New racial vilification laws rushed into parliament next week
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Monday he would recall the federal parliament on January 19 ahead of its scheduled return on February 2.
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The prime minister is rushing through sweeping hate speech and gun reforms urgently drafted after the Bondi Beach massacre, allowing parliament just one day to pass the complicated legislation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Monday he would recall both houses of federal parliament on January 19 and 20, ahead of its scheduled return on February 2.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday. Credit: AAP
“It’s a comprehensive package of reforms which creates serious offences for hate preachers and leaders seeking to radicalise young Australians,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra.
Albanese said Monday would be spent on a condolence motion condemning the Bondi atrocity, which the Coalition had agreed on the wording for.
He said the legislation, called the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, would be debated and passed on Tuesday.
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Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke has previously said the new hate speech legislation would push the limits of the Constitution, and his department has rushed to draft laws over the summer that would withstand being challenged in the High Court.
Albanese said the new laws would create a framework that would allow the home affairs minister to ban “hate groups” that don’t reach the threshold to be listed as terror organisations.
“Once an organisation is listed, it will be a criminal offence to be a member, to recruit for it, to donate or receive funds or support that group in any way,” Albanese said.
Within the legislation will be newly created offences - targeting “aggravated hate speech” for preachers and leaders who promote violence, and an offence of “serious vilification based on race” - that will be limited to the targeting of people based on race.
There will also be an increase to the maximum penalties for hate speech offences in the Criminal Code that already protect people based on their race, religion, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, among other attributes.
The prime minister said legislation would also set up the national gun buyback scheme, “bringing Australia’s world-leading gun laws into the 21st century and getting guns off our streets”.