these laws are operating soundly. While we do not have the full picture yet, there are many questions that need to be asked of counterterrorism officials and, particularly, ASIO to identify where their processes went wrong.

The natural instinct of some, particularly our media class, is to demand more laws, but we must be considered in doing so. Knee-jerk legislation passed in response to an outrage is, at best, ill thought out and, at worst, harmful. Terrorism and antisemitism in Australia will not go away by sending a few bits of paper down Dunrossil Drive. It requires a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society push to not only foil terrorist plots before they occur but to tackle the causes of terrorism and close off the pathways that lead people towards extremism.

The Prime Minister has arrogantly decreed that, with unprecedented haste, these bills will pass through both houses on the same day they were introduced. This arbitrary deadline will lead to this parliament missing issues in the drafting that would have been spotted through a proper inquiry process. While I hope that this parliament enacts wise laws tonight, unfortunately, history shows that a lack of scrutiny leads to poorer outcomes. I urge all senators, all of my colleagues in this place, to conduct themselves deliberately, thoughtfully and with the interests of the nation and the people we represent in mind. Thank you.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I hand the call to Senator Scarr, I believe there's a second reading amendment in your name. Will you seek to move that now?

Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I, and also on behalf of Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman, Thorpe and Tyrrell, move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute:

"(a) the Senate notes that:

(i) this bill includes complex legislative changes that make significant amendments to hate speech and migration laws,

(ii) independent senators have had the final text of the bill for less than 12 hours,

(iii) the Government only undertook very limited consultation on the exposure draft legislation, only provided three days for public submissions on the bill and a week for parliamentary consideration and public consultation,

(iv) time for parliamentary debate of this bill has been significantly curtailed with many senators not afforded an opportunity to speak on or ask questions about the bill on behalf of their communities,

(v) there is strong community support for combatting antisemitism and all forms of racism, hatred and violent extremism however, a broad range of experts, community leaders, organisations and members of the community have expressed serious concerns about the bill and have called for more time for it to be considered,

(vi) serious concerns have been expressed about potential unintended consequences and the bill's potential to impinge on legitimate freedom of expression, especially in the absence of a federal Human Rights Act,

(vii) serious concerns have been expressed about the failure to extend new proposed protections to other groups with protected attributes creating a two-tier system of protections and potentially putting further stress on social cohesion,

(viii) there is ambiguity and uncertainty about many of the definitions and provisions including serious matters like retrospectivity and inclusion of a 'good faith' defence, the introduction of recklessness-based fault elements and a reversal of the burden of proof,

(ix) the bill lacks procedural fairness safeguards, particularly in relation to changes to migration law, and

(x) to be successful in advancing towards the Government's worthy ambition of national unity, Australians and their representatives need a fair opportunity to be heard, to consider such significant legislative changes and the time and political will to develop and negotiate amendments in good faith while respecting parliamentary process; and

(b) the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 3 February

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, taking on board Senator Payman's comments. I listened very carefully to Senator Payman's speech. I do so because I believe this bill is in the national interest. I sincerely believe there's an imperative that we pass this bill, and I believe there's a great risk—some people have been talking about the risks in some of these provisions, the risks of the process et cetera. I say: consider the risk of us not passing this bill. Consider the risk of us not including these additional offences in the Criminal Code. Consider the risks of us not strengthening the visa cancellation and refusal processes in the Migration Act. Consider how those risks could be manifested again in the future, as they were on the beach at Bondi on 14 December. That is a risk we have to all carefully consider. In doing so, and after great careful consideration, I support this bill. I sincerely believe this bill is in the national interest and in the interests of all Australians.

Before giving my detailed comments, I would like to first place on the record my regards and compliments to the staff of the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of Home Affairs. They have been working tirelessly in relation to this legislation and all of the extensive supporting material, so I really do want to acknowledge their efforts. It is only through their efforts that we're in a position this evening to pass this legislation in the national interest. Let me put that on the record.

There are a number of points I'd like to make in rebuttal to some of the arguments that have been made from those across the chamber. First, there were a number of speakers on the Labor side who attacked the coalition's issue with the hate speech law in particular—the proposed racial vilification offence. To them I say this: the coalition makes no apology, no apology at all, for deeply scrutinising that proposed offence. We make no apology at all, because it's our job to defend the balance we achieve in this place and this parliament between, on the one hand, the freedoms of all Australians, which we cherish, and, on the other hand, making sure we protect all Australians. So we make no apology for discharging that duty, which is our duty as members of this parliament.

Second, I believe that the Labor Party, the Labor government, should have consulted with the coalition as soon as possible before the briefing which occurred last Monday evening in relation to the proposed bill. If that consultation had occurred earlier, I think there would have been better prospects for us landing on an agreed position with respect to that particular clause.

Third, it isn't just the opposition that has raised concerns with respect to that hate speech offence, that racial vilification offence, which is now out of the bill. It wasn't just the coalition; it was stakeholders across the Australian community. Thousands of Australians made submissions raising their concerns to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security in relation to that offence. Faith leaders—Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh—raised concerns about getting the balance right in relation to freedom of religion. They raised concerns. So don't criticise the coalition for listening to the Australian people or for listening to stakeholders including faith leaders that were saying that that clause in particular was too rushed. That's our job—to listen to the Australian people—and we did that.

The second point I want to make is on the comments which have been made in particular by members of the Greens and the crossbench in relation to the prohibited hate group sections. Those sections are incredibly important. One, they only apply if there has been criminal conduct or conduct in the nature of criminal conduct. That is an extremely high bar. Second, the director-general of ASIO has to identify a risk of politically motivated violence or the promotion of communal violence. Again, that is an extremely high bar. Third, there's a disallowance process. Any prohibition has to come before this parliament to provide an opportunity for all members of this parliament to raise their concerns and for it to be disallowed if a majority of the elected representatives believe it should be. There are checks and balances in relation to these provisions, appropriate checks and balances, and they only apply and will only apply in the most extreme of situations, in situations where they need to apply to protect the Australian people. The last point I make on the prohibited hate groups is this: there is a link to the provisions in the Migration Act, and the ability of the government to strengthen processes and procedures to cancel and refuse visas is dependent upon those provisions being passed, in part. You can't strengthen the provisions under the Migration Act without passing those other provisions. They're mutually complementary.

The third point I want to make is that this law applies for the benefit of all Australians. It applies equally to protect all Australians. Whatever their race, whatever their country of origin, whatever their ethnicity, this law applies equally to everyone. That includes our First Nations people, it includes the descendants of those who came to this country generations ago, and it includes our newest Australians. It applies to everyone equally. It doesn't matter what your nationality, whatever your race or whatever your country of origin is; you get the benefit of these laws.

I want to say something about Islamic State. There have been references to the ideology which appears to have inspired those responsible for the Bondi massacre. The reality is that the Islamist extremism that underpins Islamic State is a scourge around the whole world. It's a global phenomenon. Let me give you the list of terrorist acts which have occurred around the world as a result of that extremist Islamist ideology that underpins Islamic State. There have been terrorist attacks in Iraq, Belgium, Canada, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Denmark, Tunisia, Yemen, Turkiye, Kuwait, Egypt, Russia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Israel, Malaysia, Jordan, Sweden and Spain—all over the world—and the victims of those terrorist attacks have been people of all races, all ethnicities and all religions. Those terrorist attacks have targeted churches, synagogues and mosques. They've targeted Christians, Muslims, Jews and ethnic minorities all over the world—people of all faiths. They've attacked hotels, tourist sites and the Supreme Court of Afghanistan before the Taliban retook Afghanistan. They're attacking women and girls attending universities and schools. They're attacking the Save the Children office in Afghanistan. They're attacking voter registration centres. The extremism which underpins Islamic State is a scourge, and we need the ability to do everything that we can to protect all Australians, regardless of their race, their country of origin, their ethnicity or their religion—all Australians. This bill achieves that purpose in the national interest.

The fourth point I'd like to make is this issue that's been raised about the Migration Act being amended to change the word 'would' to 'might'. I want to put this in context and I want to read the particular section. Those listening to this debate, listen to this very carefully and tell me what your views are. This is the character test. This is from section 501(6):

Character test

(6) For the purposes of this section, a person does not pass the character test—

which means there are processes so that their application for a visa is refused or a visa can be cancelled. One of the subsections is:

(d) in the event the person were allowed to enter or to remain in Australia, there is a risk that the person would:

(i) engage in criminal conduct in Australia; or

(ii) harass, molest, intimidate or stalk another person in Australia; or

(iii) vilify—

et cetera, or—

(v) represent a danger to the Australian community …

At the moment, that provision says that, to trigger the character test, the minister or the department has to form a view that the person 'would' do those things. Is that the appropriate standard? I don't think so. I think that if you ask the Australian people whether or not it should be 'would' or 'might', just about a hundred per cent of the Australian people would say that it should be 'might'—that we shouldn't take that risk. Why should we take that risk?

People come to this country from all over the world because of our values, for safety. And the Greens and others are telling us that we should have to make a positive decision that that person 'would' actually pose a risk instead of 'might'. I think it's plain we can't afford to take those risks. We're talking about the lives of Australian people, and we saw a manifestation of what happens when people in this country, whatever their origin, actually engage in this behaviour. So I think it is reasonable and proportionate that that word 'would' should be changed to 'might'.

If there is a red flag raised with respect to someone who is seeking the privilege to come to our country, then there is both a preventive element to our responsibilities, to make sure that person doesn't have the opportunity to come to the country if they 'might' have an impact on the lives and security of Australians, and a protective element, if a person is in that category and they're currently in our country—preventive and protective. I think the amendment which is proposed is reasonable and proportionate, especially, as Senator O'Neill said, in the context of what happened at Bondi, which has brought us all together—15 innocent people shot dead.

I don't believe these laws will, in any way, unfairly apply to the vast majority of people who come to our country in good faith, who in many cases bring an appreciation for our freedoms—because they're coming from countries where they were denied those freedoms—and bring so many things to our country. In fact, these laws will assist to protect those people and all other Australians. I believe these laws are, in fact, reasonable and proportionate. We shouldn't have to wait for someone to commit a crime and to cause harm to Australians before we act. We shouldn't have to wait for that harm to occur before we act. We have to adopt a risk based approach in relation to immigration and in relation to cancellation and refusal of visas.

I note that the amendments proposed to the Migration Act reflect the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism's recommendations with respect to changes to migration laws, and the coalition made a promise—a commitment—that we would do everything we could to see those recommendations enforced. Ms Segal, in her report, recommended government actions to screen visa applicants for antisemitic views or affiliations, consistent with a risk based approach. As I've set out, the amendments to the Migration Act do just that. Also, ensuring the Migration Act and associated decision-making review processes effectively facilitate visa refusals or cancellations for antisemitic conduct and rhetoric—the proposed amendments do that. The coalition has engaged in good faith with the government in relation to these changes, and I'm very, very pleased that we're in a position this evening where this bill will be passed with the support of the coalition. That is in our national interest, and that is in the interest of protecting the safety of all Australians.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. December the 14th, 2025, is a date that will forever be etched in the story of our nation. It was the first night of Hanukkah, a festival of light, family and celebration, that soon became a night of unspeakable, ISIS inspired, antisemitic terror. Fifteen innocent people were murdered and so many more were injured simply for being who they were.

That sort of targeted violence didn't appear out of nowhere. Antisemitism rarely announces itself with sirens. It accumulates, it normalises, and it spreads. As chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, said:

It is not just the Jewish community that is in mourning, our entire country is in mourning, and now is time for a national soul-searching.

Now, more than ever, we need unity across our nation. What happened at Bondi demands that we confront both the motivation of this violence and the method by which it was carried out. Our bill deals with both.

Earlier today, during our firearms bill, we debated the 'how'. This bill, in particular, deals with the 'why'. We know the motivation behind this atrocity was fuelled by hate, with antisemitism at its core. For Jewish Australians, that hatred is not abstract. It is lived. Last year, an annual report released by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded more than 1,600 anti-Jewish incidents in just a single year: Nazi swastikas painted on the fences of a Sydney synagogue in January 2025; firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024, while people were inside—an attack ASIO has linked to the Iranian government; a pig's leg thrown into a Jewish business in Sydney in August 2025. Just last night in Melbourne, a group of Jewish teenagers were allegedly abused in a drive-by incident by some vile people yelling, 'Heil Hitler,' out of a ute, almost running one of the boys over. Absolutely no-one should have to face any of this. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry's research director, Julie Nathan, put it perfectly:

We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society—

and become part of the mainstream—

where it is normalised and allowed to fester and spread …

That is why this bill matters. We're making sure visas can be refused or cancelled for people who promote hatred or support terrorists or prohibited hate groups. Where a visa is refused on these grounds, permanent re-entry bans will apply unless the decision is overturned.

We're introducing a new framework to ban organised hate groups, which allows us to go after these right-wing Nazi organisations. We're increasing the maximum penalties for hate based threats and violence, from five years to seven years for base offences and from seven years to 10 years for more serious cases. We're making it a serious crime for extremist leaders to use their position of authority to preach violence—up to 12 years imprisonment. We're introducing tougher laws for those who try to radicalise children. We're making racial hatred an aggravating factor when sentencing federal crimes. And we're strengthening the law against the public display of Nazi symbols and symbols from other prohibited organisations.

We know these laws won't erase hatred. We know there will still be those individuals with appalling and vile views. But they will make it harder for that hatred to be organised and spread, and harder to recruit. We're already seeing this in practice. Last week, Neo-Nazi group the National Socialists Network—the NSN—one of Australia's most prominent white nationalist organisations, announced it would fully disband. That disbandment includes co-projects like White Australia, the European Australian Movement and the White Australia Party.

We've also seen criticism of this bill from groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, who are deemed a terrorist organisation in the UK, Germany, India and many other countries. These reforms will make it harder for groups like theirs to operate. The National Socialists Network was directly called out last year by the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess, for the harm they pose to Australia. If the Nazis are taking a step back because of our stronger laws, you have to ask yourself, 'Why would anyone want to vote against this bill?' If radical organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir are complaining, that tells us something very important. Why would anyone vote against legislation designed to weaken organised hatred and protect Australians?

Last year, a childcare centre in south-east Sydney was set on fire and spray-painted with vile, antisemitic graffiti. We've seen synagogues and Jewish schools armed with security guards. We've seen cars set on fire and shops in the suburbs being vandalised with swastikas. This hasn't just been going on for the last two years; we've seen this kind of hate for decades now. Personally, I was raised Catholic. I grew up in a largely Anglo-Celtic community. We never had to face anything like this. I cannot imagine what it must be like to send your children to a school where security guards are part of everyday life, or what it must be like to explain to your children why their faith means extra precautions and why other children have to think about these things at all.

This is a time where we rise above politics, where we come together and act. This is what good governments and oppositions should do. We saw it after Port Arthur, after the Hoddle Street massacre and after the Lindt cafe siege. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chair, Peter Wertheim, has repeatedly implored for new protections and unity. He said:

How much worse do things need to get before we as a nation finally have the courage to tackle the deliberate promotion of antisemitic hatred that is the heart of the problem?

Those were his words.

Yet, even in a moment like this, there are those in this parliament who would rather play politics than focus on keeping Australians safe. Just last week, on 14 January, we heard Senator Bridget McKenzie single out Western Sydney as a so-called part of Islamic extremism, on ABC Radio National. She did it again today during our firearms bill debate, saying that Western Sydney suburbs are the cause of this shooting event. That's nearly three million people. To smear an entire region, to reduce millions of Australians, to a stereotype—just think about what that means. I've raised my kids in Western Sydney, like many others, and I've raised them there for 15 years. I've still got friends, family and relatives living in that area. I visit my duty electorates of Fowler and Lindsay regularly. The place is full of mums, dads, families, everyday Australians. To dismiss all of that with one sweeping label isn't just reckless. It's also lazy. It's lazy language, lazy politics and even lazier leadership which only deepens division further. Have a think about what you said. We all need to do better. Senator McKenzie needs to write those words.

