Australian parliament to return to pass hate speech laws after Bondi attack

By Kirsty Needham

SYDNEY, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Australia’s national parliament will cut short its summer break to pass laws tackling hate speech after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, as concerns were also expressed over free speech.

The December 14 shooting in Sydney that killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State militant group.

The federal parliament will return next Monday, and Albanese said he wanted legislation to step up penalties for hate speech and authorise a gun buyback to pass the following day.

Australians were entitled to express different views about the Middle East, he told reporters in Canberra.

“What they are not entitled to do, is to hold someone to account for the actions of others because they are a young boy wearing a school uniform going to a Jewish school or a young woman wearing a hijab,” he said.

The proposed laws will also ease visa denials on the ground of racial bigotry, and lower the threshold for banning hate organisations including neo-Nazi groups, officials said.

ALBANESE FACED CRITICISM FROM JEWISH GROUPS, ISRAEL

In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticised Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticised protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.

Last week, Albanese said a Royal Commission would consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia.

A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author.

The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to programme her at this unprecedented time, so soon after Bondi”.

A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded criticising the move as “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship”.

Around 100 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, local media reported.

The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision. Three board members and the chairperson had resigned.

MOST POPULOUS STATE ADOPTS TOUGHER RULES

New South Wales state premier Chris Minns unveiled new rules on Monday that allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls and impose bigger fines, as part of measures to curb “hate preachers”.

Minns said the move was prompted by the difficulty in closing a Muslim prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.

The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield, which has a large Muslim community, said councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.

“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez)