David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024. This is a bill which sadly is necessary because of the repeated failures of the Albanese government to prevent the sadly predictable spread of antisemitism. Attacks on Jewish Australians are attacks on every Australian. To attack people because they profess the Jewish faith or have Jewish ancestry is to repudiate the Australian way of life. We are a country that prides itself on treating people equally whatever their faith or background. It's a core national value, and a stain of antisemitism is a direct rejection of that value.

The initial spark for the antisemitic attacks that we are seeing across the country came, of course, with the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas. Make no mistake: the October 7 attack was the single greatest loss of Jewish lives on any day since the Holocaust. October 7 was a day of murder, torture, kidnapping and brutal sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas against Jews in Israel. The cruelty was deliberate. The horrors do not bear repeating in this chamber, but there is no doubt that they were designed with the purpose of maximising pain and sorrow amongst Jewish people. It is both desperately sad and utterly predictable that, on learning of those horrific attacks on Jewish people in their own homeland, malicious actors here in Australia would draw inspiration.

Those bad actors here in Australia rejoiced in the day that was marked by the murder, torture, sexual assault and kidnapping of Israelis. In the words of one hate preacher, October 7 was 'a day of courage, a day of pride, a day of victory.' It was obvious that they would see those attacks as giving licence to spread the same, vile antisemitic hate here—to target Jewish Australians, to spread fear, to use our streets and university campuses to call for the destruction of the Jewish state, to spread old antisemitic tropes, often hiding behind the weak academic pretence that somehow what they were doing was anti-Israeli, not antisemitic, and to target businesses, homes, cars and synagogues.

The attempts to spread antisemitism in this country after October 7 were, as I said, desperately sad and utterly predictable. This is where the government's failings first came to the fore. In this country, tone is set at the top. The tone for the national response is set by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister could and should have made clear through his actions from the very beginning that those who sought to spread antisemitic attacks here would feel the full force of the law. He could and should have been very clear from the very beginning about the scale of the horror inflicted by Hamas and that Australia would stand with its long-term friend and ally, Israel.

He could and should have used our laws and our police forces to clamp down on those who sought to weaponise the Hamas attacks for their own purposes here at home. But what did we get instead? First, we saw inaction. For months and months, we had Labor ministers who couldn't acknowledge domestic antisemitism without also mentioning other forms of discrimination. There are many forms of discrimination, and all of them are unacceptable, but it was clear after October 7 that we were seeing a crisis in antisemitism in this nation. We, as a country, saw a 700 per cent rise in antisemitic incidents in a period of months. On that night of infamy at the Sydney Opera House, October 9, we had angry mobs standing outside the Opera House, chanting hateful messages towards Jewish Australians. We had shops being vandalised, Jewish students being harassed and roaming gangs in places like Caulfield hunting for Jews.

At a time when we're responding to an unprecedented wave of antisemitism here in our country, when we are seeing armed guards outside Jewish schools, it is, of course, appropriate to focus on antisemitism. But the Prime Minister did not do that. We saw a rolling failure to take decisive action at home. Antisemitic displays were not prosecuted. Antisemitic protests were not stopped. Antisemitic sentiment was allowed to fester. We have criminal laws that are meant to deal with these things; they were not used. The AFP was not given clear direction or focus by a prime minister demanding results. Protests in our streets, in which antisemitic displays abounded, were permitted to drag on for months and months and months. Universities were permitted to be used as encampments that served as a hotbed of antisemitic action. Jewish students were harassed because of who they were. Our human rights institutions and federal government institutions were not given focus or direction. They were not called to account when they abandoned the Jew community. The Prime Minister's response was drowsy, weak and disinterested.

We've also seen this government and this Prime Minister abandon Israel on the international stage. In the wake of October 7, the instinct of this government was not to stand with Israel, which had just been the target of a horrific atrocity. Later we saw a series of votes in the United Nations in which Australia reversed a longstanding bipartisan position on Israel, a bipartisan position that existed for more than 20 years. But we know what happened. For sordid, tawdry, domestic political reasons, the government abandoned Israel—for its perceived political gain. It said that it no longer supported the basic fundamental point that recognition of a Palestinian state can only come through negotiation between all the parties, which of course must include Israel.

The Prime Minister and foreign minister betrayed our values because they were worried about a political fight with the Greens. They were more interested in the Labor vote in Brunswick than in doing the right thing in our votes at the United Nations. Let's not pretend for one minute that Labor's votes at the UN were about principle or about human rights. They were not. They were about trying to save a few seats by targeting a few hundred thousand votes in inner-city electorates. Of course, Hamas's evil actions on October 7 were designed to move nations away from Israel. Now, that did not work in the United States, under President Biden, but it did work in Australia, under Anthony Albanese.