We need to look instead to the bravery of those who showed us the very best of Australia during a dark period. That's what we need to do. Look at the courage and quick action of police officers, first responders and healthcare workers and at the selfless acts of everyday Australians who stepped forward to help others in moments of fear and chaos. Just days ago in Melbourne, a Muslim community leader, Imam Ismet Purdic, and his wife were allegedly hunted on the road in a racially motivated attack. Horribly, three strangers shouted racist abuse, threw rubbish at their car, blocked their path and forced them into a service station where his wife was threatened and he was punched in the face. Yet his response wasn't anger or division. He said:

My message for all of us in Australia is just to stay together to help each other to stay safe, and not to allow anyone, doesn't matter … his religion or beliefs, to break this peace, security and all [the] good values we believe in.

…   …   …

We must, as Australians, fight against hate, Islamophobia, antisemitism … we must stay together.

That's the Australia we know. That's the Australia we must stand up for and protect. That is why these reforms matter—to draw a clear line in the sand that hate won't be excused or allowed to grow unchecked. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, the people's parliament has descended into chaos today. We've been called to Canberra for an early sitting to vote on an amended bill that was introduced into the house this morning. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 is being rammed through parliament without Australians having a chance to form an opinion on it. It is my job to represent the people of Western Australia, yet I haven't been given time to read the bill and listen to Australians. This is not democracy.

And this isn't just any bill. Laws relating to terrorism in our country couldn't be more important. The first draft of the bill saw Australians be given only 48 hours to read and comment on it. Despite this, there were over 7,000 submissions, and those are the ones that got through. Now the updated bill is being rammed through without any time to scrutinise it. It's okay for others here to say: 'Everything's alright now. Trust us. We gutted the old one, nobody's losing any rights and we're all going to be safe. Kumbaya.' Well, if we had some time to review it and consider it properly, we could have had an informed opinion.

The cynic inside me is wondering: 'Why do you silence your political opponents? What are you scared of?' One Nation has been warning of the rise in antisemitism and radical Islam for years. Antisemitism has surged in Australia under the Albanese Labor government. This bill does not fix the problem. The gun laws don't fix the problem. This bill is a dog's breakfast and won't stop antisemitism. It won't stop radical Islam. What it will stop is legitimate criticism and nationalism. The bill barely mentions antisemitism other than in the title. It is a facade. We know the government already has the powers to stop Nazis and deport them and to stop anyone they want coming here. They don't even like world class tennis players or political commentators. They have done it.

This bill is being rushed through this parliament without proper scrutiny or debate. We've come to expect this from Labor. It seems the least transparent government ever is at it again. It seems there have been a lot of backroom parties and One Nation wasn't invited. Now we will be told we didn't support the bill. Well, the bill is fundamentally dishonest, as it diverts attention away from Labor's incompetence. Australia doesn't need new laws; we need a government with the courage to enforce the current laws. As the government have already proven they can't enforce our current laws, we have no confidence in their being able to enforce this bill. Labor's incompetence has led to this mess, and now they are using it as an excuse to rush through a vague bill that doesn't define the very matters it should be addressing. The bill is so vague and rushed that the Australian Jewish Association was urging all members of parliament to reject the bill.

This bill, if passed, represents the greatest restriction on free speech that Australia has ever seen. It will result in drastic and draconian restrictions. Hate speech has always been about preventing discussions and censoring opponents. Banning free speech is not the answer, banning more of our rights is not the answer and banning more guns is not the answer. Banning terrorists is the answer.

At a time when Islamic terrorism is on the rise, Labor keeps importing more of it. Does 'ISIS brides' ring any bells? This is what is putting our country in danger. Every Australian needs to push for the deportation of the small number of radicalised terrorists that the government have allowed to migrate here. We must stop bringing in more. The Department of Home Affairs has revealed there are 230 potential terrorists living in Australia. They are taking part in anti-extremism programs—taxpayer funded, I'm guessing. One-third of them are under 18 years old, and 40 per cent are primarily motivated by violent extremist ideology. They must be deported. Australia cannot be a home for terrorists. The Labor government are deliberately creating this dangerous situation because it fits their globalist agenda. This bill fits their globalist agenda.

Just one day after the massacre, Labor went to the top drawer of their pet projects and pulled out their censorship and gun laws. The Commonwealth Criminal Code already criminalises the urging or advocating of violence against groups or individuals; threats of violence or property damage; and conduct intended to cause, or reckless as to causing, serious harm. These provisions have been in the Criminal Code since 2010. They are not new. Nobody has been prosecuted under sections 80.2A to 80.2BE ever—not once. Prosecutions have been made under state, but not federal, criminal law. Now, the penalties are being increased for provisions that have never been used. The constitutionality of this bill is in doubt. It will result in a referral to the High Court.

It seems to be the modus operandi of this Labor government: write a bill that isn't constitutional and ram it through the parliament, guillotining any debate and silencing dissenting voices. The Australian CDC Bill and the environmental reforms bills are examples of this. Now we have the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026—split, redrafted and forced through in one day. Australians are being force-fed globalist control. In the House of Representatives today, Labor voted against an amendment to the proposed bill to make the burning of the Australian flag a crime. Who do you people represent?

