My question is to the minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Sheina Gutnick, the daughter of Reuven Morrison, who was murdered in the Bondi terrorist attack, wrote publicly:

Australia did not fail quietly.

It failed loudly, repeatedly and with full knowledge.

Its government watched hatred grow and chose to do nothing.

They minimised it. They excused it. They dismissed Jewish warnings as noise.

Minister, those are not my words. They are the words of a victim's family member. Will the Prime Minister now say sorry and apologise to Jewish Australians for his government's failure to act decisively against antisemitism, despite repeated warnings as antisemitic incidents surged after 7 October 2023?

First, again, as the Prime Minister and others, including myself, have done: our personal condolences to Ms Gutnick and to all those who have lost a loved one in this horrific attack. It was an attack that was targeted, evil, antisemitic and ISIS inspired, and it was an attack on Jewish Australians—and all of us grieve for every person, every family and every community that has been made to suffer because of hate filled and senseless violence.

The Prime Minister has made very clear the sense of responsibility and the weight of responsibility that he feels for an atrocity that happened, as he said, while he is Prime Minister, and he has said publicly he is sorry for the grief and pain that the Jewish community and the entire nation have experienced, as have I.

Our responsibility now is to do all we can to ensure this does not happen again. That is the solemn responsibility that this government and this parliament have. That is what we are seeking to do—to listen to the Jewish community the entire nation—

Senator Cash, a point of order?

It is a point of order on relevance. The question was direct in its terms—will the Prime Minister actually, for the first time since 7 October 2023, apologise to Jewish Australians for your government's disgraceful failings?

Senator Cash, calling a point of order is not an opportunity to make a statement. The minister is being directly relevant to your question. Minister Wong, did you wish to continue?

I addressed your question directly, Senator Cash, and I did so because I think it is important. But I also believe, and I think Australians believe, that it is important for us not just to speak about this but to act to ensure this does not happen again. That is why this government prioritised the drafting of— (Time expired)

Senator Cash, first supplementary?

Sabina Kleitman, daughter of Alex Kleytman, said:

Our government could not protect the 15 innocent souls who were taken from us and those that were injured … It's their duty to all Australians to provide safety and security to all.

And Jenny Roytur, whose uncle was murdered, said:

We were hunted like animals by extremists …

Can the Prime Minister say the one word the Jewish community have been wanting to hear: 'sorry' for failing to keep you safe?

(—) (): The Prime Minister has responded to that publicly, and the Prime Minister has also done what a leader of integrity does: he has engaged; he has listened; he has heard an experience, with respect—the pain, the grief and the anger; and he has determined to act to ensure that we do all we can to prevent any such attack occurring again and that we confront antisemitism in all its forms. Further, you would have heard me say in this place many times that antisemitism is an attack on Jewish Australians, but it is also an attack on Australia. It is an attack on who we are. (Time expired)

Senator Cash, second supplementary?

I've listened carefully to both answers, and, despite your words, Senator Wong, you have, yet again, failed to say sorry to the Jewish community on behalf of the Prime Minister. So I ask again. It is a simple word. Will the Prime Minister say sorry—sorry for your government's actions, that it failed to address the antisemitic crisis in Australia despite repeated warnings from the Jewish community since 7 October 2023?

I have done so twice. I have twice responded to that directly. This is a moment where we as a country have a choice about uniting in our response to antisemitism; uniting in our response to hatred; uniting the country against prejudice, hatred and antisemitism; and uniting the country around this legislation, which is intended to contribute to keeping people safer. I think it is a matter of some regret that a moment that could have been a moment of national unity has not been so, because some in this place—

Did you see what happened at the opera house?

I'll take the interjection. Yes, I did, and I responded. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Australians are rightly appalled at the horrific shootings that took place at Bondi on 14 December. It was an antisemitic, ISIS-inspired terrorist attack on Australian Jews. Our thoughts remain with all those affected, particularly members of our Australian Jewish community. It is essential that Australians come together during this difficult time. How is the Albanese Labor government responding to these horrific events?

Thank you to Senator Sheldon for that question. What we know is this: the Bondi terrorist attack of 14 December was an horrific act; it was an horrific act of antisemitic violence; it was an horrific act inspired by ISIS. ISIS is a radical extremist ideology, a perversion of Islam that has no place in our country. It was an attack on Australian Jews, and it was an attack on the Australia we know and the Australia we cherish. Our thoughts remain with the loved ones of those who were killed and those still recovering from injury.

We pay tribute to the emergency services who responded without hesitation and to the everyday Australians who showed such immense courage in the face of terror. We pay tribute to Ahmed al-Ahmed, Sofia and Boris Gurman, Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff and Geffen Bitton. I am pleased that the government was able to facilitate Mr Bitton's return to Israel for medical treatment.

In response to this attack, the Albanese government has sought to unite the country, whilst taking strong action to crack down on hate, radicalisation and antisemitism. We've established the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, supported by Dennis Richardson's independent review into the federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It will investigate antisemitism in Australia. It will make recommendations to assist federal agencies to tackle antisemitism. It will examine the circumstances of the terror attack, and it will make other recommendations to strengthen social cohesion and counter the spread of ideologically and religiously motivated extremism in this country. We want to strengthen social cohesion and bring people together. (Time expired)

Senator Sheldon, first supplementary?

Australians expect their leaders to work together to eliminate antisemitism and strengthen our social cohesion. What other actions have the Albanese Labor government taken since the attack to tackle antisemitism and keep Australians safe?

This government has acted to confront antisemitism. This government has acted to crack down on extremism and hatred, and this government has acted always in the spirit of national unity. We have introduced new powers for the Minister for Home Affairs to reject visas or cancel visas for those who spread hate and division. The eSafety Commissioner, the special envoy and the Minister for Communications are working to address antisemitism online, and we are building on the envoy's plan to combat antisemitism—an aspect of which included racial vilification, something that I note that those opposite have walked away from, despite calling—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order! All senators across the chamber will come to order! Every senator will have an opportunity to make a contribution if they wish but not now during question time.

We've invested in immediate mental health support for those who are dealing with the trauma of Bondi, and we will keep working to bring Australians together because hatred and extremism can never divide us in this country.

Senator Sheldon, second supplementary?

Why is it important for the Albanese Labor government to respond to these events by taking action to enact gun reform and strengthen hate laws and migration controls?

When the Prime Minister announced his intention to recall parliament and to legislate in the way that we have described he said that those who had committed this horrendous act at Bondi had 'hatred in their minds and lethal weapons in their hands'. This parliament and this government need to address both. We are seeking to get dangerous guns off our streets with the largest national buyback since 1996. There are also the gun reforms limiting the number of firearms to be held by any one individual, because someone in suburban Sydney probably doesn't need six guns. They limit open-ended licensing and allow additional use of criminal intelligence to underpin firearms licensing, and our reforms ensure that only Australian citizens can own guns. These are important reforms that continue the work of John Howard, Tim Fischer and Kim Beazley. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Macquarie University academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has led children in calls for intifada, and she rejects the idea that Zionists have the right to be culturally safe. The Premier of our home state of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, has said that he is 'of the view that the statements and actions attributed to Dr Abdel-Fattah go beyond reasonable public debate, being antisemitic and hateful at worst and deeply offensive and insulting at best'. Do you agree with Premier Malinauskas that Dr Abdel-Fattah's statements and actions are antisemitic and hateful?

I oppose—and all of us should oppose—calls for intifada. I believe Jewish Australians—all Australians—are entitled to cultural safety. My views on these issues are longstanding and have been consistent over many years in public life and over the last few years as Foreign minister. I have consistently made those views clear. In relation to this issue, I've been asked about this on a number of occasions. I have made the point that, as I understand it, the person in question is taking legal action against the Premier. I don't propose to comment any further, but my views on the issues are clear.

Senator Ruston, first supplementary?

Minister, given that you apparently agree that Dr Abdel-Fattah's comments and actions are antisemitic—given the answer you gave to my primary question—will you condemn the collective boycott of the Adelaide Writers' Week by supporters of Dr Abdel-Fattah, and could you actually confirm that you do agree that her comments were antisemitic?

First, I have been much more focused on the package of gun law reform and hate speech and racial vilification legislation, which we now cannot proceed with, than on some of the issues that you describe. Mr Burke, I think, has responded more broadly. I have made clear my views on the use of those statements, and my views on the use of those statements are consistent. I have made these comments before.

Senator Ruston?

I raise a point of order on direct relevance. I think I was very clear and very short in my question, asking whether the minister could confirm that she condemns the comments that were made by Dr Abdel-Fattah and whether she was prepared to condemn the collective boycott of Adelaide Writers' Week by those that are boycotting it.

The minister is being clear and direct in her answer to your question.

I would also say—and I have been asked about this publicly—that I am a strong supporter, as I think every South Australian is, of the Adelaide Festival and our reputation as the 'festival state'. I'm sure that will continue, and I'm sure it will continue to be internationally renowned. (Time expired)

Senator Ruston, second supplementary?

To be perfectly clear, then, Minister, could you please answer me as to whether you support the comments that were made yesterday by Minister Burke, who you've referred to, when he said that dealing with antisemitism is a matter for the festival alone? Do you believe that the matters in relation to antisemitism are a matter for the Adelaide Festival, or do you believe, as your prime minister said, there is no place for antisemitism in this country?

I have been on the record, certainly in my time as Foreign minister to date but also all my life, about prejudice being an issue we all have a responsibility to confront. Antisemitism is a hatred that we all have a responsibility to confront. That has been my consistent position, Senator, and it always will be.

Senator Ruston, on a point of order?

In relation to direct relevance to the question that I asked, the Prime Minister has made one comment and Minister Burke has made another. I'm just seeking to understand which of those you agree with.

Senator Ruston, points of order are not opportunities to make statements. I will address your point of order and say, once again, that the minister is being relevant. Minister Wong, did you wish to continue?

I would make this point: I was asked previously, in a different context, about references to intifada, and I'll refer you to those comments, Senator. What I did say was I agreed with Ms Segal—

Maybe let Don answer. He's prepared to answer.

Senator Ruston, you've asked your question.

What I said was I agreed with Jillian Segal, the antisemitism envoy, in her views about the way in which those failures have been used to whip up hatred.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. In the first three weeks of 2026, we've seen cyclones and flooding in North Queensland, floods in Sydney, fires and heatwave conditions in South Australia and, in Victoria, the worst bushfires since the 2019-20 Black Summer and catastrophic flash flooding on the Great Ocean Road. This extreme weather is undeniably worsened by climate change, which is driven by burning coal and gas. How can you possibly have approved the expansion of a thermal coal mine in Queensland last Friday and now be considering further drilling for oil and gas off the Great Ocean Road?

I'm happy to try and respond as best as I can, Senator, but I'm sure that the minister, Minister Watt, could probably give you a more detailed answer than I can about EPBC approvals, which I think was part of your question. The government has made our position on climate clear. We want to continue to transition our economy. We believe that is economically responsible as well as responsible from an intergenerational and environmental perspective. We also know it is not easy. We also know we have historically had a very fossil fuel dependent economy, a very resource rich economy, and if we are going to transition responsibly we need to make sure we build those industries, including export industries, and those skills and capacities which will be needed in a world that is—pays a premium for lower carbon goods and services.

In relation to energy, you would know, because you have observed this over years, that the energy transition is a really important part of transforming our economy. We have traditionally had, obviously, a very fossil fuel dependent energy system, with all that that means, because we had access to lower price resources. Shifting that is not easy, and the government has worked on that with great intent since we came to government and with the legacy, as you know, of what 22 failed energy plans and climate denial over the previous government's term has meant. It meant that there was disinvestment. That is, people gave notice that they were closing coal-fired power stations and no-one wanted to invest further. That transition is something we have worked on since we came to government. There is a lot more to do, and the government will keep doing that work for the benefit not only of household budgets but of future generations. (Time expired)

Senator Waters, first supplementary?

You don't transition off coal and gas by opening more of it, and it's the people in affected communities who are now looking at millions of dollars in clean-up costs. What is your government doing to make the coal and gas companies driving this damage pay for the consequences, rather than the innocent people being devastated by repeat climate catastrophes?

Senator, I'd make two points: first is that all projects must meet environmental requirements to be approved, including mining and resource projects, and second is that we have approved—and I'm grateful to Senator Watt for assisting me with this—some 130 new renewable energy projects since being elected in 2022. That includes solar farms, wind farms, batteries and more.

I raise a point of order on relevance. When will the polluters pay rather than people pay for the climate consequences?

Yes, that was part of your question, as was an issue around transition. I believe the minister is being relevant, but I'll continue to listen carefully. The minister has indicated she has finished her response. Senator Waters, second supplementary?

So not only does this government refuse to make the climate polluters pay for the damage they cause but the taxpayer is also subsidising that damage. Why are we paying billions every year through fuel tax credits to subsidise big coal and gas corporations to burn fossil fuels and worsen natural disasters?

Senator, the answer to that is in my first response. We do take the responsibility of being a government that works to change our economy, change our energy system, very seriously. But, unlike you, we recognise that that involves work, policy and economics. It's not just an angry political slogan. We take responsibility as a government for doing that and we will continue to do that, and you have seen that in the investment in renewables since we came to government. That will continue, and we will continue to be focused on the transition, which we know will take many, many years.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, Senator Watt. The antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach on 14 December last year was the deadliest terror attack on Australian soil. What steps are the Albanese government taking to address both the motivation and the means of this attack to ensure something like this can never happen again?

Thanks Senator O'Neill, who I know has had consistent advocacy on these matters, not just since the Bondi attack but well beforehand as well. As I think all Australians know, the terrorists who carried out the antisemitic Bondi attack had hatred in their hearts and guns in their hands, and any response to this horrific attack that ignores either hatred or guns is an incomplete response. That's why the Albanese Labor government is acting on both the motivation and the method for this attack by strengthening laws to confront hate and extremism and by reforming gun laws to keep Australians safe.

Australia now has more than four million firearms in circulation. This is more than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, which was nearly 30 years ago. That fact alone requires us to confront a difficult truth: our current system allowed someone who posed a deadly risk to legally access firearms. That cannot be allowed to happen again. The Albanese Labor government's reforms that we're considering this week restore the principle that firearms ownership in Australia is a conditional privilege secondary to public safety. So what these laws will do is reduce the number of guns in the community, strengthen background checks, improve intelligence sharing and make sure that people who do not need guns or who might pose a risk cannot obtain them. You really would think that's something that this entire parliament could support.

In the wake of the tragedy at Bondi on 14 December, we as a parliament have a responsibility to come together and act decisively to make sure that Australians can be safe and feel safe. We can do this. Just like the country did after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 and just like John Howard did 20 years ago, the government will establish a national gun buyback scheme to purchase back arms that are not necessary— (Time expired)

Senator O'Neill, first supplementary?

Thank you for that fulsome response, Minister. Could you also explain what this means for Australian gun owners and the importance of sharing accurate information about the gun reforms?

Thank you, Senator O'Neill. It is important that Australians have accurate information about what the gun laws the government is proposing will actually do rather than all sorts of furphies that are being propagated by people who don't support these laws to justify voting against them. Let me begin by saying that, if you have a legitimate reason to own a gun, these changes are not about you. But, of course, that hasn't stopped those opposite peddling their misinformation about what these reforms are about.

Our reforms are not a blanket ban on firearms. Our reforms will not stop Australian athletes from competing internationally or accessing the equipment they need. Our reforms will not stop those with a genuine need, such as feral-pest controllers and sporting shooters, from obtaining a firearm. Our reforms will not stop Australian farmers and primary producers from being able to perform their daily tasks. People with a genuine, legitimate reason to own a firearm, like primary producers, feral-pest controllers and sporting shooters, will still be able to— (Time expired)

Senator O'Neill, second supplementary?

Thank you so much for some of the correction of misinformation. What will these sensible gun reforms mean in practice? What effect would these reforms have had on the Bondi terrorists?

Thanks again, Senator O'Neill. If this national reform package, including the hate crimes bill and the gun law reforms, had already been in place the gunmen involved in the Bondi terrorist attack would not have been eligible to hold firearms at all. They would have had none. The father in this incident would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen. The firearms that they were using would not have been available to them. And the son, who of course is now facing charges, who didn't have a firearms licence in any event, had he tried any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licensing decisions. Now, no-one is pretending that dealing with guns deals with everything behind Bondi attack, but it deals with the method used to commit this atrocity. We must deal with that method, despite the fact that we see some opposite pretend that these laws are about something completely different. As David Meagher, the brother of former police officer Peter Meagher who was killed at Bondi, said:

… an antisemite without a gun is just a hate-filled person, an antisemite with a gun is a killer. (Time expired)

On 7 December 2025, I wrote to the Minister for Home Affairs seeking urgent funding for critical upgrades at the National Jewish Memorial Centre. The centre has had these upgrades costed at just over $100,000. Noting that the government has been working on various priority measures over the Christmas and New Year period, can the minister update the Senate on the status of that request and whether a decision has now been made?

Thanks, Senator Pocock, for the question. I will come to the specific point in a moment, but it's worth reminding the chamber that, since the Bondi attack, the Prime Minister has announced several measures to support the Jewish community to the value of $102 million, and those measures are designed to enhance the safety of Australia's Jewish community, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to addressing antisemitism.

The National Jewish Memorial Centre you've asked about has previously received funding through different pathways. I'm aware that Senator Gallagher, in her role as senator for the ACT as well as finance minister, has been working very closely with the organisation concerned about potentially accessing further funding. I recognise the letter that you've written, Senator Pocock, and, as I say, Senator Gallagher has been very active on this issue, including meeting with the organisation again, as I understand, yesterday. The development of a grant opportunity towards additional security funding is being prioritised and organisations will be able to apply for additional funding when announced. The intention would be that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry would administer this funding when it's available.

The government, well before the Bondi attack, had expended significant funds, rightly, to strengthen security around synagogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish institutions. We've made additional commitments in that regard since the Bondi attack. Clearly, it's the case that a range of senators have been advocating—whether it be you, Senator Pocock, Senator Gallagher or, no doubt, many others—and we will continue to consider those applications.

Senator Pocock, first supplementary?

Thank you, Minister. As you said, there has been funding before the Bondi terror attack. My understanding is that they asked for money for this and it was denied. Given there's now $104 million on the table, can you give any indication? Surely these are the upgrades that are actually urgent. We have a community asking for money. There's money on the table. Why has there been no answer over the last month?

Thanks, Senator Pocock. I understand that, in terms of previous requests for funding from this organisation, two of the three items that they requested funding for were approved. Without in any way attributing blame here, the decisions as to how funds should be expended previously and which organisations should receive those funds were made at arm's length from government. Our role was to provide the funding and set up a process for those decisions to be made independently. There were no doubt good reasons for the decisions that were made previously about which elements of that funding were approved and which ones were not. But we understand the very genuine request that has been made by the organisation, supported by you and supported by Senator Gallagher, and we'll no doubt have more to say about that before too long.

Senator Pocock, second supplementary?

Minister, given the heightened security risks facing Jewish institutions and given the relatively modest cost of this upgrade—there's $100 million on the table—what is the process? When will the decision be made? Who makes the decision? When will this money actually flow? People see big amounts being pledged, and then on the ground they're asking, 'Well, where is this money given the urgency?'

Obviously, there needs to be a process to determine where that funding will go. We should remember that it is relatively soon after that horrific attack on 14 December. The government has acted with urgency previously in providing funding under previous rounds, and we'll certainly be doing that again now that we've announced additional funding.

Senator Gallagher has advised me that she provided some advice yesterday to this organisation about how they could strengthen their application and how they could consider undertaking a full assessment of the site for its risk, rather than the particular part of the site that they have been particularly interested in. I understand the organisation has taken that feedback on board and intends to have that work done, so we look forward to receiving that application, as we do from a number of other organisations. It's certainly our commitment to provide Jewish Australians with the security that they deserve.

Senator Pocock, I'm advised Senator Lambie has given you her questions, so I will call you again.

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Wong. Minister Wong, as you would know better than anyone in this place, the protests in Iran have been largely suppressed by a brutal crackdown. Thousands have been killed and a communications blackout has been in place. From the images, recordings and accounts that have made it out so far—some verified, others not—the deliberate, unrestrained and savage targeting of civilians by government forces is hard to adequately describe. Huge concerns have been expressed by members of the Iranian community here in Canberra, across the country and, more generally, amongst people in the community who are concerned about what they are seeing. Please can you outline the steps the Australian government has taken and is contemplating taking in response to this crisis?

Thank you, Senator Pocock. First, Australia condemns the Iranian government's violent crackdown on its own people. We, along with others, call on Iran to protect and respect the rights of its citizens. The killing of protesters, the use of force, arbitrary arrests, the blackouts of telecommunications: all of these repressive measures must stop. I have said, and I say again, Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.

We have taken strong action to hold the Iranian regime to account, and that action has included sanctions on some 200 Iran linked people and entities, including almost 100 IRGC linked individuals and entities. We have strengthened our sanctions framework in order to target those involved in oppression inside Iran, including against women and girls. Again, I publicly salute the courage of Iranian women and girls in particular. We were at the forefront of efforts to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, and we co-sponsored a successful Human Rights Council resolution at establishing an independent investigation into human rights violations.

I also want to talk about the role of Iran in our society. We will not allow Iran or any nation to undermine the safety of Australians, and we will not allow Iran or any nation to sew division in the Australian community. You will have seen we took unprecedented diplomatic action in response to the attacks on the Australian Jewish community— (Time expired)

Senator Pocock, first supplementary?

Given the near total shutdown of the internet and mobile phone calls in Iran, with intermittent calls only returning in recent days, please could you outline the support that the government is providing Australian Iranian communities to reach loved ones and seek information updates about what is happening in the country?

My thoughts are with the Australian Iranian community at this time. I anticipate that I speak for the chamber in saying that our thoughts are with the Australian Iranian community. Australian Iranians who have family members in Iran, who are observing or seeing or reading some of the horrific news which is coming out of Iran—that is incredibly, extremely distressing for the community. That distress is compounded by the telecommunications blackout, which means people haven't been able to contact loved ones and relatives to check up on their welfare. I'm advised that the Department of Home Affairs continues to engage with the Iranian diaspora community regarding this concerning situation, and that work will continue.

Senator Pocock, second supplementary?

Thank you, Minister. Will Australia commit to doing more to pressure the Iranian regime, including expanding targeted human rights sanctions, speaking up publicly, providing visa assistance to families of those here in Australia and coordinating with allies for stronger action to support the Iranian people?

We have done those things, Senator Pocock. We will continue to do so.

My question goes to the Minister representing the Prime Minister. Minister, following the terrorist attacks in Bondi—the deadliest in our nation's history—the Prime Minister has failed to acknowledge that radical Islamic extremism was the driving ideology behind it. You cannot defeat what you won't define. The Prime Minister has muddied the waters. This refusal to clearly name the threat has allowed this threat to spread unchecked, and as a result Australians have been placed in danger. When will the Prime Minister finally concede that refusing to name radical Islamic extremism as the driver of this terrorist attack on Australians makes future attacks more likely and helps antisemitism continue to spread unchecked?

You just voted against the bill to stop hate preachers!

Senator Watt, come to order!

Senator Bell, first, the Prime Minister, Mr Burke, myself—we have all identified very clearly, on the advice of the AFP and ASIO, which have also been part of the public discussion and public reports, that this is an antisemitic terrorist attack that was inspired by ISIS, which is an organisation that peddles hatred and is inspired by a radical perversion of Islam. We have said that.

Second, I'm seeking, in a time when we are grieving the worst terrorist attack in Australian history, not to engage in partisanship. I would say this, Senator: your party just voted against bills which enable the government to crack down on hate groups. Your party voted against legislation which was all about tackling hate. So your party has come out against—

Government senators interjecting—

Order on my right!

Your party just voted against laws which enable tougher being taken action on visas—both the cancellation of visas and the refusal of visas. So, Senator Bell, to come in here and say you want stronger action taken on hate whilst your party over there votes against legislation which would enable stronger protection on migration in terms of visas for hate preachers and others—your party voted against laws which are designed to crack down on those who preach hatred and organisations which do that. With respect, I think that is not a consistent position. (Time expired)

Government senators interjecting—

Order! Order on my right! I've called for order three times. I should not have to do that. Senator Bell, first supplementary?

Minister, you talk about hatred and you talk about perversions, but we want you to talk clearly about radical Islamic extremism and this government's failure to enforce existing laws since the October 7 attacks two years ago.

Government senators interjecting—

Order, again, on my right! The senator has the right to have his question heard in silence.

The refusal to unequivocally call out radical Islamic ideology, driving antisemitism in Australia, has allowed this problem to escalate into a terrorist attack on Jewish Australians. When will this government accept responsibility?

The bill that has just passed the House and that you will have the opportunity to consider shortly is a bill that, amongst other things, enables the Minister for Home Affairs to cancel or refuse a visa for people who want to come here and spread hate. It's a bill your colleagues voted against, and I would ask you—if your position is that you want government to be able to crack down on those who spread hate—to reconsider your position on this legislation between now and when it comes to this chamber.

Senator Bell, second supplementary?

Minister, you talk about passing legislation to deal with the problem, but what we've actually seen today occur in this parliament is a farce. Your government, with help from the Liberals on one hand and the Greens on the other, are rushing through massive changes to our nation's laws with no real scrutiny—two bills—and you are shutting down debate. When will your prime minister accept responsibility for this farce and resign?

Senator, we believe that the worst terrorist event on Australian soil in our history requires a serious response—a responsible and serious response—and that is the approach the government is taking. With respect, that question was not a serious response.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Emergency Management, Senator McAllister. It's been a tough summer for communities across Australia who have experienced severe weather events, from dangerous bushfires in Victoria to flooding in north-west Queensland. Communities in my home state of Victoria have experienced catastrophic fires, with thousands of firefighters courageously facing challenging conditions to protect communities and bring fires under control. How has the Albanese Labor government worked with the Victorian government to respond to the fires and support communities as they recover?

Thank you, Senator Darmanin. I know that all Victorian senators will have been standing with their communities in what has been a very difficult time. In the last weeks, we have seen communities across Victoria devastated by dangerous bushfires, and I want to thank the thousands of first responders who have braved very challenging conditions and protected their communities.

We know that it is a very different time. Many in the community have had to evacuate and many have experienced damage to their homes and to their businesses. I want to thank all of those Victorians who have listened to the authorities and also those who have reached out and helped out their neighbours. Our thoughts are with the family and the friends of the person who died in the Longwood bushfire and the rescuers who were with them at that time.

While the firefighting effort is far from over, we want to support Victorians to get back on their feet as quickly as possible. The Albanese government has activated the disaster recovery allowance for workers who have experienced a loss of income as a result of the bushfires, as well as the Australian government disaster recovery payment, which provides one-off financial assistance for Victorians who have experienced major impacts from the fires. We're working hand in hand with the Victorian government to activate more than $77 million in additional assistance. Primary producers are the backbone of many of these local economies, and we are providing $75,000 grants to help cover the costs of clean-up and reinstating their enterprises. We've established a $12 million council support fund to support bushfire affected councils to restore vital community assets and services, and we're investing more than $82 million to restore and repair bushfire affected roads. We continue to monitor the situation in Victoria, and our government will work with the Victorian government and stands ready to consider requests for assistance. (Time expired)

Senator Darmanin, first supplementary?

Many communities across northern Queensland are also experiencing the impacts of ongoing flooding and severe weather. Emergency service workers, volunteers and the community have all been supporting each other through this very difficult time. What assistance has the Albanese Labor government activated to support Queensland communities impacted by the recent flooding?

North-west Queensland has experienced a series of monsoonal floods, and ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji has caused widespread damage to people's homes and livelihoods. Queenslanders are resilient, supporting each other during these challenging times, but this is a time to help them. Supporting these communities in north-west Queensland is and will remain a priority for the Albanese government.

We know that recovery starts with people; that's where we always start. It's why we've worked with the Queensland government to activate personal hardship assistance, to help ensure impacted residents can meet essential needs like food and clothing. We know the extensive flooding has been particularly tough for farmers in north-west Queensland, and it's why we have made available disaster recovery grants of up to $75,000 for impacted primary producers and activated $7 million in emergency fodder assistance to help farmers keep their stock fed. (Time expired)

Senator Darmanin, second supplementary?

We know Australians are facing increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters. The Albanese Labor government has been committed to strengthening the government's capacity to respond to events like these and to help people recover. What measures has the government invested to prepare for this higher-risk weather season?

The Albanese government has made record investments in the Commonwealth's emergency management capabilities to better prepare and protect communities. We've increased funding to the national aerial firefighting fleet. It includes the large air tanker and the Black Hawk helicopters, which were deployed to Victoria to provide extra support to state authorities who need the response. We established the national emergency management stockpile, which includes items like generators and emergency accommodation, which states and territories can call upon.

We know that, as the climate changes, we can expect more frequent and more severe disasters. That's why we want to help communities. We want to build resilience against future disasters with our $1 billion Disaster Ready Fund, and we recently committed $14.6 million, as an example, for a cyclone shelter on Palm Island, in northern Queensland, to protect that local community.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. Australia doesn't have a gun problem; it has a problem with antisemitism and Islamic extremism. The government has failed for two years to take effective action against antisemitism and extremism. Minister, can you provide a guarantee to the Australian public that the two terrorists who perpetrated the 14 December Bondi attack would not have been able to do so had the government rushed these flawed firearm bills being in place at the time?

I think what most of us believe is that this attack does highlight the need to get guns off our streets, and we know that—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order across the chamber! I cannot hear the minister's response.

We know that Australia's gun laws were substantially reformed in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, and we saw bipartisan support from John Howard, Kim Beazley, Tim Fischer—

A government senator: Borbidge!

and Mr Borbidge—thank you—for action. I think it is sad for the Australian community that we see such a politicisation.

On relevancy, my question was: would the Bondi Beach attack—

Senator McKenzie—

have been able to occur had the—

Senator McKenzie, come to order.

unfair firearm laws been in place?

Senator McKenzie! Do not continue speaking when I call you to order. You have made a point of order, I have noted your question, and the minister is being directly relevant. Minister, please continue.

This is the advice I have: if the national reform package had already been in place, the gunman would not have been eligible to hold firearms at all. The father would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen. The firearms that they were using would not have been available to them. And the son, who did not have a firearms licence in any event, had he tried, any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licensing decision. Senator, this is one of the many reasons why you should be voting for it.

Now, no-one is pretending that guns deal with everything, and the gun buyback legislation is only one aspect of what the government is doing and what the parliament is doing. As the Prime Minister said, and I referenced earlier, the gunmen at Bondi—the murderers at Bondi—had hate in their minds and guns in their hands and we need to deal with both. And it is a matter of great regret that you have chosen not to deal with— (Time expired)

Senator McKenzie, a second supplementary?

Australia already has tough gun laws in place. The question is: Are the existing laws being implemented effectively? How was a person who was assessed by ASIO for close ties with an Islamic State terrorism cell able to access firearms in the state of New South Wales?

Honourable senators interjecting—

Senator McKenzie, resume your seat. I reminded those on my right, particularly, when questions are being asked, the senator has a right for that question to be heard in silence. That is my expectation. Senator McKenzie, please continue.

I did finish—I finished on 'New South Wales'.

That is precisely why we need the legislation that you seem to wish to oppose. That is precisely one of the reasons why we need this legislation. Look, I understand the constituency and the communities that you seek to represent, and you are right—there are many decent law-abiding gun owners. But we also know that we have more guns now in our country than after the Port Arthur reforms were in place. We know, as I said earlier, that if we had stricter gun laws in the shape that have come into this chamber then the two gunmen responsible are likely to have been unable to obtain a weapon. So what I would say to you is, yes, it is worth doing; it is worth regulating. David Meagher, the brother of the police officer who was killed, Peter Meagher, has made some comments and I will refer to them in my next answer.

Senator McKenzie, a second supplementary?

If the government's firearm reforms are purportedly intended as a response to the 14 December terrorist attack, why is the government proposing new restrictions on the imports of gel balls for toy skirmish markers and handguns for competition sports? How does restricting these items respond to what happened at Bondi Beach?

My recollection is that those provisions were in part as a result of the advice from national security agencies but I am sure that will be—you know, laughing at that, Senator, I find remarkable.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Once again, order across the chamber. Minister Wong, please continue.

David Meagher, the brother of former police officer Peter Meagher, who was killed at Bondi, has said, 'An antisemite without a gun is a hate-filled person; an antisemite with a gun is a killer.' So, Senator—

What about a car? What about knives? What about a bomb?

I will take that interjection. What about a car? They are not the same thing.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order!

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Health, Disability and Ageing, Minister McAllister. We know the events of 14 December have had a profound impact on our Jewish communities and people across Australia. What mental health support is the Albanese Labor government providing to those affected by the Bondi terror act?

This has been a difficult summer for all Australians, particularly the Jewish community and those who were at Bondi on 14 December. To those who were affected by the attack, I want to acknowledge the grief, the trauma and the distress that you are working through. Every Australian's heart is with you.

I also want to thank the mental health workers who have been supporting the people and the families who have been impacted by the attack. The work you do is often hard and always important, and I know that many of you have been managing your own grief while you are helping others.

As the Senate acknowledged yesterday in its condolence motion, the impact of the Bondi attack includes the trauma of the men, women and children who were injured physically and psychologically, including those who witnessed the horror. That is why our government is responding with formal mental health supports, responding promptly after that attack to deliver immediate assistance. The $42.6 million package is intended to help those most affected by this tragedy. It includes $14.2 million for targeted mental health supports for the Jewish community. This funding has been made available through organisations with established links to communities nationally, such as Jewish House and Jewish Care. A further $4.5 million has also been provided to primary health networks in the Sydney region and areas with significant Jewish communities. We've committed to establishing a Medicare mental health centre within the Bondi area. The centre will have a specific focus on trauma support and will provide free walk-in services. Work is well underway, and we expect operations to start next week.

Senator Cox, first supplementary?

In the wake of such a traumatic event, coordinated support is critical. How is the Albanese Labor government working with New South Wales agencies and non-government organisations to deliver support?

Thank you, Senator Cox. We know that this event may affect people in different ways, and it's why our package includes targeted support for particular cohorts in addition to the support that I have already mentioned. We've provided $5.6 million to the Black Dog Institute's National Emergency Worker Support Service. This provides an online mental health assessment and triage service as well as free psychological sessions with a particular focus on PTSD. 12 free sessions will be made available to any first responder, including lifeguards and other community members who responded to the attack. We've provided $3 million for targeted support to young Australians, and this will extend the hours of headspace Bondi and support headspace mental health training and education session to school staff, students, parents and carers in schools across Australia.

Senator Cox, second supplementary?

We know the devastating impact the Bondi terror attack has had and continues to have on all Australians. How can people access support during this difficult time?

Violence casts a long shadow, and many Australians will carry the scars from 14 December with them for a lifetime. Lifeline, Beyond Blue, eheadspace, yourtown's Kid Helpline, and 13YARN have been provided a share in $7.6 million to scale up capacity and provide additional crisis support. Many who have visited the Bondi hub will have seen Lifeline teams on the ground, and I thank them for their ongoing assistance.

Support is available to all Australians, no matter where you are, through the Better Access initiative. Through the Better Access initiative, eligible people can access Medicare benefits for up to 10 individual and 10 group psychological services per calendar year. We are monitoring service usage and eager to hear from service users directly, and we stand ready to do more over time.

I ask that further questions be placed on notice.

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to Senators Kovacic, Henderson and Hume from the 19th to the 20th of January, for personal reasons.

Question agreed to.

If there is no objection, the business is postponed.

The President has received letters requesting changes in the membership of committees.

by leave—I move:

That senators be appointed to and discharged from committees as set out in the document available in the chamber and listed in the Dynamic Red:

Community Affairs Legislation Committee —

Appointed—

Substitute member: Senator Steele-John to replace Senator Allman-Payne for the committee's inquiries into the Health Legislation Amendment (Prescribing of Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2025 and the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025

Participating member: Senator Allman-Payne

Education and Employment Legislation Committee —

Discharged—Senator Sharma

Appointed—

Senator Nampijinpa Price

Substitute member: Senator Barbara Pocock to replace Senator Faruqi for the committee's inquiry into the Fair Work Amendment (Right to Work from Home) Bill 2025

Participating members: Senators Faruqi and Sharma

Education and Employment References Committee —

Discharged—Senator Sharma

Appointed—

Senator Nampijinpa Price

Participating member: Senator Sharma

Question agreed to.

I move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The terrorists who killed 15 people on that horrible day had hate in their hearts, and guns in their hands. The tragic events at Bondi demand a comprehensive response from Government. As a government we must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method. We must deal with the motivation of hatred, and the firearms—the method—the attackers used to devastate so many lives.

This Bill delivers on the Government's commitment to address the methods of the attack.

The Bill provides a framework for ensuring Commonwealth intelligence can inform firearms licence decision-making in states and territories. It provides the foundations for the largest buyback of firearms since Port Arthur, nearly 30 years ago, and strengthens laws for the importation of firearms.

The Bill forms part of a comprehensive package of reforms, including the renegotiation of the National Firearms Agreement led by National Cabinet, and the Bill brought forward by the Attorney-General to further criminalise hateful and extremist conduct, and ensure that those who seek to spread hate, division and radicalisation are met with appropriate penalties.

It comes as a shock to most Australians that Australia has more firearms now than we had before Port Arthur, nearly 30 years ago. Many people were also surprised to see that it was possible for a visa holder to have a licence, and that the information held by our intelligence agencies was not integrated into the firearms licencing decisions.

A critical question that I've often been asked during this debate is if this national reform package had already been in place, how many firearms would the Bondi gunmen have held. Would it be six? Would it be five? Would it be four? The answer is zero. The father would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen. The firearms that they were using would not have been available to them. And the son, who didn't have a firearms licence in any event—had he tried, any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licencing decisions.

No one is pretending that dealing with guns deals with everything that happened at Bondi. But it does deal with the method, and we must deal with the method.

Buyback Scheme

The Bill will establish a framework for a National Gun Buyback Scheme to support proposed reforms to national gun laws. The Buyback would purchase surplus and newly restricted firearms, and reduce the now more than four million registered firearms in Australia. A buyback is essential to compensate state and territory firearms owners for surplus or newly restricted firearms, and ensure that restricted guns don't end up in the hands of criminals and organised crime groups.

The sheer number of firearms currently circulating within the Australian community is unsustainable. Research by the Australia Institute last year highlights over 2,000 firearms are stolen or diverted to the illicit market every year—that's roughly one firearm every four hours.

The less legal firearms in the community, the less opportunity there is for them to fall into the wrong hands, including potential violent extremists and serious and organised criminals. The National Gun Buyback Scheme will help get firearms off our streets.

Commonwealth Intelligence Sharing

The Bill will also lay the foundation for a new Commonwealth background checking framework to inform decisions to issue or renew firearm licences by the states and territories.

The model would leverage AusCheck's existing role in providing background checks to other sensitive licensing frameworks.

Intelligence held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission would be shared securely and underpin firearms licensing decisions.

With these changes, the licencing system will combine with AusCheck and the National Firearms Register to make sure we're using the best information we have. When someone seeks a licence or renewal, AusCheck will make sure that our intelligence holdings are utilised.

When new persons of interest come to light for our intelligence agencies, they will be able to readily check if the person of interest is also a firearms holder. This means our intelligence agencies will get the best information they need. And states and territories, when deciding if someone is a fit and proper person to hold a licence, will have the best possible process before a licence is issued.

Details of the regime's operation, and how assessments are used in licencing, will be negotiated with states and territories.

Customs restrictions

While states and territories predominantly regulate firearms, the Commonwealth regulates the importation of them at the border.

There will be a range of measures introduced through customs regulations. These tougher, more robust regulations will protect the safety of the Australia community by ensuring only those with legitimate needs can import restricted firearms.

The regulations dealing with wearable ammunition equipment such as vests will not be dealt with today. There will be further consultation on this measure.

Criminal Code offences

At the time of Port Arthur, and the original National Firearms Agreement, there was no such thing as 3D printing, let alone 3D printed guns. The Bill updates Australia's Criminal Code to deal with this new technology.

The Bill will create new offences for using a carriage service to send electronic materials, like 3D-printing blueprints, used to manufacture firearms and explosives, or possessing or controlling this material through a carriage service.

These measures respond to feedback from the firearms community, including defences to ensure it does not capture those who seek to share material that assists with firearms maintenance, safety training and information on ammunition packing, and provides narrow defences for possession and use of 3D printing blueprints by those who are licenced to manufacture and modify firearms and firearms parts.

Other Customs amendments

The Bill also strengthens regulations that prohibit the import or export of goods that contribute to the spread of hate, extremism and promote the use of violence against persons and groups.

National Firearms Agreement

The measures in this bill complement the Government's ongoing work with states and territories to modernise and strengthen Australia's firearms laws. This includes the agreement by National Cabinet to develop options to:

Conclusion

In the wake of the tragedy at Bondi on 14 December, we as a parliament have a responsibility to act decisively to make sure Australians can be safe and feel safe. We must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method of the attackers. We must deal with both the hatred they had in their hearts, and the guns they had in their hands. This Bill is a critical step towards addressing their methods.

I extend my thanks to staff across the portfolio for their incredible work in developing this Bill. I also extend my thanks to the members of the public, advocates, community representatives and industry groups who have engaged in consultation to inform the measures I am introducing today. I commend the bill to the chamber.

I'm pleased to be able to rise on behalf of the coalition to start debate in the Senate on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. As the Senate would recall, the legislation that we're currently debating was, in fact, part of a broader package of laws all jammed together, all tied in together, as an omnibus bill. These laws, for the most part, deal with gun laws—a framework to set up a gun buyback scheme; a system to enable Commonwealth intelligence agencies to share information around background checking for state and territory law enforcement agencies, which are the responsible bodies to issue licences for firearms in this country. It expands that background check arrangement; it expands the importation controls and new tests; it expands customs import and export prohibitions relating to extremists and hate linked materials, symbols and weapons.

One of the big concerns we had about this legislation in the first instance was that it was legislation jammed in with other legislation relating to matters to deal with the antisemitism crisis we face in this country, to deal with how we might proscribe and manage hate groups in this country, how we might deal with individuals under these laws who, of course, are spreading hate, inciting violence, are seeking to do terrible things to unpick the social fabric of our country that are not in our national interest, to deal with people who hate this country, who do not want democracy to succeed, who do not feel that the way we live in this country is indeed the way that it should be. They want to change everything. So to have this set of laws jammed in together was a huge concern for us.

I will also point out that these laws were slapped down on the table by the Prime Minister, by his government, and he said, in doing so: You've got a week to look at this. The parliament will be coming back—and here we are—and you've got to get it right by then. You've got to go through the 150 pages or thereabouts of legislation, you've got to read the 350 pages of explanatory memorandum—all of it very complex, all of it impacting existing laws across our statute book, all of it having impacts on things that many of us have raised concerns on towards freedom of speech and the like—and you've got to get it all done within the week. This is a truncated process off the back of legislation having been tabled that no-one outside of government had any input into prior to the legislation being made available to the public on Tuesday of last week—seven days ago.

At 9.00 am on Tuesday last week, the government released this legislation, or a draft version of it, for public consultation. Of course, since then, the legislation has been taken out of the omnibus bill they'd tabled, because they did see the writing on the wall. They realised, of course, that in its form then and the approach being taken—'Take it or leave it; we've drafted legislation, and you're going to have to pass it, or we'll blame you for the failure of this legislation'—was not going to work. As anyone tuned into this debate might realise, the Australian Greens political party have offered their support to the government to pass the firearms component of this legislation and the related customs element as well. They saw fit to pass this; they were able to do that in short form. I'm not sure what interrogation was had into this legislation, but they've reached that conclusion anyway.

The coalition does support elements of the legislation. If we start with, of course, the provision regarding expanded background checks using intelligence holdings, it's frankly baffling that today we don't actually have that in place, that that is not a standard form, that a police or law enforcement agency—whoever the licence-issuing authority in any state or territory is—doesn't, as a matter of course, go and interrogate the holdings of intelligence information or seek to understand whether there is any information held by national intelligence agencies. It's the fact that here we are in 2026 and that's not actually happening. To that end, it is a good move to have that arrangement in place—that we are actually able to ensure that level of information, which was, as at today, unavailable to agencies who are making decisions, is important.

It has also highlighted the very slow-going nature of the National Firearms Register. As I understand it, there are some jurisdictions—and this is the reason we don't have a national firearms registry—that still have a paper based registry. It's not electronic, it is not online, it's not even an Excel spreadsheet! It is an antiquated system, which, of course, makes one wonder how it can be properly administered, especially when there are quite a number of people in our community who do have firearms and who are law-abiding citizens. But how do you manage this kind of system if it's in a book or on a bunch of scraps of paper? Who knows how that operates? But it does show that the government does need to speed up.

We, of course, do have some concern around unintended consequences of the expansion of importation controls and the new tests contained in this legislation. We are concerned about the impact of changes to the types of weaponry, the types of ammunition that can be imported and for what purpose, and the arrangement that a firearm licence holder would have to go through to get to them and to comply with the law. My colleague the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator McKenzie, will be moving amendments on behalf of the opposition to deal with some of the concerns we have. We think it is important, given the rushed nature of the legislation here, that we do get the balance right, that we do make sure that this does not improperly impede law-abiding gun owners and licence holders from being able to continue abiding by the law.

Some of those concerns, of course, relate to what changes these laws might have on the ability of an individual to continue to earn an income. You've got individuals out there who draw an income from controlling vermin who will have an array of firearms as part of their toolkit to be able to do the job they need to do. A colleague, Senator Colbeck, showed me a picture last night of an individual who manages property at a place called Barrington in Tasmania, where, in his scope, there were hundreds of wallabies destroying the pasture for his livestock. That is an impact on business, so that person legitimately needs a range of weapons which have a range of fixtures—and there's a range of ammunition related to it—which will be caught up and impacted by this legislation. Some of those things, as I say, will be dealt with under the amendments to be moved by Senator McKenzie, who ordinarily would have led debate on this—

Old wallabies, young wallabies, so you need different wallaby guns.

I'm not sure what Senator Shoebridge is worried about there, but I was just giving a voice to some of the concerns that have been raised in a very reasonable fashion. Indeed, I'm sure that I'll be able to interrupt Senator Shoebridge's contribution on the subsequent bill, which, of course, will be very interesting to hear.

Interjections are always disorderly. Senator Shoebridge!

Praise the lord, yes. Look, if we could please just stick to the issues at hand here, the other concern that the coalition had in this was the suggestion that dealing with gun laws was going to be a silver bullet to deal with issues related to antisemitism. The first response of this government after Bondi was to announce that there would be a review of and changes to gun laws. That is not the cause of what happened here. The gun laws we have in this country were not what caused the event in Bondi on 14 December last year. Yes, firearms were used. They were a weapon, along with homemade bombs. As we know by the proliferation of terrorist activity across the globe, there are a range of weapons that people use beyond firearm, sadly. Indeed, there was an impassioned contribution by another colleague of mine, Senator Liddle, around perpetrators of domestic violence and how there are a proliferation of weapons used there. To suggest that the terrible terrorist event perpetrated by Islamic extremists, the worst terror attack on our soil in our history, would be fixed by changing the gun laws in the way we do is, sadly, a misnomer. So we took issue with the fact that the government's first and only response for a period of time was indeed to change the gun laws and say: 'You know what? All will be well.'

As we know, as history has shown and as the Prime Minister was forced to concede, there was a need for a royal commission. Everyone was calling for one. The world united to have that beyond a response in the form of firearms legislation amendment. You had the victims' families calling for a royal commission. That's much more than just changes to gun laws. You had business leaders, community leaders and not only the opposition but others in this party calling for a royal commission. They finally did it, beyond firearms legislation amendments, and indeed there was much more required.

An omnibus bill landed on the table of this parliament—not even this parliament but the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—of 150 pages which included the racial vilification provisions which the government said were necessary to tackle antisemitism in this country. But, again, as some of the witnesses to that inquiry said, the changes proposed under racial vilification in part 5 of schedule 1 of the bill as it was originally slated were the biggest changes to laws governing speech in this country for more than half a century. That is a serious step that parliament would take and requires more than seven days of rushed consideration on laws that have such a dramatic impact on freedom of speech.

It is pleasing, though, that the laws have been separated, and we are dealing with the firearms laws and the customs laws separately. I will also indicate that the coalition were supportive of the provisions of the schedule relating to customs, which were originally, I believe, in schedule 3 of the previous bill. But we do have a myriad of concerns relating to the firearms provisions. I have given voice to those elements we support, and I'm sure other colleagues, including Senator McKenzie, will go into greater detail around the provisions that we actually have real issue with, including through the amendments that the opposition will be moving and including a second reading amendment Senator McKenzie will move.

We do want to deal with genuine issues, including the illegal manufacture of firearms, and with some of the issues around unintended consequences relating to electronic files. There are people out there who access information about how to reload ammunition. They need to genuinely understand how to do it properly so that they don't cause injury or harm to themselves or others. But, under these laws, what they do to try and reach a safe outcome will be deemed illegal. These are the unintended consequences for the representatives of shooting bodies and of farmers' and graziers' associations across the country, as Senator McKenzie and others will, I'm sure, talk about and give voice to.

With that, I'm pleased to have kicked off debate in the Australian Senate around these laws. Obviously, the position is clear: we don't support these matters as they stand today. There are elements of the bill we are supportive of, but we are not supportive of it in total. Unless amendments can be agreed to, we have real reservations around this, and the coalition will not be supporting this legislation.

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. Thirty-seven days ago Australia was shaken by the worst terror attack on our nation's soil. It was meant to be a day of celebration, love and joy, but in mere moments it turned into pain, grief and tragedy. There were 15 innocent lives lost and many others injured. As they were celebrating Hanukkah with their loved ones at Bondi, they faced an act of antisemitic terror that defies comprehension. Now, more than ever, we need unity across our nation and a parliament that is prepared to act to strengthen our national security and social cohesion without weakening the values that define us as a country.

Rabbi Mendel Kastel, who lost his brother-in-law in the attack said:

I think it's time that people actually step up and say, 'You know what, we need to step forward and say we are with the Jewish community, we care about you, we're here to support you.'

Rabbi Ulman, who lost his son-in-law, Rabbi Schlanger, urged communities to say strong. He said:

We have to step up now. They're looking to us. Now is the time to unite, and forget petty things.

To them, and to all Jewish communities across Australia, we say clearly and without hesitation: We are with you. You deserve more than words. You deserve action. That means confronting both how this atrocity was carried out and why it happened.

The terrorists at Bondi had hatred in their hearts and minds and guns in their hands. Right now there's a record number of over four million firearms in Australia. There are more guns in this country now than there were at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. Just like the Howard government then, we can't address this horror without confronting how this violence was carried out. Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a Jewish Australian, public health expert and senior research fellow at the University of Wollongong, said:

Our legislation has long been the envy of the world, but time and distance has done its work and we are no longer as safe as we once were. It is vital that we take the lessons of Bondi to heart, and ensure that future generations of Australians are as protected as we have been for decades.

That's what this bill seeks to deliver. We'll introduce some of the most significant changes to our Commonwealth gun laws in decades.

We're making sure that firearms can only be imported by Australian citizens. We're strengthening licensing and background checks so that national security and criminal intelligence can be used when someone applies for, renews or holds a firearms licence. We're tightening the rules around importing dangerous firearms and related equipment, including straight-pull weapons, high-capacity magazines and speed loaders—the same kinds of tools used by the Bondi terrorists in their horrific attack. On top of that, we are also introducing a new public safety test for firearms and weapons imports which will allow the minister to block items that pose a real risk to the safety of the public before they ever reach our shores.

