The new hate speech bill threatens Australian civil liberties

If there was ever a sign that civil liberties and rights were being thrown under a bus in Australia, it would be now, he writes Dal Ouba.

Unlike the 2019 Christchurch massacre, in which Australian Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people and attempted to kill 40 others in Christchurch, New Zealand, the 2025 Bondi tragedy, which left 15 dead, had a profound impact on the civil rights and freedoms of Australians. However, both actions were carried out by Australians.

Despite warnings by Australian educators Oubani and Oubani that social cohesion was at risk due to the failure of education curricula to combat Islamophobia in Australian politics and media in 2014, there was no significant impact on Australian laws, public discourse or life. An Australian terrorist with far-right, white supremacist views deliberately killed more than 50 Muslim worshipers in a mosque just 5 years later. However, Australia has still not questioned how its own public discourse has created an environment for white supremacy, let alone considered ideas for new legislation that could prevent future acts of terrorism against its own vulnerable and marginalized community groups.

Even stranger were the events both before and after the Bondi attacks on Hanukkah celebrations on December 14, 2025. In early 2025, various rights-eroding laws were developed within weeks following a fake caravan terrorist plot in Dural; At a press conference on 10 March 2025, AFP and NSW police also acknowledged that all antisemitic firebomb attacks and graffiti reported from November 2024 to January 2025 were fabricated. The NSW Civil Liberties Council has demanded an upper house inquiry into whether NSW Labor was aware of the fake caravan scheme before rushing through the legislation, with legal commentators saying the new laws exploit antisemitic fear to control communities that were ‘never in the grip of an antisemitic crime wave’.

Incredibly, despite many Australian Muslims having fled the Islamic State and being specifically targeted by religious extremists who have prioritized targeting Islamic Shia, Sufi and Sunni sects that disagree with their ideology, the entire Australian Muslim Community has been called upon to pay the price for this significant intelligence failure. While hundreds of thousands of Muslims who reject ISIS ideology are being killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan, and threats to the borders of Iran and Lebanon are now emerging, such expectations from the local Muslim community are akin to brightening the mood for victims of domestic violence to prove that they did not provoke the attackers to attack a second victim.

Although Islamophobia has increased by 200 percent since December 14, 2025, according to Record Australia, many people without any political accusation of Islamophobia could easily become targets, and every Islamic institution was expected to publicly condemn the Bondi tragedy. Interestingly, the new Syrian government, led by and linked to al-Qaeda extremism, Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly Abu Muhammad al-Jolani) currently has more peaceful relations with Israel than with its own Muslim neighbors; It has minimal interest in a free Palestine and focuses mainly on imposing its dogmatic Islamic ideology through brutal bloodshed in the Middle East.

While Australians were still reeling from New Year’s celebrations, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s noble call for unity rejecting divisive hatred and rushed hate speech legislation would soon be clashed with a special invitation for Israeli president Isaac Herzog to visit Australia. Ironically, Isaac Herzog’s character is exactly the type of behavior and incitement that the hate speech bill proposes to target. Herzog is accused by the International Court of Justice of genocidal statements, such as punishing all civilians in Gaza and writing messages with Amnesty International in Australia calling for an investigation of his acts of genocide over bombs prepared to be dropped on Gaza children.

These comments strengthen the threats of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who threatens to turn Lebanon into Gaza in October 2024. Herzog’s planned visit to Australia also conflicts with Australia’s commitments to the EU. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1949) binds Australia to international obligations to prevent and punish acts of genocide. Welcoming foreign criminals who commit genocide to heighten existing tensions over loss of life in Australia would be hugely traumatic for Australians from the Middle East, particularly Palestine and parts of Lebanon, who have often had many family members and friends killed by Israel in its quest for border expansion.

Sarah Schwartz, Chief Executive of the Jewish Council of Australia, also expressed these concerns:

“Inviting a foreign head of state implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks reinforcing the dangerous and antisemitic correlation between Jewish identity and the actions of the state of Israel. This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.”

This contradiction between the words and actions of our Prime Minister and the framework of political discourse seems to make one thing clear; Hate speech laws were never intended to protect all Australians; not just some Australians, but all Australians, have paid the price by losing due process protections that prevent their simple freedoms from being overridden by political rivals.

This callous manipulation of the pain and suffering of different community groups in Australia ultimately protects no Australian and only leads to an arbitrary use of force and a lack of due process. Basing punishment on political rather than legal grounds appears to be counterproductive to the federal government’s purpose. Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Immigration Laws) Bill 2026 It threatens to create a future of fear and unpredictability for Australians from diverse backgrounds. If the life of one Australian truly is worth more than another, then we have officially created different classes of citizens that should be admired.