Prime Minister Albanese and the Labor Party have decided to deflect any and all responsibility at a time when people are at the depths of incredible grief and loss. One Nation are not going away and vow to expose this government's culpability. Albanese has got to go. I intend to move the amendment standing in my name, as circulated in the chamber.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The parliament is sitting tonight because Australia experienced an act of domestic terrorism on our shores just one month ago. This was the worst terrorism event in Australia in our nation's history. This is an event that will forever change our nation. Australians will never feel safe again after two hate filled Islamist extremists perpetrated a callous attack on Australian Jewish families at Bondi Beach on 14 December last year. This attack on Jewish families on our soil is an attack on all Australian families. An horrific event such as what occurred on 14 December calls for a demonstration of unifying leadership from our nation's government. And, unfortunately, it is what is likely to be the defining moment of the prime ministership of Mr Albanese, as he has systematically failed to rise to the occasion yet again.

He failed in the immediate aftermath of the attack by refusing to call out Islamic extremism and antisemitism in our country and, instead, sought to create a political diversion with this attack on one million law-abiding firearm owners. Australians have seen through that diversion, whether or not they are law-abiding firearm owners, and unfortunately the Senate, with the Greens and Labor joining together, has passed that legislation.

The Prime Minister initially refused to call a royal commission. He needed Jewish families to be publicly crying and begging him before he could bring himself to. The Australian legal fraternity, sports stars, community members, the opposition and crossbenchers were all calling for a royal commission so that our country could understand how such an abhorrent thing could happen in our corner of the Earth, which has been such a place of solace for the Jewish community.

He refused to call a royal commission in the same way that he refused to act on the growing antisemitism post the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas. The slaughter of Israelis and the spike in antisemitism are unparalleled. He instigated, under pressure, an antisemitism envoy who handed him recommendations for action six months ago. They are not in place. We've debated in this chamber his inaction ad nauseam for 2½ years. We've borne witness to the antisemitism in our own communities—whether it be Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or beyond—and it has fallen on deaf ears with the Greens, it has fallen on deaf ears with the Labor Party, and it has fallen on the deaf ears of this Prime Minister.

The real tragedy of the Bondi attack is that the government has had more than two years to respond and take action, and it has failed to do so. There are many things the government could have done to protect our Jewish community which don't even require legislation in this place. I've sat around a cabinet table, a national security committee and an expenditure review committee. You can make decisions in government. You can actually make things happen. This government could have assisted Jewish families in the aftermath of that and assisted them in paying for the armed guards that Australian Jewish children have to attend school with. That didn't require the Senate to come back. Hate legislation is not required to take practical action and to protect Australian children going to school—because, right now, the Jewish community is paying for armed guards at kindergartens and schools right across this country. That is unacceptable.

The government could have called out antisemitism and Islamic extremism without, on every single occasion, drawing this false equivalence with Islamophobia as if it is somehow equivalent. The data says no. Mosques are not being bombed, children attending Islamic schools are not being spat on, and our wonderful Muslim community in this country is not being shot as they celebrate Eid.

Instead of taking the invitation of bipartisanship from the coalition to come together in the face of this tragedy on the very next day and sit down as the parties of government, saying, 'Despite our philosophical and political differences, how do we address this scourge, and how do we address it in a way that meets community expectations?' this prime minister chose to play politics. He could've brought the opposition into his confidence to develop and agree on legislative changes to protect our Jewish community and the wider community.

The evidence of this failure has been writ large over the last five days. Poorly drafted legislation has been rushed through this parliament, and parliamentarians, in both houses and of all creeds and colours, have made the point that this is a bad way to legislate and it is a shame for our parliament to behave this way. We don't always agree, but we're in this place because we think parliament matters and the Australian people's views should matter. It's our responsibility and job to bring the diversity of views to the table in order to find solutions. We've had poorly drafted legislation rushed through the parliament that was guillotined in the House and guillotined in the Senate. There's been no normal scrutiny and no public advice from impacted stakeholders, community groups, agencies, experts, academics or the legal fraternity. There's been none of that.

Last week, the government's legislation was effectively friendless in the community. That forced the Prime Minister to split the bill. He said previously that it couldn't be separated. When the parliament rises tomorrow ahead of Thursday's day of mourning, the sad reality is neither of the bills set to pass the parliament enjoy bipartisan support. As an Australian who has strongly supported and been a close friend of our Jewish community for many years—I am a proud Zionist and I'm sure the haters will hate on me online as they do every time I say that—it pains me to witness the way this government is trashing the normal process of parliamentary scrutiny in a vain attempt to secure a fleeting political win off the grief of our Jewish community.

I want to commend the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, the shadow minister for home affairs, Senator Duniam, and the shadow minister for foreign affairs, Senator Cash, for the good-faith way they have conducted negotiations with the government on this bill. It's been a terrible example of legislative process, with over 500 pages of documents to do with the legislation subjected to committee investigation with almost no notice and critically important stakeholders provided with no genuine opportunity to scrutinise the proposed laws.