We're making it a serious crime to use the internet to access or share instructions for making guns or explosives, including digital blueprints used for 3D-printed weapons. And we're establishing a national gun buyback—the largest since the Howard era—to reduce the overall number of firearms in the community. These laws support the National Cabinet commitments to make Australian citizenship a condition of holding a firearm licence, accelerate the rollout of the National Firearms Register, limit the number of firearms any one person can own and limit open-ended import permits so every firearm brought into this country must be individually approved. And it's not just guns. We're also shutting the door on the import and export of violent extremist material—hate symbols and the goods that contain such things.

I want to be very clear about something else. These laws are not about putting blanket bans on guns for farmers or sporting shooters or law-abiding Australians who have legitimate reasons to own guns. These laws are aimed at stopping extremists. Extremist beliefs, combined with access to firearms, are what turn hatred into deadly action. We've seen this again and again. We saw it last year with Dezi Freeman in Victoria. We saw it in 2022 in Wieambilla in Queensland, where Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train shot three police officers and a neighbour in cold blood. And now we've seen it again in the terror attack at Bondi Beach.

All of these changes could have made a practical difference at Bondi. If this national reform package, including the hate crimes bill and the gun law reforms, were in place, the gunmen involved in the Bondi attack wouldn't have been eligible to hold firearms at all. They would have had none at all. The father would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen, and the firearms would not have been available to them. The son, who is facing charges, who didn't have a firearms licence but had tried—any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licence decisions. He wouldn't have had the gun. The means is not the only issue but is such a vital one that we must deal with it.

Just today in a statement, the families of Constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, who were murdered by those extremists at Wieambilla in 2022, spoke out in support of our stronger gun laws. The families that lost those constables in just 2022 said this:

We fully support the federal government in its plan to tighten guns laws and promote the national gun buyback scheme.

…   …   …

All the Australian population must play a role in shaping firearm legislation in Australia.

…   …   …

Instead of the 'bickering' between parties, and across law enforcement agencies, we hope they will come to their senses and work together for change.

That's the victims—those families and many others. I want to quote David Meagher, brother of Peter Meagher, a former police officer who lost his life at Bondi:

Gun reform alone will not solve hatred or extremism, but an antisemite without a gun is just a hate filled person. An antisemite with a gun is a killer.

These laws would not have erased the hatred in their hearts but they would have made it vastly harder for that hatred to be turned into mass murder. How could anyone in good conscience vote against these measures? We owe it to the families grieving, we owe it to the Jewish community, who are hurting, and we owe it to every Australian, who deserves to feel safe in their own country. I commend this bill to the Senate.

In 1996, in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, state and federal governments came together to take decisive action on gun laws in Australia. They united to remove semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from our community. In total, more than 700,000 guns were surrendered and destroyed. It is devastating that we are here needing to pass these laws because of another mass shooting, this time at Bondi, but the loss of 15 innocent lives demands action.

There are now more guns in our community than there were in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre—almost double the number recorded in 2001—and at least 2,000 new firearms are lawfully entering the community every week. The Bondi tragedy was made possible by gun laws that are no longer fit for purpose. The Greens welcome today's long-overdue gun law reforms. The Greens have consistently called for limits on the number of guns in our suburbs and clearer restrictions on the most dangerous weapons.

We welcome the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and we welcome the fact it was separated from the government's proposed changes to the Migration Act and new powers for the home affairs minister—which the Greens remain opposed to, in solidarity with the community. In its original form, the hate speech bill drew criticism from legal experts, faith groups, academics and the wider community. The vast potential for unintended consequences, the unanswered questions about the impact on political freedoms and the exclusion of many groups from its protections made the bill impossible to pass, or to reform with amendments, in the extremely tight timeframe enforced upon it by the government.

After close consultation with gun safety advocates, the Greens confirmed we would back the important gun safety reforms. But we could not support the other parts of the bill, which scapegoat migrants and create wide-ranging, divisive, one-sided laws. We were originally willing to see if the laws could be amended and fixed, but, with every passing moment, fresh concerns were raised by academics, faith leaders and experts about the vast consequences of rushed hate speech laws. We now see that the hate speech laws have been made even worse, with a last-minute deal stitched up between the government and the opposition. The original bill was rushed and lacked time for legal experts and stakeholders to review it. These changes in the last 48 hours are even more hasty, more dangerous and even less scrutinised. The government has chosen to join the coalition's race to the bottom. Far from narrowing these laws, the amendments that Labor have agreed to in this dirty deal with the coalition expand the reach of an already unreasonable crackdown on free speech. There are real questions about the constitutionality of this expansion.

These expanded laws will also allow the government of the day to capture conduct retrospectively—a terrifying overreach. A process that was looking rushed last week, with only days to consider the bill, is now looking downright dangerous, with the parliament legislating a bill that is still warm from the photocopier. Giving the home affairs minister power to ignore procedural fairness and ban or criminalise organisations is a blank-cheque power grab. These are Trumpian powers that remove the usual checks for good decision-making. These changes are bad, and the Greens stand with the community to oppose them.

Hate and hate groups raise very real problems, but there are existing powers to ban Neo-Nazis and other groups that promote or incite violence. We have repeatedly asked why those powers have not already been used against Neo-Nazis, and we have not had adequate answers. Allowing the government to proscribe organisations is a serious step and needs to come with safeguards and protections, including procedural fairness. Currently, the minister can refuse or cancel someone's visa if their presence poses a risk or they would generally represent a danger to the Australian community or a segment of the community. The bill would change the threshold for the ability of the minister to cancel a visa from the existing threshold of 'would pose a risk' to 'might pose a risk'. This broadens immigration's powers to impact almost anyone, dramatically increasing the minister's powers within an already opaque system.

The legacy of the appalling violence at Bondi cannot be the undermining of civil and political rights. All laws that can be used to weaponise racism and hate against everyday Australians who follow their conscience and speak out when they see wrong carried out here in Australia or overseas. We need to ensure that these laws cannot be weaponised to shut down legitimate political protest. Criticism of Israel's actions, just like those of Russia, China, or Australia, should not be criminalised.

The firearms bill that we have before us at the moment is an opportunity to take dangerous weapons off our streets. It is critical that it's not bound up with rushed legislation that would divide people by religion, prevent them from critiquing governments and their human rights abuses, including Israel's genocide in Gaza, or allow the home affairs minister to ignore procedural fairness in banning or criminalising organisations.

We consider the national gun buyback and information sharing amongst national, state and territory law enforcement and security agencies the bare minimum of what's required to ensure that we never see a tragedy of this magnitude in Australia again. Many gun laws are state based, leaving us with inconsistent implementation of rules across the country. What we need now, as we saw after Port Arthur, is a national commitment to change. A patchwork of laws just creates opportunities for people to shop around for the weakest of jurisdictions. A patchwork of laws makes police monitoring of gun ownership and licensing more difficult.

Information about a person's criminal history and any previous screening that made them ineligible to own a gun in one state is not necessarily shared with other states when they move. A history of domestic violence, an affiliation with hate groups, animal cruelty—none of that will necessarily prevent them from getting access to firearms in other jurisdictions. The changes proposed in this bill allow AusCheck to manage a background checking scheme for gun licensing and improve data sharing with ASIO and the Australian Crime Commission. That is a welcome move towards better transparency and more robust decisions. Regular reviews of eligibility should be conducted to ensure that risks can be reassessed as circumstances change.

Restrictions on the types of guns that can be imported have not kept pace with changes in technology. We welcome the public safety test for imported firearms and the proposed restrictions on fast-loading weapons and accessories that enable mass killings. It's difficult to conceive of any justification for such weapons. Terrifyingly, there's also been a rise in 3D printed weapons—homemade guns that often escape safety regulations and, without registration, escape notice. Two high-powered 3D-printed guns were seized by police in a raid in Tasmania just last weekend. New offences in this bill targeting materials for the home manufacture and modification of weapons will go some way towards addressing this.

One key reform from Port Arthur—which still hasn't been actioned—is a national firearms register. The Greens and, in particular, my colleague Senator Shoebridge have been vocal about the failure to deliver this register for many years. Work on creating the national register was largely dormant following Port Arthur until renewed calls followed the fatal shootings in Wieambilla in 2022. Again, action was prompted by tragedy rather than getting ahead of it.

In the absence of a national register, Senator Shoebridge established the toomanyguns.org website as a tool to see how many weapons are in a local area, revealing the sheer scale of gun ownership in our suburbs, but because of the limited transparency nationally, there's currently only comprehensive data available for NSW. Australians should have the right to know how many guns are being held by people in every state and territory. The Greens welcome the government's new commitment to fast-track implementation of the national register and have it operating this year. We will continue to call for the register to include public access and regular reporting.

Despite its urban location, Bondi has 190 guns in the 2026 postcode, with one gun owner possessing a shocking 24 registered weapons. In Matraville, one firearm owner has 295 registered guns. No sensible firearms laws would allow massive private arsenals to be amassed like this. This is a serious weakness in Australia's firearm laws that is being exploited and putting the public at risk. Nobody needs 295 guns.

The Greens accept that there are people in the community who have a genuine reason to own a gun. Farmers on rural properties often require firearms for euthanising injured stock and additional, different firearms for controlling invasive animals. Target shooting at a registered gun club is also a long-recognised and legitimate sport. Members of a shooting club, Olympic and other competitive shooters, and farmers may reasonably be able to establish the need for a number of guns to address their different needs. Those legitimate needs should be reflected in any firearms reforms. That has long been the Greens's stance. But there is simply no reason to have dozens or even hundreds of guns.

The Greens will work across state and territory parliaments to ensure that communities are safe from gun violence, with fewer dangerous weapons, limits on gun numbers, robust background screening, implementation of the buyback scheme and comprehensive data sharing. It is reprehensible that Liberal governments in Queensland, Tasmania and the NT are refusing to contribute to the cost of a national gun buyback. We need a uniform, national buyback scheme, and people in those states deserve the protection of a national buyback. Federal Labor should commit to paying the full cost of that so that we can have a national approach. Let's not let politicking get in the way of doing a good thing to keep people safe.

The Greens are pleased that the federal government has, under pressure from the Greens and gun safety advocates, decided to take the advice to establish a firearms safety council. This council will provide independent advice on the status of gun regulation across Australia, develop national best practice standards informed by expert advice and promote transparency, integrity, harm prevention and public education. We thank the government for agreeing to do that extra good thing.

Even before Bondi, the community had been calling for action on gun control. Polling by the Australia Institute showed that around 70 per cent of Australians think gun laws should be strengthened to make it harder to get a gun. The tragedy of Bondi means we must not ignore those calls any longer. This moment is beyond politics. Our resolve to act is a test for our common humanity, and I hope that all of parliament will join together to ensure that no-one can walk the streets of Sydney or any Australian city with a high-powered gun. I'm proud, on behalf of the Greens, to support these gun law reforms today.

I think the over a million law-abiding firearm owners in this country need protection from the dirty deal done by the Greens political party, who have always sought to demonise hunters, sporting shooters, farmers, feral-pest managers and environmentalists for doing what they should lawfully be able to do.

They've found a willing partner in a prime minister that sought to demonise law-abiding firearm owners in the wake of his flaccid, weak response to an Islamic terrorist attack on our shores. What was his first response? It wasn't to call out Islamic radical terrorism or extremism, which has now found terrorising expression on one of our most iconic landscapes. No, that wasn't the Prime Minister's first call. In fact, he is still yet to say those words, and the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, which we'll debate later today, doesn't even mention it.

Yet here we are, literally driving the bus over a million lawful Australians, who are going about their business, enjoying their sport, working hard et cetera. I am just so thankful that they have risen as one. They have said no to unfair gun law changes. That is why I seek leave from the chamber to table a non-conforming petition.

I understand leave is granted.

Thank you so much. Over 65,000 Australians have signed up to say, 'No, we are not the problem here, Prime Minister, and you need to stop saying we are.'

The National Party and the coalition are opposing these laws, and we don't make an apology for that at all, because we know it's not the gun that saw 15 lives lost and Jewish Australians targeted on 14 December, when Australia was confronted with a brutal and senseless act of violence at Bondi. Innocent people going about their lives in a place that should have been safe and ordinary were murdered. Families were shattered—

Senator McKenzie, just a moment. I understand the agreement that was arrived at was that you would have a bundle of the petitions on the desk, and the rest would remain on the trolleys.

The agreement was that I would table a non-conforming petition.

The agreement with the clerks was that you would have some on your desk and the others remain—

That wasn't agreed.

I'm sorry, Senator McKenzie, that is what I am requesting. Please put the rest back on the trolley. You're not in a debate with me, so put the rest back on the trolley. They need to be removed from the floor for safety.

Sure.

Not by you, because you need to continue your—well, you've got other senators there.

We're happy to do our own heavy lifting.

Our nation was reminded once again that the forces of hatred, extremism and radical violence are not abstractions; they have real victims, real names and real consequences. The coalition's message has been very clear and consistent: antisemitism, terrorism and hate-fuelled violence in all their forms must be confronted, condemned and defeated.

Making law-abiding firearm owners your scapegoats is very convenient. It allows the Greens to do something they've wanted to do for a long time, but it does not get to the heart of the issue. You've heard a lot from the Labor Party about what the real issue is. The reality is that the coalition called for a royal commission after the Bondi attack so that we could understand how this Islamist had firearms in his home. He should never have had access to firearms under existing laws. We need to find out who knew what and when, and why these firearms weren't removed before 15 innocent Australians had to pay the ultimate price.

This bill seeks to instigate a national gun buyback. We have state and territory governments who have made it very, very clear that they do not see this as an appropriate response.

I'm happy for these to stay in front of me, if you don't mind. We've got the other 60,000 signatures behind us and not being out in front of everyone, so I think we've found an agreement.

I will be moving amendments on behalf of the coalition. These amendments are required to make the proposed buyback more consistent under 1996, a buyback where an agreement was struck on 10 May 1996 that all state and territory jurisdictions agreed to a process to create and amend firearms legislation in so much as this would, for the first time, create consistent and agreed processes that would manage all elements of firearm legislation across Australia, with the states and territories being responsible for various firearm acts and the Commonwealth responsible for changes to the importation and end-user certification. That actually reflects our Constitution.

For the first time since 1996, the federal government has decided to abandon the process that we all agreed to over 25 years ago and which had made us the envy of the world when it came to strict gun laws. They were strict gun laws that still allowed lawful Australians to participate in their sport, farmers to practice animal husbandry, environmentalists to ensure that feral pests were managed and Olympians to win gold medals—of which we're all very proud, but you can't do that if you're not getting young people through the pipeline of this great sport. The advice I have is that if you really want to participate in all of the firearm disciplines available you'd need more than 50 different guns. That's like banning your three iron, your putter and your wedge while trying to get your handicap under 20 in golf.

After two meetings of the state and territory attorneys-general and police ministers, the proposals of the Albanese government were comprehensively rejected by the majority of the signatories to the National Firearms Agreement. Instead of accepting the result of the process—state ministers saying, 'Well, thanks very much for your advice, Mr Albanese, but we've got it from here,' which has been the system for 30 years—the Albanese government has chosen to use the powers of the federal government to prohibit certain firearms by denying import certification, leaving Australia in a situation where a firearm that had previously been approved will now be banned. You're leaving us in a situation where things that have been prohibited by the federal government are still able to be legally owned and purchased in the majority of Australian states and territories. These guys, helped by the Greens, actually don't know how this works.

The National Firearms Agreement, sadly, is an agreement in word only. By trashing this most important agreement, which was arrived at thanks to the leadership of John Howard and Tim Fischer, the future of firearms management in Australia has now been set back many years. Instead of being the envy of the world, we are now the laughing-stock. Real leadership would dictate using the National Firearms Agreement as the agreed pathway forward, and accepting the outcome of that process. And if the majority of states said, 'No, thanks,' then that, I'm sorry, Prime Minister, is how government works. It's how our Constitution works. But here we are, debating a bill which has several flaws, and that is why I will be moving amendments on behalf of the coalition.

With regard to these amendments, there is no detail around this buyback. Which firearms and equipment would be banned by the states? How many guns can a person own? Is there going to be fair market compensation paid to lawful firearm owners? Are the many dealerships that operate around the country, who have millions of dollars worth of stock sitting on the shelves right now that will be unable to be sold or used, going to be fairly compensated? Our Constitution requires for that to happen federally. The amendment sheet that will be circulated will also provide that compensation be available for those business losses.

I will also be moving amendments that require states and territories to give notice by 3 March 2026 if they are going to participate in this gun buyback or not, because when it comes to the state of Victoria and the state of South Australia, both of them are going to state elections. Firearm owners in those states need to know is Jacinta Allan going to throw hundreds of thousands of law-abiding firearm owners, including her husband, under the bus before the election? Is Premier Malinauskas going to tell South Australian firearm owners what he's going to do before his election? Firearm owners deserve transparency on this so that they can put their vote behind the National Party and the Liberal Party, who support their lawful right to hold firearms and to participate in our society lawfully.

Amendment sheet 3595 will seek to delete the proposed ban on assisted repeating and straight-pull repeating firearms. These are not semiautomatic weapons and in most states are subject to a genuine reason process. You can't just walk in and buy one. You've got to have a genuine reason. Senator Little and I were talking about how you don't need a repeating rifle if you're hunting deer. But if you're out hunting feral pigs you do, because one shot and they're all gone. Anyway, it just shows a complete misunderstanding of how firearms are used appropriately in this country.

The amendment on sheet 3597 will prevent a costly administrative and bureaucratic burden on compliance agencies. Currently, licensed gun importers can bring in bulk firearms under a B709DA permit; Labor's bill will require individual permits per item. That's a problem not only for the importers but for Home Affairs and the state agencies which are going to have to assess all these permits. We support the measure that seeks to prohibit the downloading of instructions from a carriage service for 3D printing of illegal and unlawful firearms, but there doesn't seem to be a clear defence for lawful firearm owners to seek information from the internet relating to reloading and spent ammunition or to access to manuals for firearms that the person owns legally.

We need to have a merit review process when it comes to adverse criminal intelligence assessments. Currently, that isn't in the bill. I will be moving an amendment that provides clarity that the provisions in the bill do not effectively ban the import of pistols, which I'm told will have severe and unintended impacts on the elite competition and sport shooting that goes on in clubs right around the country in a very safe and secure environment.

The government originally proposed to impose restrictions on worn equipment, such as shooting vests and cartridge belts—and I'd like to give a huge shout-out to SSAA, and to Beretta Australia, who provided me with a shooting vest yesterday. I was able to say that you're not allowed to have clothing that would allow you to have more than 30 cartridges. There go your Olympic vests! You need to be able to carry over 50 cartridges. After putting that up on the internet, guess what? The government has changed this because firearm owners are saying that this is nonsensical. So thank you to the government for doing that.

The failure to properly distinguish between legal firearms, which are used safely and securely, and the acts of terrorists will demonise over a million people. The petition I'm tabling today involves over 65,000 law-abiding Australians who are standing up to the Labor Party and saying no. I want to make it very, very clear that the coalition supports the firearms registry process. We don't know why we're still waiting for it to be implemented! The government has been in charge of this process for over four years, and yet here we are announcing it as if it's something new. The reality is they didn't put money towards it and that is why it hasn't been seen as a priority. Let's make sure that we can do better next time.

We know the Labor Party's dirty deal with the Greens is a step back. As I have outlined, it is in contravention of the National Firearms Agreement that we all signed up to in 1996. For the Prime Minister to say that he's 'just like John Howard', shows what a mockery this is. John Howard and Tim Fischer took on their own constituency—took on the farmers and took on the sporting shooters, who are typically coalition voters—in an effort to address the mass shooting at Port Arthur. This Prime Minister has failed to take on his own constituency in the Labor Party and in the Western Sydney suburbs. That is the cause of this shooting event.

I move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute "the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 March 2026".

This amendment requests that this legislation goes to a Senate inquiry in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for four weeks. We need to have the chance for firearm owners to have their say—the National Rifle Association, SIFA, SSAA, the Shooters Union, the Australian Clay Target Association, Target Pistol Australia: all these. Gympie Pistol Club would also like to have a say. Let the people, the experts and our agencies have input into this firearm legislation so that it's not actually harming the people it's supposed to protect. (Time expired)

Fifteen innocent lives were tragically lost at Bondi Beach. They were gunned down by two terrorists. One of the shooters had a firearms licence, and he was legally in possession of six weapons. Australia's current firearms laws entitled that gunman to own an uncapped number of guns. This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, will stop that. He was not an Australian citizen, and this bill will stop non-citizens from holding a firearms licence. This bill will also stop the importation of rapid-fire guns.

These are sensible reforms in response to the Bondi massacre. They will protect our community and protect our law enforcement. These are important reforms for Queensland, where we have lost far too many police officers to criminals and murderers in possession of guns. As someone who has spent most of my career working alongside police, today I say their names: Constable Matthew Arnold, Constable Rachel McCrow, Senior Constable Brett Forte, Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding, Constable Brett Irwin, Senior Sergeant Perry Irwin, Senior Constable Norman Watt. Each one of them was a Queensland police officer murdered by a person with a gun while doing their job. I say their names as a reminder that the gun debate is not an attack on law-abiding gun owners. It is about reducing risk. It is about safety. It is about protecting Australians and our law enforcement.

You see, the idea that Australia is safe from guns is a myth. The events of 14 December at Bondi are a shocking and painful reminder of that truth. The reality is that there are more guns on Australian streets now than when John Howard's original gun buyback scheme—

Order! Senator Chisholm, on a point of order?

We listened in silence to Senator McKenzie's speech. I'd ask the same for Senator Mulholland.

Indeed, Senator Chisholm, and senators should be in their seats if they must heckle.

There are more guns on Australian streets now than when John Howard's original gun buyback scheme took 650,000 guns off our streets in 1996. One in 30 Australians holds a firearms licence according to research by the Australian Institute. There are now more than four million registered firearms in Australia—an average of four guns per licence holder.

Here is another myth that we need to confront: the majority of the guns are in rural communities. They're not. The overwhelming majority are in the suburban streets and cities of Australia. This legislation clearly exempts farmers who need guns for legitimate purposes like pest control and livestock management. This is about keeping Australians safe from people who stockpile weapons in our suburbs to kill others, like at the Wieambilla siege in the Western Downs of Queensland, where police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were gunned down and killed along with a neighbour Alan Dare. Another officer, Randall Kirk, was injured by the gunfire. The shooters were fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists, and one of them was a registered gun owner. Days before the siege, he was able to buy ammunition in Queensland using a suspended gun licence from NSW. Obviously, we need to close this loophole to ensure we have a truly national firearms register with live data linked to intelligence agencies.

In 2024, Queensland Police launched Operation Whiskey Firestorm in response to 3,290 firearms offences across Queensland. The purpose of the operation was to get licensed gun owners to properly secure their firearms. Why? It is because hundreds of guns are stolen from suburban homes in Queensland every year via break and enters, and they end up being used in violent, murderous crimes. Fortunately, the majority of gun owners audited were found to be compliant. I commend the many responsible gun owners in Queensland for how seriously they take this responsibility. But there were still almost 110 gun owners who the police found with guns stored under beds and in cupboards, leaving them susceptible to theft or misuse—not to mention the fact that in this country a woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner, and it's estimated that around 10 to 15 per cent of those homicides involve firearms. So we cannot talk about guns without talking about the domestic violence and safety risks these present in our communities. Queensland saw upwards of 3,000 firearm offences in 2024 alone.

We don't need to wait for someone else to die. We need to act now to make necessary change and we need political courage, and nowhere is that more important than in Queensland. Queensland has the second highest number of registered firearms in Australia with one million guns in circulation. As a Queensland senator, I feel enormous disappointment that our LNP state government is refusing to participate in the national buyback scheme. I have to ask myself why.

Last month, Courier Mail revealed that within hours of the Bondi massacre occurring gun lobbyists contacted the LNP government and urged them to resist gun reforms. To the Queensland Premier and to the Queensland police minister I say that you cannot be tough on crime and soft on guns.

I acknowledge that we're on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, the sovereign custodians of the land, and sovereignty was never ceded to this colony.

I welcome strengthened gun laws, but, if we're serious about gun safety, accountability can't stop at just civilian firearms. Oversight, tracking and transparency must apply to all guns, including those issued to police, prison guards, security guards and defence personnel. I intend to move a second reading amendment in my name, which calls on this parliament to implement robust and nationally consistent oversight of firearms. The public has a right to know what firearms are imported into this country and who imports them, how they are stored and used and what happens to them at the end of their life cycle.

International evidence shows that firearms can and do move from police stockpiles to criminal markets when oversight is weak. Australia should be learning from that, not pretending it can't happen here. We already know that stolen firearms are the biggest source of illegal guns in this country and that most guns used in crime are stolen guns. A recent report by the Australia Institute shows that approximately 2,000 firearms, 2,000 guns, are stolen each year, averaging one every four hours. Recently, firearms were stolen from police in Townsville. We've also seen evidence presented in court cases that shows that weapons stolen from army facilities have been used to commit serious crimes, including murder and armed robbery. These are some of the few cases we know about, but there is no consistent public transparency about these incidents.

It has also been reported that a police issued firearm was allegedly used in the horrific domestic violence murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, which raises serious questions about the management and oversight of police weapons. Police defence armouries remain largely opaque, which limits accountability and undermines our gun control framework. A national firearms register that excludes police weapons is incomplete. If the goal is public safety then transparency has to be universal. This also leads to the point that the armoury and strength of police in particular is used against the very people they are supposed to protect, whether it is violence against protests standing against genocides and war crimes or police deaths in custody.

A 2020 Deakin University study showed that, even though Australia has half the population size of the UK, it had more fatal shootings by police. Shame! Recently, there was the shooting of Kumanjayi Walker by Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe in Yuendumu and also the shooting of 29-year-old Yamatji woman JC, who was shot using hollow-point bullets. The bullets explode in your body; that's what a hollow-point bullet is. That's what the police use in this country. These bullets explode in your body. These bullets have been banned in international warfare by the 1899 Hague declaration. This is why one of my amendments restricts law enforcement from importing hollow point bullets to use against civilians.

We know that globally purchases of militarised equipment are creating a new profitable market for defence contractors rather than really putting questions of public safety first. In 2023, a study led by Brown University's Associate Professor of Political Science Rob Blair studied a militarised crime intervention in Cali, Colombia, and found little evidence to support the idea that military policing reduces crime. Safety cannot be found through violent, colonial institutions, more police, more cops or more prisons, especially for First Nations people.

On the hate crimes bill—I cannot support this bill. Racism, including antisemitism, is a real and serious problem in this country. But this legislation does not represent a good faith effort to combat hate and racism. It seems designed to: suppress legitimate criticism of the State of Israel; restrict protests and political expression, especially on the topic of genocide; and create hierarchies of who deserves protection and who does not. This parliament must genuinely commit to protecting everyone from hate and racism, not selectively and not in ways that undermine fundamental rights or erase the foundational racism against my people.

Expanding hate crimes law for a select few protected attributes and excluding religion leaves communities who continue to be affected by rising hate, violence and vilification at risk. There has been—and you don't see this in the newspapers, especially the right-wing Murdoch media—a 2,297 per cent increase in Islamophobic incidents reported to the Islamic Council of Victoria in 2025 alone, a 2,297 per cent increase! A recent incident in Melbourne saw an imam and his wife attacked, driven off the road and threatened with stabbing. There were 33 Aboriginal deaths in custody just last year, and since the horrific attack at Bondi we have shamefully seen attempts to blame the actions of two violent extremist men on the entire anti-genocide movement and on Muslim and Arab communities more broadly. No-one's talking about the violence of men in this debate. These false and dangerous claims fuel the very racism and Islamophobia this parliament apparently wants to address. In the words of Jews Against the Occupation '48:

To conflate the speech and actions of people motivated by deeply held convictions on justice and universal rights with the speech and actions of people motivated by racist hatred is not only wrong but dangerous. (To do so because the interests of a foreign nation, communicated via politically-motivated lobby groups, coincide with the desire by the state to clamp down on the democratic rights of people in our own country is cynical in the extreme.)

All the while, more than a year after the National Anti-Racism Framework was handed down, this government has still not provided a formal response to getting rid of racism in this country at a national level. You have not even responded to the work of the Race Discrimination Commissioner. You say you want to fix the problem in this country. Believe me, hate arrived on these shores over 200 years ago. My people have been subjected to hate all of that time. You haven't provided anything back to the antidiscrimination commissioner, let alone committed to implementing any part of it, which says that everyone should do racism training in this place. We know that we have racists in this place who inform the legislation. Instead, we are presented with rushed legislation, with a deal done with the Liberals—the coalition—on the hate crimes, a deal done with the Greens on the guns, so the crossbench have no say in any of it. It was a deal done during late night meetings and conversations, and back room discussions, so it's stitched up. The human rights committee is meant to scrutinise legislation but it didn't even come to us, so you haven't even followed your own colonial procedures here, which you tell me to do all the time. You didn't even follow proper process.

So anyway, here we are, with rushed legislation that is very dangerous to everyday people out there, that dangerously expands state power, that is riddled with legislative inconsistencies and that undermines fundamental principles of the rule of law and due process. We don't have a bill of human rights in this country either, so human rights in this country are not protected—people's human rights! Despite removal of the racial vilification offence, the bill as a whole continues to pose a risk of discriminatory enforcement and disproportionate impact on Muslim people, Palestinians, First Peoples and other racialised or marginalised people. For example, it grants sweeping new authority to the Minister for Home Affairs to cancel or refuse visas with minimal safeguards. So the minister can just say, 'Yes, we heard what that one has been saying. Cancel his visa. Forget about the family, children, connection here. He can go.'

This is a government with a long record of cruelty towards migrants and refugees now using the language of antiracism to further undermine fairness, due process and accountability in our immigration system. This bill also treats religious instruction as a risk factor, lending legitimacy to Islamophobic public, political and media narratives that justify heightened scrutiny and over policing of Muslim communities. I see here the same white Australia policy that criminalised, killed and punished my people for practising culture, for gathering and for speaking our languages. If this parliament truly wants to confront hate, it must do so by addressing racism as a whole.

This is a racist country. Australia is a racist country, no doubt about it. But we're not addressing that here, are we? If this parliament wants to confront hate, it must do so by addressing racism, by protecting all communities and by defending democratic rights, including the right to protest and speak freely. Protest is important. Protest is part of democracy—peaceful protests. We've got nothing by standing silent and idle. Who are we waiting for to do it—the government? We have to protect protest. Anything less is not justice; it is shallow politics dressed up as protection. As Chelsea Watego says, it's another day in the colony.

Senator Thorpe, we already have a second reading amendment before the chair. Your amendment that you wish to move will need to be foreshadowed now and moved later on in the debate.

Okay.

This legislation, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, is bad. It's rushed. There was no consultation with affected Australians—one million constituents, one million Australians who didn't get a say—and there was definitely none done with firearm related researchers and academics who are saying this legislation will not work. It will not achieve the outcome of reducing illegal firearms. This is instead a very expensive stunt to distract from the Prime Minister being forced kicking and screaming into a royal commission and to respond to the tragedy of the Bondi massacre.

What an outrageous, discriminatory and dumb statement to say there are too many guns in Australia. This demonstrates the anti-gun agenda of Labor and the Greens, and their lack of understanding of different sorts of firearms; apparently, all guns are the same. Senator McKenzie gave us some great examples of why we have a need for different firearms—as well as for different golf clubs! Their lack of understanding of why Australians need and enjoy firearms—worse; this is a government who seeks to deny Australians the very basic right to choose what firearms they own for their enjoyment. Of course there are more guns in Australia; there are nine million more Australians than there were at the time of Port Arthur—Australians who enjoy competitive shooting, clay target shooting and hunting, and many Australians who use guns for work, such as farmers, graziers and pest contractors. To be clear, there are fewer guns proportionally now than after Port Arthur—less! Australia has some of the strongest firearm laws in the world. They are strict and they have been shown to work.

This bill before us today does not build on what works; it risks punishing the wrong people for the wrong reasons. There was no input from legal experts or criminologists. Their subsequent submissions, that have been sent to me, show that the rate of firearm related crime is less. The rate of crimes with knives, cars, fists and hands is increasing. Perhaps next time, the government will introduce legislation that would limit the number and types of knives that can be owned by Australians—well, of course not; that would be ridiculous, but not much more ridiculous than this massive overreach. The Australian Institute of Criminology has data that demonstrates these laws won't work. They are simply an attack on everyday Australians who enjoy guns—one million Australians. Maybe it's not the sport you enjoy, but that does not make it wrong.

Let us be clear about the rushed nature of this legislation—the legislation that would have prevented the importation of clothing and equipment used by competitive shooters and clay shooters. Senator McKenzie has talked about it. Olympic vests—that had to be changed once the member for Hunter pointed out how ridiculous that was. What about those Australians who reload their ammunition? Sometimes it's for cost; that's what my father did in drought years. That's what Australians who want to be really accurate with the sort of missile and the powder they use do. That's the fun of being an expert at something. That's the joy of competition. But we won't have that in Australia.

This bill also allows us the use of AI to assist with decision-making on intelligence findings. That contravenes a recommendation of the robodebt royal commission, but it's in the legislation.

So let us be clear about who lawful firearm owners are in this country. At last count—this is a couple of years ago—there were 943,000 licensed firearm holders nationwide, including farmers, professional pest controllers, sporting shooters and collectors. Forget the stereotypes. Lawful gun owners aren't hillbillies, blasting away; they are white-collar professionals, tradies, police officers, veterans and military personnel—and I would like to add senators to that list—who take the responsibility of gun ownership very seriously. They are also the people who volunteer for the SES. They help at community groups. They're mums and dads and grandmas and grandpas.

There are more than four million registered firearms, each tracked, regulated and subject to strict licensing conditions. In Queensland alone, there's over 224,000 licensed owners. For the Queensland senators in here, these are the people we come to represent. In New South Wales, there are more than 252,000, Senator Cadel. In Victoria—Senator McKenzie will know this—there are 236,000 Australians who are licensed for guns. These Australians are not criminals. They're not extremists. And they are not responsible for terrorism or hate-motivated violence. They go through stringent police checks, and they will tell you the hoops that they are required to jump through to purchase, to store and to use firearms. Yet, under this bill, they're just collateral damage in what amounts to a policy response driven by fear and not fact. They are Australians, whom we should be here to represent and defend and protect.

At last week's parliamentary hearings, the department made some absolutely extraordinary admissions. When asked whether it had conducted any research into gun buyback schemes overseas, its answer was no. When asked if it had modelled whether this bill would reduce gun crime, its answer was no. When asked if the buyback scheme would reduce the number of illegal firearms in Australia, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission said it was highly unlikely.

That matters because Australia has an estimated 260,000 illegal firearms circulating in the criminal black market and being used by organised crime groups and illicit drug barons. But this bill does nothing to address that. It will not stop gangland shooters. It won't stop criminal trafficking networks and standover men. Perhaps the government could turn its mind to that, rather than undermining ordinary law-abiding Australians. It will not prevent terrorists from accessing illegal weapons. Instead it targets firearms that are already licensed, registered and securely stored.

Expert evidence tells us this approach is fundamentally flawed. Dr Samara McPhedran, an internationally recognised firearms violence researcher and former member of the Queensland police weapons advisory panel, has shown that, over nearly 30 years in Australia, legal firearm ownership has increased. That's a good thing. Firearm homicide and misuse have declined. There is no demonstrated relationship between levels of legal gun ownership and firearm violence. That evidence directly undermines the core premise of this bill. More legal firearms have not meant more crime. If anything, Australian data shows the opposite.

Industry groups are also sounding the alarm. The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia has made it clear that legal firearm owners and businesses are not the problem. This bill lacks evidence. It lacks detail. It lacks fairness. Poorly designed buybacks can actually increase safety risks, not reduce them. Unlike the 1996 buyback, this bill provides no guarantee of fair market value, provides no certainty for small businesses and shifts massive financial risk onto the states. The federal allocation of around $1 billion falls dramatically short of industry estimates, which suggest costs could exceed $15 billion. That shortfall will be pushed onto taxpayers or, worse, onto compliant businesses and volunteer-run clubs that simply cannot afford it. Clubs like the Ipswich and District Rifle Club have said plainly these reforms do not address criminal misuse or hate motivated violence but impose significant burdens on lawful sporting communities. Even Labor's own member for Hunter warned on Christmas Eve that when you rush things through it has unintended consequences. Yet here we are, rushing again. What was the urgency? Could this have not waited two weeks for it to be properly considered?

Let me be very clear on one final point. This bill dangerously links lawful firearm ownership with antisemitism and terrorism. That linkage is wrong. It is unsupported by evidence, and it unfairly vilifies Australians who have done nothing wrong. I urge critics of gun ownership in this country, especially those opposite: visit your local shooting club. There you will find men and women with a total commitment to safety and the law. Cowboys aren't tolerated. Education is paramount, and there is constant reinforcement that breaking the rules is totally unacceptable. We should also bear in mind those who own businesses supplying lawful firearms, accessories, spare parts, ammunition and hunting gear. The lawful firearms and shooting sector represents a multibillion dollar, highly regulated industry contributing between $2.8 billion and over $3.5 billion annually to the Australian economy and supporting tens of thousands of jobs, many in regional Australia.

Terrorism is driven by ideology, not sporting rifles locked in safes. If the government is serious about community safety, the evidence is clear about what works: targeted policing; disrupting trafficking networks, including at our international borders; seizing illegal firearms; and investing in intelligence and counterextremism capabilities. That is where resources should go, not into a poorly designed buyback that won't reduce the number of illegal guns. This bill should be amended, paused for proper consultation, rejected or anything but rushed through and passed today because legal, lawful firearm owners are not the problem. Criminals are, terrorists are and our laws should focus squarely on them. These laws are a sellout on law-abiding Australians under an unholy alliance between Labor and the Greens. They are not supported by science, they are not supported by data and they are not supported by ordinary Australians who just want to live their lives. I urge you to reject this legislation as I will.

Today I speak in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and I do so not only as a senator but as someone who has lived through what major firearms reform looks like when it moves from this place into practice. I was a police officer during the last gun buyback scheme that followed Port Arthur nearly 30 years ago. For those who remember that period only through the headlines, it's worth recalling what that meant on the ground. During the buyback police officers just like me worked at front counters, which are normally known as non-operational spots, but we were handling surrendered firearms every day. We did not always know whether those firearms and weapons were loaded. We also didn't know how they had been stored. We didn't always know the emotional state of the person standing on the other side of the counter, whether they were angry, distressed or unwell or whether they were simply having the worst day of their life.

That is what the police did back in those days. We wore our tactical accoutrements during that period not to escalate situations but because the risk demanded it. It is a good reminder that gun laws are not theoretical to first responders. They are lived by police, paramedics, emergency service workers, at police station front counters, in rural sheds, in roadside stops and in people's homes. When those laws are fragmented, outdated or incomplete, it is police and the paramedics who absorb the risk first.

Australia learned a hard lesson at Port Arthur, and the response was decisive, it was national and it was, in fact, bipartisan. It worked. Firearm deaths fell, mass shootings stopped and lives were saved. But, nearly three decades on, we are no longer in the same conditions or facing the same level of risk. There are now more than four million firearms in circulation across Australia. That's more than at the time of Port Arthur, when close to one million licences were held. In several states the number of registered firearms alone exceeds one million.

This is not an argument about responsible ownership. It is about scale and saturation and about what happens when the scale collides with moments of crisis. As firearm numbers rise, so does the likelihood that weapons are lost, stolen, poorly secured or accessed by people they were never intended for. Again, for police and paramedics, those risks do not stay theoretical. They show up in call-outs every single day, in split-second decisions and in situations where errors have permanent consequences. My good friend and colleague Senator Mulholland has already articulated that in her home state of Queensland.

Firearms rarely stay confined to their original context forever. They, in fact, move between households, between relationships and sometimes into those moments of crisis. It is also critical that we are honest about the relationship between firearms and family and domestic violence. Domestic violence call-outs are among some of the most unpredictable and dangerous situations first responders attend. They are emotionally charged, fast moving and often unfold behind closed doors. But when a firearm is present, or even suspected to be present, the risk to victims, responding officers and children in the home escalates immediately. The presence of a gun changes the dynamic entirely. It compresses time, limits safe options and removes those margins for error. This is not an abstract concern. It is the reality that first responders confront repeatedly.

In 2023, in Floreat in my home state of Western Australia, Jennifer Petelczyc and her daughter Gretl were murdered by a man with a history of family and domestic violence. He was looking for his former partner and his own daughter before he took his own life. Subsequent reviews identified clear warning signs in the period leading up to those deaths about his escalating behaviour, feared expression, observed by those close to him, and ongoing access to firearms. As the number of firearms in circulation grows, so does the chance that weapons remain accessible, despite signs like this. Again, they may be poorly secured or drawn into moments of coercion, instability or loss of control. Jennifer and Gretl's case is not an anomaly; it is a pattern encountered again and again by police and paramedics across this country.

This is why firearms reform must be understood as a domestic violence prevention measure, not merely a matter of crime control. Reducing overall firearm numbers, strengthening licensing decisions and ensuring intelligence is considered when risk emerges are interventions that prevent harm before it becomes fatal. Gun laws are not only about what happens behind closed doors; they are about how risk escalates when hatred, grievance and instability are combined with access to weapons, whether that violence occurs in a home or in a public space.

The Bondi Beach terrorist attack on 14 December 2025 was the most devastating expression of that risk. Fifteen innocent people lost their lives in an attack motivated by antisemitism and carried out in a place meant for community, celebration and belonging. In response, we are right to say we must deal with both the motivation and the method; that is the why and that is the how. This bill does exactly that. It recognises that firearms policy must be fit for purpose in a changing risk environment, one shaped not only by volume but also by technology.

We now live in a world where weapons do not always arrive in a crate. Sometimes they arrive as a download. Digital blueprints for firearms and explosives can now be accessed online. Components can be ordered separately. Firearms or critical parts of them can be manufactured using 3D printers outside regulatory oversight. For first responders and investigators, this represents a profound shift in the risk. An unregistered, unserialised and untraceable firearm does not just breach the law; it defeats prevention, frustrates investigation and enables repeated harm.

That is the reality this bill responds to. It addresses not only the physical imports but the digital pathways to violence. It introduces targeted offences related to the use of carriage services to access and possess material that facilitates the illicit manufacture of firearms and explosives. These offences are carefully framed and proportionate, with clear pathways for licensed manufacturers, law enforcement, public officials and legitimate academic and scientific research. This is not about criminalising lawful activity; it is about interrupting a pathway to harm that is already being exploited—the same preventive logic that applies at the border.

Our borders are often the last opportunity to stop high-risk firearms, parts and accessories before they enter our communities. When those controls fail, the consequences are not borne by systems; they are borne by people. That is why this bill tightens controls on rapid-fire weapons, high-capacity magazines, belt-fed firearms and serialised components and sound suppressors. It removes open-ended import permits that allow bulk imports with minimal oversight, and it introduces a clear public safety test so that the items posing an unacceptable risk can be stopped before they enter into circulation.

This bill also establishes the legislative framework for a national gun buyback, building on the approach taken after Port Arthur. This is not unprecedented or ideological; it is a proven public policy, one for which Australia has been praised internationally. By compensating the voluntary surrender of surplus, newly restricted and illegal firearms, the buyback supports state and territory reforms and reduces overall exposure to harm. Fewer guns mean fewer opportunities for diversion, misuse and escalation.

Finally, this legislation strengthens the way firearm licensing decisions are informed. It allows for security and criminal intelligence to be considered while also preserving state and territory decision-making authority. As someone who has been a police officer, I can say this plainly: a clean criminal record does not always equate to low risk. Intelligence exists to identify emerging threats, and ignoring it does not protect civil liberties; it endangers lives.

This bill is not about punishing lawful firearms owners; it is explicitly protecting legitimate, occupational and sporting use for farmers, pest controllers, professional shooters and competitors. But access to firearms is not a right; it is a responsibility, one that must be assessed in light of public safety, changing technology and also lived experience. When our firearm laws fail, it's not the politicians who face the consequences first; it is the police responding to the calls, the paramedics treating the injured and the emergency workers managing the aftermath. It is the families and the communities living with the irreversible loss. It is all Australians right now mourning the 15 lives taken at Bondi. People in this place made the hard choices before when the stakes were high, and now it's time for us here in this place to do it again.

Just over a month ago, two hateful, violent men killed and shot 15 people in an appalling antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach, just a few miles from my home, in fact. That appalling attack happened with guns that were obtained legally. Indeed, those two hateful men between them had access to six firearms legally obtained and signed off on under our national firearms laws. We need to stop and reflect on that, and those who are opposing this legislation should stop and reflect on that fact. The appalling fact that our gun laws have failed in this instance needs to be part of a national response to this appalling antisemitic attack in Bondi. The Greens are glad that we've been able to work with the government to ensure that legislation that will establish a national firearms buyback, legislation that will ensure that security agencies and police around this country will be able to share in real time the security information they have about individuals before they're given a gun licence and before they're given guns, will become lawful, essential and necessary after the legislation passes. We're also proud to be supporting legislation that stops some of the most dangerous weapons being imported into this country and available for acts of violence.

But we won't be supporting—and we've made it clear to the government we will not be supporting—their raft of other proposed changes, to ban people and organisations whose core values are about supporting human rights and opposing genocide, to target groups who have been saying clearly that our government should do all it can to stop the genocide in Gaza. We know that there are millions of Australians right now deeply anxious that not this legislation but the legislation that will follow it about proscribing organisations and putting people in jail for their thoughts, far from making them safe, will be threatening them, their friends, their families and their communities for the crime, in the eyes of the Labor Party and the coalition, of opposing a genocide and standing up for global human rights.

I want to return to this legislation. This is legislation to support the national firearms buyback, to allow that information-sharing to happen and to stop some of the most dangerous weapons and components coming into this country. I want to start by thanking the Australian Gun Safety Alliance, the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, Gun Control Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia for their advice and legislation, because this legislation, unlike the other legislation being rushed through this parliament, has been a long time coming. It has been the subject of detailed submissions and repeated calls from civil society saying, 'Ensure that our national firearms laws are meeting the moment.' National gun buybacks are not novel; they've happened before. They have taken weapons out of homes that should never have been in homes. They've reduced the number of firearms in this country. They have saved countless lives. As a Greens Senator, I feel sure that this national firearms buyback will also save countless lives.

The advice of those community organisations has been consistent, it has been principled, and it has been focused on gun safety. Unlike the coalition, the Greens aren't taking advice from firearms manufacturers like Beretta. We're not taking donations from firearms importers and sellers like NIOA. We don't follow the lead of the global arms industry like the coalition does. And we definitely don't import toxic concepts from the United States, Trumpian US concepts, like the right to bear arms, when we're talking about firearms. Firearms are not a right in this country; they are a privilege. When we have the coalition come in here and try and equate firearms laws with vehicle safety, or guns with motor vehicles, it shows how they have so lost touch. They don't understand that, unlike motor vehicles, the purpose of guns is to kill. If the coalition can't understand that basic principle, and if they're not troubled by the fact that those two hateful men on Bondi Beach had access to more than six legal firearms, and that New South Wales police didn't have access to security information from the AFP and other policing agencies when they gave a firearms licence and firearms to one of those men—which wasn't shared in real time—they should review their consciences and they most definitely should review their politics.

The Greens are deeply concerned by those gaps in our firearms laws, and we've been concerned about gaps like that for well over a decade. I also want to note the extensive work by the Australia Institute on tracking the number of firearms in this country and looking at the gun control settings that have allowed the rapid growth of lethal weapons in our community.

I also want to thank my team, my chief of staff and others, who have for years now been tracking gun numbers in New South Wales. We have seen a disturbing rise of firearms in this country since Port Arthur. I say that as a former state MP and now as a senator. We have continued to press for data—initially from New South Wales but now also nationally—about the number of guns in this country. Appallingly, only New South Wales provides that data—and only New South Wales provides that data because my office, over a number of years, took them to court to produce that data so that we could see the number of guns in suburbs and so that people had a sense of whether or not they were living near private arsenals.

That data, that is now found in toomanyguns.org, shows that as of 2016—when we first began getting that data—there were 850,000 registered firearms in New South Wales. But the data that's now been released, as of June 2025, shows that there are more than 1,026,000 registered firearms in New South Wales—and that doesn't include collectors or dealers. There are private arsenals in our suburbs where people hold almost 300 firearms. There are multiple individuals in suburban Sydney who hold over 200 firearms and dozens who hold over 100 firearms. Why do our firearms laws allow private arsenals to be held in our suburban centres in this country?

Thankfully, after pressure from the Greens and gun safety advocates, some of those loopholes have been closed in New South Wales. But the coalition is still fighting this in Queensland, still pushing so that it doesn't get adopted in South Australia and still basically silent in Tasmania. The Northern Territory coalition have said that they don't support caps on firearms.

This is about community safety, and the coalition comes in here, armed with donations from the firearms industry, to oppose community safety laws. They make specious arguments about needing dozens of weapons to shoot wallabies. The most extreme case was when they related it to somebody who wants to compete in every single shooting sport in the Olympics, and said that that's why these gun caps don't work. Take a reality check about what's going to make our community safe. A gun buyback and sensible gun limits in our suburbs and cities are definitely taking a step toward safety.

I acknowledge that this is a moment where we can take practical steps to take guns away from people who should never have got them and to allow for the sharing of real-time security information. When police in one state, or the AFP, have information about people who are taking part in hateful ideologies, that can be shared with police in real time before those people get gun licences and firearms.

I say again: How is it that One Nation and the coalition oppose those law changes? How is it you could oppose the sharing in real time between our security agencies about whether people are engaged in hateful extremist ideologies so they can ensure that they don't get a firearm? We saw the effect of it in Bondi. With all of the politics and all of the hateful language directed against the Greens in this debate, take a moment and reflect on the coalition opposing those law changes here. It shows their politics, and it shows that they take funds from the firearms industry, and it shows that they'll never partner with the community about gun safety laws. What a change from 1996, when the coalition actually had some backbone and actually did good work. I am no friend of John Howard, but I will acknowledge that, at that point, the coalition showed the leadership that's been missing in the last four weeks on this.

I do note that there are concerns raised by groups including the National Farmers' Federation and that there are questions still to be answered about the gun buyback. We want to ensure, and we'd like a commitment from the government, that fair value will be paid to ensure that the gun buyback will be as effective as it possibly can be and take as many guns that shouldn't be in circulation out of circulation as it can. We'd ask the government to make the commitment in the course of this debate.

I also want to credit the Gun Safety Alliance for pressing for another essential reform. One of the reasons we're in this mess is that there is no body, no organisation, in this country whose job it is to futureproof our firearms laws—to see whether or not there are gaps that need to be fixed. There is plenty of lobbying from the firearms industry trying to put new gaps in our laws, but there's no way, in this country, that that sits together with the national government and state and federal governments to plug the holes and check for community safety. So I am glad that, in the course of these negotiations, the Greens have secured a clear commitment from the government—in writing, from the Minister for Home Affairs—to establish a national firearms safety council that will do that work, bring together those gun safety advocates from the Gun Safety Alliance and community representatives and ensure that we are regularly reporting to parliament not just to make our national gun laws safe for 19 January 2026 but to futureproof them going forward.

