[The Socialist Alliance National Executive adopted the following statement on January 16, 2026].
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Socialist Alliance opposes the Anthony Albanese government’s Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026.
The proposed law’s main changes are to criminal law, making a new offence for inciting racial (including ethnic and national) hatred and setting up a scheme for outlawing “hate groups”.
It is an assault on democratic rights and provides the Australian state with more means to police and imprison oppressed groups, starting with those who face racism.
The bill’s immediate target is the Palestine solidarity movement. Federal and state leaderships, including Labor, Teal, Coalition and One Nation MPs, have falsely equated criticisms of the state of Israel for its genocide and occupation of Palestine with antisemitism.
Australia is a settler-colonial society. Its institutions reek of racism, as the Adelaide Writers Week Board’s cancellation of Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah shows.
The proposed law gives the police and courts more powers to crack down on First Nations and migrant communities.
The bill makes alarming changes to the Migration Act, making it easier to cancel visa applications for anyone accused of associating with a “hate group”. The Home Affairs Minister does not need to prove whether the person’s association with the group is continuing or has concluded.
Meanwhile, far-right groups (like the now self-disbanded National Socialist Network) will find the ways to propagate their racist ideology because racism has been normalised by mainstream media and politics.
Anti-racists, including anti-genocide activists, who are fighting to eradicate institutional racism must be able to organise through popular, democratic movements. This is another reason the bill must be opposed.
Labor ministers have said the proposed law is just the first in a series of anti-hate crime laws.
This is despite the New South Wales Law Reform Commission warning in 2024 that “hatred” is too imprecise and an “inappropriate standard for the criminal law” because there are significant “differences of opinion in the community about what hatred means”.
The proposed law reinforces this problem. Rather than test what a “reasonable person” would be intimidated or harassed by, the bill seeks to criminalise those who make a “reasonable” person feel “intimidated or harassed”.
A key problem today is that many Australian state institutions treat the Jewish community as one homogeneous whole, not only in relation to antisemitism, but in regards to their support for Zionism.
However, like Australians as a whole, some Jews disagree with the state of Israel and the Australian government support for it, while others insist that is antisemitic.
Zionists support Jewish ethno-nationalism within historic Palestine and thus are a politically constituted oppressor group.
The proposed law also substantially weakens public interest defences against prosecution by making the new incitement and dissemination offences themselves offences to take into account when considering such a defence.
The ban on “hate groups” will operate like those against terrorist organisations. The minister will list a group when “satisfied” it has “engaged in, prepared or planned to engage in, or assisted … or advocated engaging in” hate crime.
The designation “hate group” is at the discretion of the Home Affairs Minister, and will have little accountability or transparency. It will be based on intelligence assessments, without related criminal convictions or procedural fairness needed.
This eliminates significant grounds to judicially review a ban.
Effective anti-racism laws have only ever been founded on powerful anti-racist movements. Labor’s rushed introduction of this bill shows it does not aim to build public support to address hate and violence. Instead, its principal objective is to shut down anti-racist movements.
Socialist Alliance encourages you to join activities to stop the proposed law being adopted.
We support an anti-racism policy based on justice and solidarity.
Therefore we demand:
- Scrap the Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill.
- End the racist targeting of people such as First Nations people, Muslims and people of colour.
- Defend and extend anti-discrimination laws, abolish anti-protest laws and scrap “anti-terror” laws.
- Support educational mechanisms for preventing and addressing serious racial and related vilification.
- Support treaties to respect First Nations sovereignty and land rights, and First Nations control of First Nations’ affairs.
- Support full residency and citizenship rights for all migrant workers.
- Support permanent protection for all refugees and their partners and children.
- Scrap AUKUS now. Break from the US military alliance! Stand instead with the Global South.