Anti-democratic hate speech bill must fail

Labor is rushing through one of the most significant attacks on freedom of speech and association in decades.

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, hastily assembled after the Bondi shooting, is set to be introduced to parliament on 19 January. Labor has allowed only 72 hours for the public to make submissions about it, and it will be introduced to parliament just four days after the closure of submissions. Among many other attacks, the bill will give the Home Affairs minister, the Australian Federal Police minister and the ASIO head sweeping powers to ban organisations, jail individuals and prevent migrants from entering the country based on broad and vague criteria. It will also make it a criminal offence to engage in conduct “intending to promote or incite hatred” of a person or group because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

The Liberals are set to vote against the legislation because of their concern for the free speech of Christian bigots. This gives the Greens the power to pass it or block it. To wave it through would be a terrible concession to the climate of intimidation that has been created by the right, and it would be a historic blow to democratic rights. The Greens, as of 15 January, have not yet decided whether to block it or to pass it with amendments. These amendments merely tinker with the bill, for example, adding protected categories like LGBTI+ people or Muslims. This would not change the fact that the bill is fundamentally designed to give a small handful of ministers the power to crack down on democratic rights, it would simply smooth the passage of an authoritarian bill.

Dangerously, the legislation lowers the threshold for what constitutes hate speech. It changes the test from whether a reasonable person would have felt threatened to whether a “member of a protected group” felt threatened. Since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, many pro-Israel students have complained to their universities that they felt threatened by the existence of protests or by the appearance of posters on campus which accused Israel of genocide. When defining hate speech, the bill includes speech directed at a group based on “national origin”, which means it could apply to both Americans and Israelis.

It lowers the bar from inciting hatred to “promoting”. As constitutional expert Anne Twomey has pointed out, it could mean simply honestly describing in a public setting (including online) war or violence perpetrated by those of a specific national origin. An obvious example is the genocide in Gaza. There is no truth-based defence, so even if completely accurate, simply describing atrocities could be deemed to have promoted hatred against that group. Twomey uses the example of displaying Picasso’s Guernica as an example of an act that might contravene these laws, because it depicts war crimes carried out by Germans, and which therefore could be deemed to be promoting anti-German hatred.

The bill is Albanese’s attempt to meet the recommendations in antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s 2025 report, which calls for stronger measures against “intimidating protest activity”, among other things. The passing of this bill would represent a major victory for those who have sought to create conditions more favourable for the repression and criminalisation of support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. Since the Bondi attacks, the right wing of Australia’s political establishment has ramped up attempts to smear, denigrate and silence the Palestine movement. In this, they have been backed by representatives of the capitalist class like the Business Council of Australia, the Minerals Council, the Australian Banking Association and the Australian Institute of Company Directors. This bill is an attempt to establish in law that criticism and protest against Israel, and Australia’s foreign policy positioning in general, is a criminal act, or perilously close to it.

The amendments to the Migration Act extend the power of the Home Affairs minister to reject visa applicants on ideological grounds. Anyone the minister accuses of being a member of, or of supporting the aims of, a group deemed a hate group can be prevented from entering the country or have a current visa cancelled. The person does not need to have been convicted of a crime to be barred, and the minister could choose which groups this applies to without going through parliament. This could easily be used against many Tamils, Lebanese and Palestinians.

The attack on the freedom of association is extreme. When the British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terror organisation last year, they had to pass the order through parliament. Albanese’s bill would centralise the power to ban an organisation in the hands of just three people. It specifically states that “the AFP Minister is not required to observe any requirements of procedural fairness in deciding” whether to designate an organisation. And groups don’t even need to have actually engaged in any hate speech to be banned. They can be designated hateful for “praising” someone who has engaged in hateful conduct. According to the government’s explanatory memorandum, a person can be guilty of membership of a designated group even “where the organisation does not have a formal membership arrangement.”

The proposed bill is so expansive and general that it’s difficult to be sure of the full implications. But this in itself will have a chilling effect—it will serve to create fear and uncertainty about what exactly constitutes a hate crime, and intimidate some who would otherwise engage in protesting and organising. When the same people who rushed to blame the Bondi massacre on the 300,000 people who marched across the Sydney Harbour bridge are lobbying for and approving these measures, it’s not hard to work out who needs to watch themselves from now on.

The powerful have always wanted to scuttle the efforts of oppressed people who organise against them, and particularly against their foreign policy objectives and positioning. In the 1950s, the union movement was crucial in standing up to Menzies and defeating his referendum on banning the Communist Party. The unions now need to come out in opposition to these laws, as does every progressive organisation in Australian society.

This legislation is an extreme, broad, and convoluted attempt to give three individuals the power to decide who is allowed to speak and organise in Australian society. It comes amid a hysterical campaign to preserve “social cohesion”, which really means the silencing of mass opposition to genocide and total acquiescence by the public to Australia’s imperialist backing of Israel and the US. It reflects a fear that the powers that be have failed to ideologically cohere the population behind support for Israel, and is an attempt to do this by intimidation and, ironically, force. Perhaps, as Brecht quipped, it would be easier for Albanese to simply dissolve the people altogether.