I also raise concerns that I think are valid about the potential proliferation of 3D-printed weapons. I want to thank the Minister for Home Affairs's office for their engagement around their firearms offences that deal with the issue of 3D printing. I note that these federal laws will allow some 3D alteration printing to firearms as long as they comply with the licence and class of weapon that's been obtained. These are areas of hard regulation. The National Firearms Register, or any national laws, needs to ensure that there is immediate constant reference back and communication back to the state registries and territory registries about any such alteration. This parliament, and the national firearms safety council, needs to keep a close and continued surveillance on 3D-printed weapons.

I finish with this: two hateful men with a hateful ideology are dangerous and need to be addressed by our parliaments and need to be addressed by all of us, collectively, if we can, but two hateful men with access to multiple firearms—if they've got access legally to multiple firearms, we have an obligation to act. The Greens are proud to always support the community on gun safety. We're proud to talk down and oppose those whose primary interest comes from the firearms lobby. And, in what is otherwise a toxic mess of a week in this parliament, we're proud to support legislation that will take those important steps for gun safety across the country.

As a Liberal National Party senator for Queensland, I know these gun laws are bad laws, and I won't support them. These gun laws punish millions of Australians. These gun laws punish millions of innocent, law-abiding Australians. These bad laws are punishing millions of law-abiding Australians who use guns for work, for recreation or for sport, or who just like to collect guns. We know that Labor are traditionally soft on crime, but today we learn that Labor are hard on law-abiding Australians, but the real dangerous weapons are antisemitism and radical Islamic extremism.

Islamic extremists have used knives. They've used cars, trucks, bikes, planes. But Labor didn't call for bans then, did they? These gun laws are a classic but sad overreach by a left-wing government that will punish innocent Australians as a diversion from their own failure to deal with antisemitism. Remember, the Bondi massacre did not start at 6.42 pm on Sunday 14 December; the Bondi massacre started on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, where an ugly mob of Islamic extremists gathered and shouted, 'F the Jews! Gas the Jews! Where's the Jews!'

And what did this Labor government do about Islamic extremism and the rising tide of antisemitism? It did nothing, and over the past two years Jewish Australians have suffered a cancerous tsunami of antisemitism. Jewish schools have to have high fences and security guards. Jewish school students hide their school uniforms when on public transport. Universities have become madrasahs of hatred. Synagogues are firebombed. Businesses are boycotted. Artists are cancelled. Homes and cars are attacked. Even last night, young Jewish Australians were abused on the streets of Melbourne. We wonder how this has come about. People shout out: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' People in this chamber have said that phrase. And we wonder how and why Bondi happened, when antisemites, including those in this chamber, have given a green light to such conduct and such behaviour!

The Prime Minister won't say sorry to Jewish Australians. He won't say sorry to Australians for failing in his No. 1 duty of keeping Australians safe. But he will, as a diversion, punish millions of innocent, law-abiding gun owners. I say to all the Queensland gun owners, gun clubs, shooters, whether for your recreation, sport or safety or because you like to collect guns: the LNP is standing up for you. Thank you for reaching out. I especially want to mention Matt Crossley and Laurie Choate for your counsel and your advice.

My colleagues in this chamber will move a series of amendments to try and improve these bad laws, but because of the dirty deal between Labor and the Greens, the amendments won't get up, so a bad law will pass and, sadly, debate will be guillotined because of the said dirty deal. We will vote against the bill because this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, punishes innocent Australians when, in fact, what the government should be doing is going after radical Islam.

Part of the Bondi massacre horror was the realisation that the great Australian 'she'll be right, mate' has failed us. We've watched the growing pro-Gaza demonstrations openly calling for violence against Jews and anyone who supports them. We've watched Islamic clerics preach hate against Western civilisation and call for jihad—violence against unbelievers. Many Australians thought: 'She'll be right, mate! This is Australia. This will sort itself out.' It did not.

For many years, the left-wing commentariat, politicians and media accused those who sought to raise the alarms around rising antisemitism and Christianophobia with the crime of 'threatening social harmony'. The very elastic crime of racism has now been extended to describe as racist anyone who defends Australia and our way of life. Many Australians have been guilty of shooting the messenger, while the message itself—the hatred and radicalisation—went unchallenged. We were told that highlighting radicalisation, rather than the radicalisation itself, was the problem. Well, now look. Look!

Australia will not be a safe and tolerant society again until the evil encouraged to fester in our beautiful country is cast out. It is an evil that has become an 'ecosystem of poison', as Labor's Mike Kelly so aptly described it recently. The Bondi massacre was not Islamic-on-Jewish terror imported from the other side of the world. The gunmen did not stop to ask if the victims were Jewish before executing them. We must call Bondi what it is: a radical Islamist attack on all Australians.

Why were the Labor Party, the Greens, the teals and the globalist Liberals so blind to the growing threat of Islamic terror in this country? As recently as 16 May 2023, Prime Minister Albanese denied the reality of Islamic terrorism when he said:

… the strongest threat that has been identified for our security has been right-wing extremism.

This statement from the Prime Minister and quisling bureaucrats is misdirection. Fascists and white supremacists are a strawman argument; their numbers are tiny and their influence non-existent, yet the Prime Minister knowingly and deliberately uses them to divert Australians' attention away from radical Islam.

The Greens are advocating an extension to the hate crimes legislation to cover hate against LGBQ+, transgenders and anyone else who does not worship their religion of the sky god of warming. Okay—I threw in the climate. But, once censorship laws such as those the Prime Minister is pushing are introduced, the inevitable outcome will be the deplatforming of political opponents. The Greens' call to extend the hate crimes provisions are designed to confuse the issue, to create multiple moving targets and to allow the government to pretend it's doing something without ever taking action against the real problem: Islamic terror.

One only has to look at the history of Islamic terror attacks against Western civilisation to see strong measures are needed now. In the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972, there were 12 dead. In the Bali bombings of 2002, there were 202 dead, including 88 Australians. In the second Bali bombings, 2005, there were 20 dead, including four Australians. In the London bombings, 2005, there were 52 dead. In the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, 2015, there were 12 dead. In the Brussels Airport bombings, 2016, there were 32 dead. In the Nice truck ramming, 2016, there were 86 dead—and no calls for a truck buyback. In the Berlin Christmas market truck ramming, 2016, there were 12 dead—no truck buyback. In the Pulse gay nightclub attack in Orlando, 2016, there were 49 dead. In the Manchester Arena bombing, 2017, there were 22 dead. In the Hamas attack in Israel on 7 October 2023, there were 1,180 dead. In Moscow's Crocus City Hall bombing and stabbing attack in Russia in 2024, there were 145 dead. And now there's Bondi, which was not the first Islamic terrorist attack in Australia. There was the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney in 2014, with two dead; the car ramming in Bourke Street, Melbourne in 2017, with six dead—no car buyback; and the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in 2024. Islamic terror is here—right here—on Australian soil, and it's been here for 25 years. All these terrorist attacks were predicated on a hatred of Western civilisation and a fundamental belief that Islam will rule the world and nonbelievers will convert or die.

ASIO can't warn against what it can't see. ASIO's budget is now over a billion dollars a year, double what it was five years ago, and it's not enough. Australia must decide: does it further increase ASIO funding or does it start sending people home who have demonstrated hatred for Australians?

At ASIO, there are 230 potential terrorists being monitored while they participate in deradicalisation therapy at the taxpayers expense. Here's One Nation's deradicalisation therapy: boarding passes, immediate deportation and remigration, never to return. While ASIO were busy mollycoddling violent extremists, they missed the Bondi shooters travelling to a known Philippines terrorist training ground for an extended stay before returning and committing their terror. ASIO missed that the father of a suspected terrorist purchased three guns on the same Thursday night in September 2023 from the same New South Wales firearms dealer.

ASIO missed that hate preacher Wissam Haddad holds a current New South Wales firearms licence. Haddad led Sydney's Al Madina Dawah Centre where Naveed Akram, one of the Bondi shooters, studied. Akram's father had a gun licence for six guns in New South Wales. How did none of this trip a red flag for New South Wales police, Home Affairs or ASIO? A royal commission must determine if this was wilful ignorance to protect a demographic that's much more likely to vote Labor than conservative.

Australia is not the country it was when I was growing up. The destruction of social harmony started when successive governments let in people who came to live apart from us and not to assimilate with us. Those who betray the hospitality we show them must be required to leave. Those who wage war crimes against Australians should be charged. As an example, ISIS brides travelled overseas to conduct war against Australia and against our armed forces.

ISIS bride Zehra Duman spoke on social media in 2015 and demanded that the faithful, 'Attack the UK, Australia and the United States. Kill them, stab them, poison their food'—your food. This is who Minister Burke knowingly and secretly enabled and helped to be smuggled back into our country. They perpetrated criminal activities and should be prosecuted instead of making work for ASIO by needing to be followed around.

Under our Westminster system of government, the buck for these failures stops with Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Minns. The terms of reference for the royal commission—if we ever see them—must allow scrutiny of how these failures occurred. This is no doubt why the Prime Minister refused for so long to call a royal commission: to protect himself and his ministers and to hide the truth.

Today, the Senate is voting on legislation which could've been brought in on a regular sitting day later in the year. What we are not voting on is the enabling legislation for the royal commission, to first get the data and the facts. This is what royal commissions are for—to inform bills like this. The Albanese government is putting the cart before the horse and burying the facts. Prime Minister: Australia is watching this royal commission. Do not cover up anything. If the cards are not allowed to fall as they may then it'll be your government that will fall.

One Nation will oppose this rushed dog's breakfast bill and the second bill coming after it later tonight. There are processes to produce good legislation. This government has made a mockery of them all. The atrocious, shoddy legislation reflects contempt for our democratic process and for the people of Australia. The hate provisions for the Commonwealth Criminal Code that Labor introduced in 2010 and subsequently amended to make prosecutions easier have never been used—not one prosecution.

Australia does not need more laws which take away the right to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement and freedom of protest. We need the government to start policing the laws we already have. Whether people are Christian or another civilised religion, there can only be one set of laws, which are laws based on our Christian, Western heritage. There can only be one allegiance in our community and it's to those laws. Tolerance has been weaponised. Labor, the Greens, the teals and now the Liberals have elevated tolerance to be the end itself. The thing being tolerated became irrelevant.

Speaking about Islam has been made prima facie racism, yet criticism of Christianity and Judaism is encouraged as being the religions of white skinned people and of colonisers. White skinned people are being demonised by the left-wing lobby groups and by other white skinned people, like Greens Senator McKim, who said yesterday that Australians will not be safe until we've eliminated Islamophobia. In 'Greens-land', apparently there's no radical Islam and the terrorist attacks I listed earlier never happened. It's this illogical, suicidal empathy that's led us to this moment.

The list of terror attacks I read used guns, bombs, knives, cars and trucks. Guns are a strawman argument. 'Look over here at these evil guns and don't look at the person wielding the gun.' Failing to act against radical Islam will lead to Australians losing their lives. Australia does not have a gun problem; we have a radical ideology problem. One Nation strongly supports the right to own and use firearms lawfully and responsibly. This Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 penalises legitimate law-abiding gun owners. The poor wording shows a failure to understand how guns are used on farms and in sport. This is what happens when city based antigun groups are consulted and gun owner associations are not. The bill proposes to limit the use of carriage services. This is pitched to limit the use of the internet to access blueprints and use 3D printers to print guns. This is already illegal under state law.

This bill elevates the description of illegal material to mean whatever the hell the government decides is illegal. It could include a legal owner downloading the manual for a gun or educational YouTube videos on how to pull down, clean and reassemble a gun or on the science of a gun, like how the striking pin works, and how to detect change, damage or wear to machine parts which may render the gun unsafe. Merits review of a refusal to grant a gun licence under this bill is eliminated. Appeals would now have to be undertaken through the Federal Court, which is, what, a $20,000 minimum? The Administrative Review Tribunal system is working just fine, so now the government are fixing a problem that doesn't exist so they can use a spurious argument to take guns off anyone they dislike.

As Minister Watt raises on gun numbers, let me assist him. There are more guns in Australia now than there were in 1996 before the Port Arthur buyback because our population has increased. The number of guns per person today is now fewer than in 1996—fewer—and the number of guns owned per person is fewer. Honesty is important, Senator Watt.

One Nation supports the right for Australians to participate in sports involving firearms, to use firearms for hunting or recreational shooting, to collect antique and historically significant firearms, and to use firearms in rural areas for pest and stock management. One Nation seeks to end discrimination against legitimate firearm owners and users, ensure all stakeholders are fairly consulted in the development of firearms laws and regulations, and make existing laws fairer. We seek to improve community safety by cracking down on illegal firearm use with stronger penalties if firearms are used in committing crimes.

The buyback scheme is a blank cheque, which, industry sources we spoke to said could cost up to $15 billion. This is a tax on everyday Australians because it must be paid for with a tax. One Nation supports Castle Law—the right to use force, fatal force if necessary, in proportion to defend one's home and family from an intruder. Bring that legislation before parliament and One Nation will support it. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 has been so badly rushed that critical passages are inconsistent to the point that a court is likely to refuse prosecution based on these inconsistent provisions. The changes on which the government and the Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, surrendered do not justify Liberals supporting this bill. The government said that creating a new offence of racial vilification was removed from the hastily redrafted bill, yet some elements are hidden in the revised bill. The bill still includes supremacy. Anyone who says 'Australian society is superior to Islamic Society' is off to jail for five years, 12 if you are a priest or a lay preacher. Will the government start rounding up hate preachers in the electorates of senior Labor ministers like Messrs Burke, Butler and Bowen for declaring the superiority of Islam over Christianity? Of course not.

Make no mistake, this bill continues the war on Christianity and the promotion of Islam that has been a feature of left-wing politics for a generation. I welcome the last-minute government amendment to include a clause attempting to guarantee freedom of political communication, even if that protection is already in the Constitution. It may make it less likely this bill would be used to ban political rivals including One Nation.

The bill still does not mention antisemitism, not once. It was never about protecting Jews; it was always about promoting Islam over Christianity. Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has with the Labor Party to wave it through without due process, with onerous clauses that take away peoples freedoms, that will cost all Australians more in taxes and that will in the end fundamentally change the nature of Australian society without protecting a recurrence. Australians, your choice is now One Nation or no nation.

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 is a case study, I think, for this parliament on how not to legislate. Labor has taken a national tragedy and responded not with calm, precision or competence but with a rushed, poorly targeted and deeply flawed piece of legislation. It has been pushed through this parliament with inadequate scrutiny, truncated consultation and a 'take it or leave it' attitude that shows contempt for proper lawmaking. Australians deserve better than policy made on the run.

Let me be clear about one fundamental point that this bill deliberately obscures. Australia does not have a gun problem. What we have is a radical Islamist extremism problem, and this government has consistently failed to confront it honestly and directly. Every major terrorist attack on Australian soil in the past two decades has been driven by radical Islamist ideology. That is the uncomfortable truth the government refuses to name. Instead of tackling that ideology, dismantling the networks that promote it and stamping out the antisemitism it fuels, Labor has chosen an easier political target: lawful Australian gun owners. Farmers, sporting shooters, collectors, dealers and licensed competitors are being treated as collateral damage for the government's failure to act decisively against antisemitism and extremism when it mattered. This is unjust, and it's dishonest.

This bill uses the horror of the Bondi attack to justify sweeping firearms changes that would have done absolutely nothing to prevent that atrocity. Nothing in this legislation would have stopped the attack. Nothing in it addresses the radicalisation pathways that led to the attack. Nothing in it confronts the ideology that motivated the attack. Instead, it punishes people who already comply with some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Labor wants Australians to believe that confiscating more firearms, tightening imports and expanding bureaucratic control over lawful ownership will somehow make us safer. It will not. It simply diverts attention from the government's longstanding inaction on antisemitism, radicalisation and community safety.

This bill has been rushed. It is poorly drafted. It was originally so unworkable that Labor was forced to split the bill in two. That alone is an admission of failure. And yet, even after that embarrassment, the government persists in trying to ram through the remainder of this bill without proper inquiry or scrutiny. That's not leadership; that's panic.

Law-abiding Australians should not pay the price for the government's refusal to confront hard truths. Farmers should not lose tools essential to their livelihoods, sporting shooters should not see their disciplines strangled, and small businesses should not be driven under. Lawful gun owners should not be treated as suspects, because the government lacks the courage to deal with extremism at its source.

Antisemitism must be crushed wherever it appears. Radical Islamist ideology must be confronted, named and dismantled. Terrorist networks must be disrupted. Noncitizens who promote hatred or violence should be removed from this country without hesitation. But none of that requires punishing lawful, gun-owning Australians. This bill does exactly that. It targets the compliant instead of the dangerous, it expands bureaucracy instead of security, and it offers symbolism instead of any kind of substance.

Australians are entitled to safety, but they are also entitled to honesty. The honest assessment is this: you do not defeat terrorism by targeting farmers, you do not defeat antisemitism by confiscating sporting firearms, and you do not strengthen a nation by eroding trust in law-abiding citizens. For those reasons alone, this bill deserves criticism, scrutiny and resistance, and this parliament should have the courage to say that Australia's problem is not guns, it is extremism, and the solution lies in confronting that reality, not in avoiding it. For that reason I will not be supporting this bill.

On 14 December, two individuals undertook a cowardly act at Bondi Beach. Their aim was to terrorise and to murder Jewish Australians as they gathered to celebrate Hanukah. From the moment that the first gunshot was fired, so many lives were changed forever. I won't repeat in full what I said in my condolence speech yesterday; however, I will emphasise this: such attacks leave scars that will last generations. They leave an empty chair at the dinner table. They leave wounds on bodies and hearts. They leave moments and memories that will never be able to be made. It is a cruelty to lose those we love to acts such as this, acts that should have never taken place. We must not let the actions of these two men define entire religious, ethnic and racial groups.