The consequences of this government's indifference to domestic antisemitism have been stark. I've already mentioned the months of protests in our capital cities and the occupation of our universities. We've seen Jewish Australians doxxed for nothing more than being part of a WhatsApp group. We've seen shops owned by Jewish Australians targeted. We've seen Jewish students and academics harassed. We've seen buildings graffitied with hateful, antisemitic material, including the Southern Sydney Synagogue in Allawah, just outside my electorate. We've seen cars torched. We've seen the attempted arson of the Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, the burning of a daycare centre in Maroubra, the terrorist firebombing of the Addas synagogue in Melbourne and now, extraordinarily, a caravan packed with explosives, apparently targeting Jewish addresses, and a Prime Minister who was in the dark—oblivious. This is an extraordinary failure by a weak prime minister, and it is marking our national character.

The laws that we are discussing today are intended to help mitigate some of the government's failures. They strengthen the existing offences in division 80 of the Criminal Code, which should have been used to stop the spark of antisemitism before it became a wildfire. Existing offences in division 80 of the Criminal Code make it an offence to urge violence against individuals on the basis of their race, religion and so on. They make it an offence to urge violence against groups because of their race or religion, among other things, and they make it an offence to advocate terrorism or genocide. For months we've been calling for the existing laws to be used. We in the coalition have been saying that the existing offences should be tested and that those preaching antisemitism should be put before a court. Why didn't that happen? Why weren't those who called for antisemitic violence put before a court almost a year ago, as the coalition suggested? Was it an unwillingness on the part of the government to run test cases, or did they hope that this insidious, evil problem would simply go away? For months we've been saying that, if the existing thresholds are for some reason so high that we cannot even run a test case, let's review them. Why didn't that happen back then? Was it drowsy disinterest from the Prime Minister once more?

Regardless, the changes made by these laws as introduced are welcome. As soon as they were put before this chamber, it became clear that there were some simple, straightforward steps the government was proposing to take. Because these laws lower the threshold for criminality for those who urge violence against individuals or groups, instead of needing to prove that the person intended that violence occur, police now only need to prove that the person was reckless as to whether the violence would occur. This is a welcome change. These laws as currently drafted remove the good-faith defence for those urging violence. This, too, is a welcome move. After all, you can't urge someone to engage in acts of violence in good faith. The new provisions expand the offences that relate to the urging of violence so that they cover a broader range of personal characteristics on the basis of which a person or group is targeted. That is uncontroversial. These laws introduce new offences for threatening force or violence that are closely related to but distinct from urging violence. This is also uncontroversial.

This bill was introduced in the last sitting week of September 2024. Given the urgency, the coalition wrote to the government before parliament resumed in October, offering to pass the bill as written. The government did not take up that offer. So, instead, we engaged constructively in the committee process and in the community, working to a timetable of the government's choosing. We examined the bill carefully, and, when the committee reported back after the end of the 2024 sitting year as the government requested, we recommended that the bill be passed. But we also said that, in the process, it should be made stronger and should cover attacks against places of worship. We plan to move those amendments, and I hope the government supports them.

They're simple, straightforward amendments which will add two new offences to the Criminal Code: firstly, urging force, violence or damage against places of worship; and, secondly, threatening force, violence or damage against places of worship. These two new offences follow the model set by Labor's own drafting as closely as possible but are specifically designed to deal with those who urge or threaten attacks on places of worship. The need for those provisions is blatantly clear in light of the Adass synagogue terrorist attack and, apparently, the targets of the Sydney caravan plot.

Unfortunately, however, this bill is not enough. The bitter truth is that we're now reaping the harvest of an awful summer of antisemitism. The government must do more. It must focus on operational issues. It's one thing to pass a law; it is another to enforce it. The government must set conditions for our police forces to find, arrest and actually commence prosecutions in the courts against those who have organised attacks on Jewish communities. But we must go further. This government needs to send a clear message by changing the law to impose mandatory minimum jail time for terrorism offences and for the display of terrorist symbols like the Hizballah and Hamas flags. There should be no doubt in the mind of any paid thug or antisemite that, if they hope to plan or participate in a terrorist attack, they will spend years in jail—where they belong. There should be no doubt that Australia will not tolerate the glorification of listed terrorist organisations that hate Australia and everything it stands for. Those who wave the flags of these organisations, glorifying them for the general public and legitimising their antisemitic hatred, do not belong on our streets.

These measures are strong, but they're necessary. Because the failures of this Prime Minister have let the antisemitism genie out of the bottle, it falls to all of us to get it back in. I thank the House.

Debate adjourned.