Civil liberties and rights have been thrown under a bus with the new federal and state hate speech laws.
In contrast to the 2019 New Zealand massacre, where Australian Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 people and attempted to murder others in two mosques in Christchurch, the Bondi terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration has had a profound impact on our civil rights and liberties.
Both terrorist acts were carried out by Australians.
Following the Christchurch massacre, the Australian government did not question how the mainstream media had created the conditions for white supremacy, let alone entertain new laws that might circumvent future acts of terror on vulnerable and marginalised groups.
The Christchurch massacre took place only five years after Australian educators warned that social cohesion was at risk because curriculums had failed to counteract Islamophobia.
The events that preceded, and followed, the Bondi attacks were bizarre. Early last year, within weeks of a hoax caravan terror plot in Dural in NSW, several sets of rights-eroding laws came into being.
The Australian Federal Police and NSW Police admitted on March 10, 2025, that all alleged antisemitic firebombing attacks and graffiti reported between November 2024 to January 2025 were also fabricated.
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties requested a Legislative Council inquiry over whether NSW Labor was aware of the hoax caravan plot prior to rushing through the new laws. Legal groups said they were exploiting antisemitic fear to control communities that were “never under the grips of an antisemitic crime wave”.
The whole Muslim community is now being collectively punished over the significant intelligence failure that preceded the Bondi attacks, despite many Muslims fleeing Islamic State (IS) terror themselves from Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan.
After Bondi, Islamic institutions were expected to publicly denounce the tragedy even though many could have been the target.
There has been no government criticism of Islamophobia, despite its significant rise — by 200% — since December 14, 2025, according to the Islamophobia Register Australia.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s appeal for “unity,” as part of his rushed federal hate speech law, was immediately contradicted by his invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog visit.
Herzog has been accused by the International Court of Justice for genocidal statements, such as punishing all civilians in Gaza — the very thing the hate speech law is supposed to outlaw. His comments reinforce Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s who threatened to turn Lebanon into Gaza in October 2024.
Herzog’s visit also contradicts Australia’s commitment to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1949), which binds the country to international obligations to prevent and punish acts of genocide.
Labor’s welcoming of perpetuators of genocide will also inflame tensions over the loss of Australian-Arabic lives, especially from Palestine and parts of Lebanon where family members and friends have been killed in Israel’s ongoing violations of ceasefires.
Sarah Schwartz, Executive Officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, has also raised concerns. She said “inviting a foreign head of state who is implicated in an ongoing genocide as a representative of the Jewish community is deeply offensive and risks entrenching the dangerous and antisemitic conflation between Jewish identity and the actions of the Israeli state.
“This does not make Jews safer. It does the opposite.”
This contradiction, between words and actions by Albanese, make one thing clear; the new hate speech laws were never meant to protect all Australians, only some.
However, all Australians will pay the price by losing freedom of speech and assembly protections. Manipulating the pain and suffering of communities does not protect anyone; it only leads to an arbitrary exercise of power and lack of due process.
With punishments based on political, rather than legal reasons, the counterproductive Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) 2026 creates fear and unpredictability for people of all backgrounds.
If one life is more precious than another, then this new law will have created different classes of citizenship — which is not in anyone’s best interest.
[Dal Ouba is a researcher, educator and writer on social cohesion.]