The report of PJCIS, our intelligence and security committee—which I've had the great honour to sit on in the past—had a dissenting report. The report was tabled far too late to contribute meaningful amendments. This is not the way it's supposed to work. That is why tonight, instead of sitting till tomorrow so all senators could have their say on this legislation and the bits they agree with, could outline the pieces that they don't agree with and could ask questions of ministers—which communities expect this chamber to be able to provide—all of that's being guillotined in a guillotined debate. Given the potential serious implications for the freedoms of Australian citizens, national security legislation deserves to pass a very high bar of scrutiny and expert development.

Unfortunately, despite the many positive elements of this legislation, the government has not been able to convince my party room, the National Party, that adequate safeguards are in place for the proposed hate crimes. We do want to ban extreme organisations that would seek to do our community harm. We would have liked to have been able to have the opportunity to participate robustly in a timely way with expert advice to get to that place. It is for this reason that I will foreshadow an amendment to the second reading debate on this bill to refer this legislation to the scrutiny of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee of the Senate for inquiry and to report swiftly by 2 March 2026.

This public process, unlike the sham PJCIS inquiry that was run, where submissions have not even all been uploaded. As the bill is passing the House of Representatives, stakeholders across this country took the time in the limited time they had to put in their views, and the public and senators, the House of Representatives, haven't been even able to avail themselves of that wisdom being made public in time for votes to be cast. This government makes a mockery of their Bondi response in how they treat this parliament and in how they treat the parliamentarians that Australians have sent here to work hard on their behalf.

Everything you need to know about this Prime Minister is writ large in the last month. It's all about the politics. It is still Sydney University student politics and it is an affront to those killed. The Bondi Islamic terrorist attack is an affront and an abuse of power against the million law-abiding firearm owners who have taken a hit because it sounds tough to get tough on gun laws when they're not the issue, because you are too gutless to even put the words 'Islamic extremism' in the bill that's supposed to deal with it. Of course the National Party supports tougher migration laws to get hate preachers off our streets, on a plane and out of our country to stop the harm of radicalisation. But this Prime Minister has used this opportunity to divide our country, to divide this parliament, for his own political advantage and that says everything about this man who we call Prime Minister.

Our Senate inquiry will give the parliament adequate time to properly scrutinise the bill, to call the expert witnesses, to have the debate in public and it will allow us to pass this very, very quickly. I urge senators to do the right thing, to support our push for a Senate inquiry and more time to get this right, because, as you have heard tonight, it's not right. The inquiry could allow community organisations to put forward their views and ultimately recommend any amendments that might be necessary to protect Australia's Jewish community. I will also be moving amendments circulated in my name to the bill, and Senator Canavan will also be moving amendments that have the support of the National Party. These amendments in their totality provide National Party MPs and senators with further confidence that adequate safeguards are in place.

In closing my contribution so other members can participate, I reflect the deep disappointment in a Labor Party government that is not able to bring the parliament a genuinely bipartisan set of legislative proposals that would have done justice to our parliament, our people and the slain from the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill is being debated in extraordinary circumstances. It comes after the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi, carried out on the first day of Hanukkah, a deliberate attack of targeted hatred that took innocent lives, traumatised survivors and turned a place of everyday safety into a scene of terror for Jewish Australians and the nation. In recalling parliament, our first action was to come together through the condolence motion to honour those who were killed and those whose lives were forever changed. Our next responsibility is to act.

This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, is about drawing clear lines around what Australia will and will not tolerate. It's about ensuring that those who seek to spread hatred, radicalise others or exploit positions of authority to encourage violence face consequences that reflect the seriousness of their conduct. This is about protecting Australians. The government originally developed an integrated package of reforms. That was the right approach. Hate does not exist in isolation. Extremism does not respect neat legislative boundaries. Criminal law, migration settings, firearms regulations and intelligence powers all intersect when it comes to public safety.

We govern in the parliament that Australians elected. Faced with the reality that the full package would not pass as one bill, the government made a clear and responsible choice: we split the legislation so the urgent and necessary reforms would not be delayed. This bill represents part of that original response that deals directly with criminal law and migration powers. It should not be read as a lesser response. It is a serious and substantial set of reforms.

This bill changes what happens when the hate moves from rhetoric into real harm. When a person in a position of authority uses their standing to advocate violence or threaten harm against a community, the law now responds with clarity. Influence brings responsibility. Where that responsibility is abused to radicalise or incite violence, the consequences are serious and reflect the risks created. When hatred escalates into threats, intimidation or violence, the law no longer treats those acts as isolated or incidental. Hate crimes are designed to do more than just injure an individual. They are intended to unsettle entire communities. This bill strengthens penalties so the law recognises that broader impact. Where a crime is driven by racial or ethnic hatred, courts are required to take that motivation into account at sentencing. That matters because crimes motivated by hate leave deeper and longer lasting harm, well beyond the moment the offence is committed.

The bill also addresses the organised nature of modern extremism. Groups that exist to promote or normalise hate based violence can now be disrupted before they embed themselves. The new listing framework targets recruitment, funding and coordination, supported by intelligence, advice, legal safeguards and parliamentary oversight. The public display of hate symbols is also dealt with more effectively. These symbols are used to intimidate, to glorify violence and to signal exclusion, including online. The changes in this bill strengthen enforcement in a modern context by preserving legitimate uses for education, journalism and historical discussion.

