They were responding to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announced crackdown on hate speech and other proposed measures to address antisemitism in the wake of the Hanukkah massacre that took 15 lives at Bondi Beach.
“More could have been done and I accept my responsibility … as prime minister of Australia, but what I also do is accept my responsibility to lead the nation and unite the nation,” he said. “Anyone in this position would regret not doing more,” Albanese added. “But what we need to do is to move forward.”
But as the screws tighten on hate on Main Street Australia, the elephant in the room remains: a broader pattern of state-sanctioned religious stigmatization.
An increasingly worried Jewish community has pointed to glaring signals, ignored for years.
A string of arson and vandalism attacks on synagogues, homes and a day-care center, as well as multiple car burnings, were among the 1,654 anti-Jewish acts perpetrated with no response by lawmakers, as anti-Jewish hate crimes exploded nearly five-fold what it had been in the years leading up to October 2023.
Albanese’s own Jewish envoy, Jillian Segal, reported back in July that antisemitism had become “ingrained and normalized” in recent years. Among other points, she recommended monitoring schools, the arts and the media and creating a national database of antisemitic incidents.
The policies belatedly proposed since the Bondi Beach wake-up call reflect what Ms. Segal had proposed. They would sharply increase penalties for speech that incites violence, including online; broaden the government’s power to block or revoke visas for individuals who spread hate; and punish organizations whose leaders engage in hate speech.
Albanese further committed to implementing a 13-point plan advanced earlier this year by his antisemitism envoy and announced the formation of a task force to ensure Australian schools confront antisemitism decisively.
But as the screws tighten on hate on Main Street Australia, the elephant in the room remains: a broader pattern of state-sanctioned religious stigmatization. A parliamentary inquiry in the southeastern state of Victoria aimed at minority religions announced in April of this year is a disturbing reflection of the true intentions of a few anti-religious crusaders on the island continent. The inquiry has also spilled over into mainstream news and social media, prominently featuring inflammatory and bigoted slurs in the literature, talking points and the very title of the inquiry itself.
Lawmakers Down Under can’t continue to snore through the alarm bells of anti-religious hate, choosing only to wake up and act when it’s a matter of political self-preservation.
Assuming the prime minister and his administration really are serious about wanting to stamp out hate crimes in Australia, the very first step to take—before enacting a single new law—is to immediately shut down the Victorian government’s anti-faith campaign disguised, at this time, as an “inquiry.”
If you swat at religious bigotry with one hand while sowing its seeds with the other, you’ve already handed the haters a victory.
