‘No place for hate’: crackdown on extremist preachers
Local councils will be at the forefront of shutting down illegal religious centres, so preachers are not given a platform from which to spread hate speech.
The NSW government will give councils the power to cut services to a public place of worship operating without the required planning consent.
The reforms follow the Bondi massacre, in which 15 people died when two gunmen, a father and a son, targeted a Jewish gathering celebrating Hanukkah in an Islamic State-inspired terror attack.
Naveed Akram, 24, who faces 59 charges including 15 murders, was linked to the Islamic extremist preacher Wissam Haddad in western Sydney.
The central Al Madina Dawah was closed by Canterbury-Bankstown council in December.
NSW Premier Chris Minns said the latest powers were aimed at maintaining social cohesion and protecting communities from divisive rhetoric and religious extremism.
“There is no place in NSW for hate, intimidation or extremism masquerading as social activity,” he said on Monday.
“The aim of this reform is to shut down ‘hate factories’ that operate unlawfully by promoting hatred, intimidation or separatism within society.”
The police and planning department will support councils in enforcing the law.
Councils will also be required to consult with NSW Police on community safety issues before approving new places of public worship.
The changes come as federal parliament is recalled ahead of Australia Day, with Anthony Albanese set to expand hate laws to tackle extremist rhetoric.
These include aggravated hate speech charges against preachers and leaders who incite violence, and listing centers and groups that engage in racial hatred.
Narrow federal criminal charges for serious racial or supremacist libel will also be introduced.
The Federal Court ruled in July that three sermons Mr Haddad gave in late 2023 contained “devastatingly offensive” accusations based on the race or ethnicity of the Australian Jewish community.
But it was more than Mr. Haddad’s words that caused the center’s undoing; The council said the center operated in a decades-old building that was never allowed to be used as a religious centre.
Ahead of the race discrimination case he lost, the opinionated preacher told AAP: “If people have a problem with the (religious) reference that I brought… then they should take it up with God, not with me.”