The bill further strengthens migration settings so that the people who seek to come to Australia to spread hatred or extremism can be refused entry or removed. Australia remains an open and welcoming country, but openness does not require tolerating those who seek to divide or incite harm. Taken together, these measures are not about overreach; they're about protection. They allow earlier intervention, clearer responses and stronger backing for communities who have been targeted by hate.

As a Tasmanian I cannot approach this debate without reflecting on Port Arthur. That tragedy changed our country. What followed was not perfect, but it was decisive. Across political parties and across jurisdictions, Australians chose safety over hesitation. That moment was defined by unity. We have, again, been confronted with a moment that demands the same resolve. Most people in this place understand that. Many have acted in good faith, but there has also been division. History remembers whether parliaments rose to the occasion.

This bill does not do everything—no single piece of legislation ever does—but it does something important. It moves the law forward. It responds to a real threat. The Jewish community has asked this parliament to act. This government has listened. Where consensus was possible, we have sought it. Where delay would have left Australians less safe, we have chosen progress. I commend this bill wholeheartedly to the Senate.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. I want to start by, again, remembering that we are here today because 15 people were murdered in a terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community in Bondi—the largest terrorist attack to happen on our shores. It was an attack designed to inspire fear and divide us. Jewish Australians, including here in the ACT, who were already concerned for the safety are now even more afraid. Parents have been left worrying about the safety of their children. Synagogues, schools and community centres, already needing constant security, have had to further upgrade protective measures—an unacceptable situation for any community in Australia.

We hoped such an attack would never happen on our shores, but it has, and we must respond with compassion and with unity. And, more than a right, it is the responsibility of our elected government to bring forward legislation and policy to respond to events such as these. It is what the community expects. However, it's also the responsibility of this Senate to review the government's bills, and particularly in a way that opens up scrutiny to the Australian people so that experts and the communities we represent can have their say and contribute to the laws that govern this land. That hasn't happened adequately in this instance. It's been farcical. We still have nine nongovernment senators on the speaking list to speak to this incredibly important consequential bill who will, likely, not get the opportunity.

Crossbenchers only received this bill, in this iteration, at 10 o'clock this morning, a mere 12 hours before being expected to vote on it. I too called for parliament to resume early so we could actually start this process and commence scrutiny, not to hastily legislate something in a single day and, for the Senate, in an afternoon and an evening. We should have done the condolence motion, introduced these bills, started the debate and then referred them to a Senate inquiry for more scrutiny and the time to properly consider, develop and negotiate amendments in good faith before voting in February or March. The crossbench, including the Greens, were not able to participate in the PJCIS inquiry—an inquiry that held two half-day hearings and only allowed three days for public submissions on the exposure draft legislation, which was already being changed less than a week after it was released. At the last election one-third of Australians gave their first preference to someone other than a major party, and, despite that representation, not a single crossbencher was allowed to ask questions of officials, experts and other witnesses at the inquiry about how these laws are expected to operate.

This bill is extremely consequential and potentially has big implications for people's freedoms to speak, to dissent and, potentially, to protest. It has implications for the kinds of protections vulnerable and persecuted groups are afforded and ensuring they apply equally to everyone. Rushing this process undermines trust in the government and in our political institutions. It undermines trust in this Senate, which should not act as a rubber stamp and should not conduct its business without debate.

Giving people a chance to be heard, coming together to work out what we can agree on and getting better at disagreeing well is so important when it comes to rebuilding social unity. We should be soberly considering changes to our national laws, out of respect for the people who have sent us here to represent them. We have a crisis of trust in political institutions, and the way this bill has been brought here today makes that worse. In moments such as these, where we are called to act together to improve community safety, good parliamentary process should not be seen as a barrier to good policy, but as an enabler.

In these moments, we have to listen to what the communities who sent us here are saying, and I fear that has not happened. My commitment to people of the ACT is to consider all bills in good faith and on their merits, and also to consult widely with experts and the community before I cast my vote on their behalf. This is a responsibility I take very seriously. In the time I've had available to me, I've done my best to do that.

Yesterday, I held three roundtable discussions, which included experts and members of the ACT community, about the firearms measures and on the exposure draft of this bill. This roundtable included leaders and a range of representatives from the ACT's Jewish community, Muslim community, Indian community, Chinese community, Canberra Palestinian community and South Sudanese community. It also included faith leaders, experts in civil liberties and human rights, women's safety organisations and campaigners for LGBTI rights. I also had the benefit of hearing from the ACT's Human Rights Commissioner.

While it's true to say that not everyone feels the same way about this bill, everyone was united in saying that the government should slow down and take the time to properly consult on the merits, impacts and risks of this bill. This was also reflected in a survey of Canberrans that I conducted over the weekend. Across about 1,000 responses, 75 per cent of Canberrans told me that they had serious concerns with the exposure draft of the bill and they thought it should be the subject of greater scrutiny before it passed.

Canberrans have told me that if we're going to pursue these laws then they need to be broader and protect those in our communities who are regularly the targets of hatred. This includes Jewish Australians, Muslim Australians, First Nations people, people with disability, the LGBTI community and all of our culturally and religiously diverse communities. Ninety-four per cent of people who took my survey said that this was a priority for them. They wanted equality under the law. A huge number of Canberrans—again, 94 per cent—told me that it was very important to avoid substantial restrictions on freedom of expression, including the right to protest. This is a challenging balance to get right, which makes it so important that we take the time to consult properly and carefully consider the drafting. Another concern raised included the religious text exemption. The visa changes and the listing of hate groups, both of which lack due process provisions, are among other concerns.

I want to take a moment to talk about the feedback I've received from the Jewish community in Canberra over the past month. Obviously, the Jewish community is not a monolith. Like any community in Australia, there are a range of views. There are many who feel that these laws to curb antisemitism are urgent, and who told me that in the wake of Bondi they felt isolated, alone, desperately worried for the safety of their community and desperately sad, but not entirely surprised, that years of growing antisemitism culminated in this most hateful attack.

They are calling for immediate measures to better protect them—this legislation, but also concrete measures like security upgrades and longer term initiatives like better education. There are others in the Jewish community who worry this bill may make antisemitism worse. I recently received a letter from 14 members of the Jewish community here in the ACT, and I thought, rather than paraphrase it, I would read part of it directly to the Senate. It says:

Our purpose in writing is not to minimise antisemitism or deny its reality. Antisemitism is real, it is dangerous, and it must be confronted seriously. But we are deeply troubled by the way Jewish identity and Jewish fear are being invoked to justify a legislative package that may reach far beyond the prevention of violence or intimidation, and into the regulation of political speech, protest, and association.

We have specific concerns about the substance of the Bill, including lowered intent thresholds for speech offences, expanded executive powers, and provisions that risk criminalising legitimate protest against the Israeli state and its conduct in Gaza. As Jews, we are particularly alive to the deep risks inherent in increasing the powers of the state to police language, behaviour and association—powers which have historically been used against our parents and grandparents.

We ask that you consider our views as Jewish constituents in the ACT. From our perspective, opposition to Israel's actions does not in itself amount to antisemitism, and we do not want our identity to be invoked as a justification for laws that risk weakening democratic freedoms for everyone.

We need to be able to recognise and respond to the rise in antisemitism in Australia. We need to acknowledge that the terrorist attack in Bondi was a repulsive act of antisemitism that targeted the Jewish community and that Jewish members of our community have been subject to the most vile and appalling treatment—from being spat on to having places of worship firebombed. I believe we can do that at the same time as we can recognise the hurt and ongoing hatred and discrimination being experienced by so many other people in our community as well.

The Bosnian Imam Ismet Purdic and his wife were attacked in Melbourne. Here in Canberra, the deputy chair of the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum, Diana Abdel-Rahman, was attacked in the street while wearing her hijab. Aunty Violet told my roundtable about her Ngunnawal people being called all manner of vile, racist terms, being subject to online abuse and being discriminated against institutionally—not to mention our appalling nationwide record on closing the gap and deaths in custody. These are a just few examples. They are by no means comprehensive, but they are illustrative of why protections need to apply broadly and why more needs to be done beyond a rushed and flawed bill.

Fundamentally, we can't legislate our way out of hate. Hate speech laws and antivilification laws have a place, but alone they will not solve the undercurrent of racism, extremism and violence in our society. This bill treats the symptoms; it is not the cure, and I feel that we, as legislators and representatives, do a disservice to the Australian community in not taking the time to consider the drivers of all forms of racism, discrimination and violence in this country that contribute to so many people feeling unsafe in our neighbourhoods and feeling like they are guests in their own country.

As a start, the government could actually respond to the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework, which presented 63 recommendations—back in 2024 now—on how to start to address this issue more comprehensively. We've heard nothing from the government about this, not even a response.

I cannot in good faith support this bill today. From the 12 hours in which I've had this bill, I cannot confidently say that the benefits outweigh the risks. I cannot confidently say that this bill strikes the right balance between stopping hate speech and preserving a person's rate to express themselves freely and to protest. I will try to move amendments that I think go some way to improving the bill, but I still feel overwhelmingly that more time should be taken to study its merits and its impact. I will also move an amendment that broadens the protections to capture other people who experience racism and violence every day, including to people with disability, LGBTI Australians, religious communities and our culturally diverse communities. I'll move another amendment to clarify that criticising the policies, actions or institutions of a foreign state alone cannot be taken as hate speech for the purpose of these laws. Protest and the right of people to criticise our government and foreign governments is not hate speech, and my amendment will make that clear. I'm also putting forward that an independent review of these laws commence in two years so that there is at least an opportunity for someone to review these laws properly.

Finally, I'll be moving an amendment to remove the mandatory minimum sentences for the hate speech laws which, shamefully, were passed last year. There is no evidence that they work and it is actually against the Labor Party's platform to support mandatory minimum sentences. They are antithetical to our good justice system. They make justice less transparent and less fair, and they should never have passed this place last year. It brings great shame on the Senate that, in 2025, we introduced mandatory minimum sentences in Australia.

I thank those of my Independent Senate colleagues who have agreed to co-sponsor these amendments. I hope other senators can see fit to vote for them on their merits as well.

Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 is the first of many steps the coalition is taking to make sure that the national tragedy at Bondi never happens again. Now, let's get the facts straight: the intent of this bill is to designate and disrupt extremist ideological organisations that are radicalising Australian people to commit terror on our land. It will increase border control by deporting or refusing visas to people posing extreme risk to our national security.

In short, this bill is a response to the worst terror attack on Australian soil—an attack driven by extremist ideology that is fixated on the violent destruction of a group of people in Australia that have done nothing but exist and contribute to Australia in a peaceful way. We are here because the Labor government's approach to combating antisemitism has been woeful.