As politicians, we have a responsibility to act. We must strengthen our laws so that what happened that Sunday can never happen again. It is our responsibility to counter racism and hatred in all of its forms. And in this moment of deepest grief, we must be shoulder to shoulder with one another. The Australian Greens supported the recall of parliament. We supported the establishment of a royal commission to identify what went wrong and what must change, whether in our hate speech laws, our gun laws, our intelligence agencies. We owe it to the victims, their families and the whole community to make sure that this never happens again.

I will turn my contribution now to the need for gun law reform. We must close the loopholes in our gun laws that allowed these terrorists to legally access rapid reload weapons. Many of us look at the gun violence pandemic in the United States in horror. We are rightly proud of Australia's gun laws. We are rightly proud of the reforms that were enacted nearly 30 years ago, in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. And because gun violence is not so widespread here, some people assume that our laws must already be strong enough. The reality is that, as of December 2025, there are more guns in Australia than there were before the buyback of 1996. In the postcode 2026, where Bondi is located, there are 370 registered firearms. One individual has 24 registered in their name. There is no acceptable reason or justification for someone living in the inner city to own 24 firearms—none whatsoever.

That is why the Greens will support the changes in this bill. We support tighter controls on what can be imported. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 places restrictions on the importation of assisted repeating and straight-pull firearms, on magazines of more than 30 rounds, on firearms suppressors and speed loaders.

We support better background checks. Moving federal firearm checks into AUSTRAC is progress. This will enable agencies and police forces to share relevant information in relation to background checks. One of the clear failures in the Bondi attack was that the gunman was known to ASIO but the information could not be used in federal firearm checks.

We support a national buyback scheme, as the amount of firearms in this nation is, as I said, now higher than it was at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. We have a saturation of rapid-reloading rifles and shotguns. This reality goes against the goals of the post Port Arthur action. It is the alarm bell ringing to tell us that urgent action is now needed.

But, even once these changes have been made, we cannot be complacent. Firearms manufacturers have a long history of finding ways around strong gun laws. In the past they have changed the reload mechanisms just to dodge the restrictions. Their motivation is profit, not public safety. We need to stay vigilant to safeguard these changes.

In 2023, in my home town of Perth, a 16-year-old accessed his father's gun cabinet. He took two legal rifles and ammunition, drove to a school car park and fired three shots, two of which hit the building. That incident showed that gun laws must evolve to stay effective. After that, Western Australia strengthened our gun laws. The Greens (WA), led by Dr Brad Pettitt MLC, voted in support of these stronger and tougher laws.

I want to see changes made today, because public safety matters. A community free of gun violence matters. I also want to be clear that these laws should not punish responsible, legal gun owners who have a genuine reason for owning a firearm. Western Australia is home to some of the most threatened species on the planet, including the numbat, the bilby, the western ground parrot and the northern quoll. These animals are not only losing their habitat; they are being hunted to the brink of extinction by feral predators. Licensed landowners, professional pest controllers and conservation minded hunters have an important role to play in protecting these species against feral predators. These laws must be strong so that they can protect the community while also allowing legitimate conservation and land management work to continue.

We owe it to the community to make sure that we are safe from gun violence and that the attacks that we saw in Bondi can never happen again. This bill will make it harder for illegal and legal firearms to fall into the wrong hands, while making sure that those who have a legitimate reason for a firearm can still access them. It is commonsense legislation, and we must now get it done.

I rise to make my contribution to the very poorly named Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. If you'd called it the 'firearms and customs law bill', it would have been much more honest, but I do acknowledge that we are dealing with the horrific events, or the aftermath of the horrific events, of Bondi on 14 December and that there's a desire to make a connection. And, as I said yesterday, we must do everything that we possibly can in this place to ensure that Australia again becomes safe, and we'll pass some other legislation later in the day to do that.

But I can't support this legislation, because of the flaws that are in it. The fact that, frankly, the government wasn't prepared to work with the coalition to get bipartisan support for this legislation in the same way that John Howard did after the tragic events of Port Arthur in 1996 is an indictment of this government and a demonstration of the fact that they are about the politics and not the reality of the situation. I was a candidate in the 1998 election for the seat of Lyons, and I won't forget those lawful firearm owners who came to me (a) to put their perspective and (b) to place their trust in me as someone they intended to vote for despite the fact that we'd legislated for them to have tighter access to firearms. Now, I wasn't successful in that particular election, but I haven't forgotten the conversations nor the responsibility.

This legislation is a complete demonstration of the failure of leadership of the Prime Minister in managing this. The fact that the legislation was tabled a week ago—nobody had seen it. He hadn't come to the opposition, who had indicated for a considerable period of time since Bondi that we were prepared to work with the government as the Australian people wanted us to do to make some changes. The Prime Minister, despite calling for us to come together, has done nothing and failed to actually do the things that would bring us together. He mocked the coalition. He criticised the coalition, and, quite frankly, in calling for us to come together while not bringing us together, he was gaslighting the opposition, gaslighting the Jewish community and, in fact, gaslighting the Australian community—a complete failure of leadership. For him to now try and compare this legislation and some of its actions with John Howard, who actually did bring the country together, got bipartisan support and got the National Party to agree to the legislation in 1996, is actually quite offensive. It's quite offensive that he tries to appropriate the actions of John Howard in this debate because in this sense he has completely failed.

There are a number of measures in this legislation that we should have been able to agree on, and there are others that, with some improvement, could have formed some very sound legislation. But, of course, Labor thinks they know better, and I really wonder who they were actually listening to when they built this legislation. They clearly weren't listening to their own backbench because up until this morning this legislation prohibited a piece of equipment that Olympians use in Olympic competition. So who were they listening to? Who were Labor listening to in developing this legislation?

They tell us that this will have no impact on farmers and rural Australians, and they tell us that this will have no impact on sporting shooters. I don't believe them. Why should I? The evidence is completely to the contrary. Why would I? They don't even know what the impact is. They have no understanding. We hear it so often in the trotted out talking points that they run in this debate in relation to this matter. They have no concept of what tools are required by farmers to manage browsing on their farmers or the different forms of browsing, the different firearms you might need to deal with wallabies or wild deer or, as Senator McKenzie said earlier, wild pigs. So the artificial limitations on the number of firearms available are a limitation on the tool kit available to farmers and rural Australians in managing their farms.

They say that if you're not a citizen, you won't be able to get access to firearms. What about the non-citizen farmers? What about the Australian residents who run farms? I know some. They're not Australia residents, but they have the same problems as every other farmer in managing feral wildlife. That's not considered as part of this legislation. What about the non-resident Australian farming workforce that also assists? Senator Steele-John was talking about managing feral animals in parts of Western Australia. I'm sure some non-resident farmhands are assisting with that very important role. But they can't under this legislation, because they won't be allowed to have a firearm licence; they're excluded under the simple fix.

This government has no idea what it's legislating. They have no understanding of the unintended consequences of this legislation, so why should anybody trust them when they say it will have no impact on farmers? We know it will. What about those farmers who reload their shells? If they want to use a carriage device to find information about reloading the shells appropriately, so that they get the right amount of shot in the shell, that's an offence under this legislation. We're not sure about the impact of that. What if an Olympian finds out that, in the United States, there is a new technology around reloading shells that gives the Americans an advantage? Are they going to be impacted? This lot don't know; they can't tell us. And nobody was consulted; I was listening to the evidence at the hearings last week. They have no idea what they're legislating here, so why should we trust them? I don't believe them when they say nobody is going to be impacted, because they don't know themselves. So why should we pass bad legislation? It's a pattern that we've, sadly, grown used to with this government—a failure of leadership, a failure to bring us together, a failure of consultation and, in this circumstance, a failure to genuinely understand.

Here's a photograph, through a scope, of browsing pressure on a farm in Tasmania. There's hardly room to put a sheep or a cow on that farm in between the browsing animals. Farmers need to have the right tools to manage their properties properly. On that same farm, where all those wallabies are competing with grass that might be used for sheep or cattle, is a vineyard. The next day there are wild deer in the vineyard. There is a different firearm required for the wallabies to the deer, or perhaps the birds that might come in and take grapes off the vines at different times of the year. Farmers need to have the toolkit. I don't believe the government when they say this legislation won't restrict them, because it's clear to me that there are unintended consequences. The fact is that, until this morning, an Olympian couldn't have a jacket that would hold 50 shells—which is an Olympic requirement—because they were restricted to 30.

The buyback is another example of the failure of leadership of this government. As I said before, it's offensive that the government tried to appropriate John Howard's buyback in their arguments for this buyback. John Howard worked with the states, set up a process, made sure that appropriate payment for firearms was paid, supported small business—and then he paid for it all. He didn't just announce it and then say to the states, 'By the way, you're paying half,' without any consultation first—which is what this government has done. This government talks about us coming together and this being a time for us to come together—yet they have done nothing to bring us together, and they present us with this flawed legislation. I'm not surprised they've done the political deal they've done with the Greens, because they have no care for Australian farmers. And here we are with this bad and flawed legislation, which I cannot support.

It's a sad situation because, had the Prime Minister gone to the Leader of the Opposition in the days and weeks after the terrible events at Bondi and worked with her and other members of the parliament, we could have been standing in this place today with an agreement on legislation which we all understood and which did the job that we wanted it to do. It is a failure of leadership of the Prime Minister that we are not in that situation. It is a very, very sad situation for us to be in because, with genuine leadership, this legislation could have been so much better and it could have been something that we all supported. As I have said, there are a number of things in this legislation that we should be able to agree on—the background checks; some of the controls. But, because of the failure of leadership of this government, we're not in a position to be able to do that, and, therefore, I am not in a position to support the legislation.

I rise to speak to the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 and foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name and in the names of Senators Lambie, Tyrrell, Payman and Thorpe. I begin by, again, expressing my deep condolences to the victims of the horrific ISIS inspired antisemitic terrorist attack in Bondi that targeted members of the Jewish community. To the families that lost loved ones, to those who were injured and to a community that has been left shaken and grieving, our thoughts remain with you.

What occurred in Bondi was not just an attack on individuals; it was an attack on a community and an attack on the freedom to live, worship and gather without fear, and it has left a deep scar on our country. The men who perpetrated that atrocity should never, ever have been able to access firearms. Australians are united in the wake of that tragedy, and we must do everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again.

Before I turn to the substance of this bill, I want to acknowledge a broader truth. Trust in politicians and in government in this country is bad and is getting worse. Frankly, after what we've seen in the parliament in recent days, it's not hard to see why. Australians expect this parliament to act decisively, but they also expect us to act carefully and consult effectively, to actually collaborate and ensure that we are passing good laws. At its core, this bill seeks to do something that Australians overwhelmingly support—to prevent firearms from falling into the hands of terrorists and others who seek to do harm. That principle is totally uncontroversial. Australians want strong firearms laws. We want dangerous weapons kept out of dangerous hands. And they want governments at every level to work together to make that happen.

Over the weekend, I surveyed people here in the ACT, and nearly 1,000 people responded. Eighty per cent told me that they support or strongly support state and territory firearm buyback schemes backed by the federal government, and 93 per cent support or strongly support stronger import controls on firearms. That is overwhelming support for stronger action.

But the hundreds of thousands of responsible law-abiding firearm owners must not be treated as collateral damage in our response to terrorism. Farmers, pest controllers, sporting shooters, veterans, people who use firearms legally and responsibly for agriculture, for invasive species control and for recreation—these Australians are not the problem, and many of them are deeply unsettled right now. Many of them are angry. Many of them feel attacked by this legislation and by the lack of detail and time for consultation with people in that community. Because of the way that this bill is being rushed through the parliament, there has been minimal consultation. There has been limited scrutiny, and this has created a vacuum of information. In that vacuum, we've seen uncertainty, confusion and misinformation. I've heard directly from people who I represent here in the ACT who feel under attack, who do not understand what these laws will mean for them and who are struggling to get clear answers from the government. That is not how good laws are made.

Yesterday, I held two roundtables to hear from people across the spectrum on this issue. I heard strong support for the intent of this bill, but I also heard serious, very legitimate concerns. I heard from gun-control advocates who told me that without proper resourcing and enforcement legislative change alone will not deliver the outcomes that we need. I heard from community advocates that any reform of the regulation of firearms should also look at how we can continue efforts to stop family, domestic and gendered violence. I heard from organisations representing firearms owners who told me they have deep concerns about implementation, vague definitions, procedural fairness and uncertainty around compensation.

Many questions remain with this legislation. The farcical way that the Labor government has decided to deal with this legislation means there will likely be no Committee of the Whole. There will be no time to ask questions to clarify some of these concerns. It means that these questions will likely remain. Will buybacks offer fair market value for firearms and ammunition? What about ammunition? If firearms are bought back, what happens to the hundreds of thousands of shells of ammunition out there? What happens to the small businesses that may be forced to shut their doors due to changes at a state or territory level? What exactly is captured by terms like 'firearms and explosives manufacturing material' in the context of these new offences? Does it apply to farmers or to pest controllers who are reloading at home? It's very hard to get any clarity on that. Where is the funding for security agencies, law enforcement and Home Affairs to implement the scheme? I've been banging on about resourcing for the AFP for the last 3½ years. If this is important, we have to resource it. We have to resource it better. These aren't fringe concerns. They are reasonable questions, and too many of them remain unanswered.

Outside the legislation, questions are being asked about why it's taking so long to stand up a national firearms register. In the ACT, more than 4,000 gun licences are administered on a paper based system—a paper based system in 2026. One part of this bill that I do unequivocally welcome is the strengthening of information sharing and background checks. If we are serious about preventing another atrocity like Bondi, intelligence must flow more effectively between agencies. The federal government has a clear role to play here in the coordination between ASIO, the AFP, state and territory police, and firearms registries. The federal government also has an important role in strengthening import controls and in supporting nationally consistent approaches to buybacks. Stopping acts of terror requires preventing those who wish to commit acts of evil from accessing the tools to carry it out.

But support for the intent and the majority of the provisions of this bill does not excuse the failure of process. Ramming complex legislation through parliament without adequate consultation undermines trust. That is why, while I support this bill, I cannot ignore the serious deficiencies in how it is being handled. We owe it to the victims of the Bondi attack, the Jewish community and all Australians, including those who lawfully own and use firearms, to get this right. For that reason, I'll move a motion that, once passed, this bill be referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry to report by 2 March 2026. That inquiry will allow this Senate to hear from the community, test the legislation, identify unintended consequences and make any necessary amendments without delaying the urgent protections Australians rightly expect. I will also put forward an amendment to establish an independent statutory review of this legislation in two years time. I'm hopeful that these amendments, put forward in good faith, will help to improve public trust in these laws and in our political process.

Just over a month ago, we witnessed the worst terrorist attack on Australian shores in our history, targeting the Jewish community. It was an attack that shook our nation. I support this bill as part of the response to the attack, but there is much more that needs to be done to combat antisemitism and to combat all forms of hate, and we must never lose sight of that.

I will be shorter than my allocated time here because I know that many people wish to talk, but I do want to address some things have that have been said. I would like to start by saying something that I know is controversial, but I mean it. If you were to seek to punish 813,000 Muslims in Australia after this attack, you would be called an extremist because you would be, fair and simple. But, if you want to punish 940,000 gunowners in this country for what happened, you are the Prime Minister. That is unfair. It is unfair that a group of people who have done nothing are being punished for something that they have never done.

What we heard in some of the things Senator Pocock said really crossed party lines and crossed everything. We hear about gun buybacks and we hear about the potential for the capping of state funds out there. If you went to Southern Cross Small Arms and bought a Taipan X for $1,800 yesterday or the day before this happened, do you get $500 back for it? You mentioned ammunition. If I go and buy a box of Barnes .416 Rigby ammunition, 20 of those—it's $20 a round—I have $400 in a single box of ammunition. So where does that go to protecting the people who have done the right thing? No-one should be able to group-punish. I remember in school, if someone did something stupid in school and we all got held back, we hated that kid. We are group-punishing again here, and it is unfair.

I do not blame the Greens for being consistent in their policy position of supporting these bills. They are consistent, they are where they are, and they want to do it. I blame the government for rushing this through—us being told that it was not for changing. 'We're not splitting this, and we are not changing this.' We are here. It has been split. And I can't keep up with the changes from the four different versions there were yesterday and the one that came in at 6.13 am this morning, where things like the importation of sporting apparel changed. There was a ban last night—and I think even this morning first thing—on belts, ammunition and clothing that can hold more than 30 rounds. My Levi's can hold 30 .22s in their pocket. My wranglers can hold 30 rounds of .22 in their pocket. Now that's changed. We are talking about the reaction of banning the importation of gel blaster beads as a reaction to our terrorist attack—gel blasting, which is a sport in Queensland, much like paintball, much like things like that. We're talking about banning gel blaster beads as a response to a terrorist attack. This is not fair. This is not a position where the government is trying to make the problem go away for Australian people; this is a problem where the government is trying to make the political problem go away for a prime minister. That is what this is about.

Coming back early to discuss, to be sensible, to do what this place does best—and we have seen it many times where we have worked together to get solutions that are important—has happened. To come back to be given a bill of 'take it or leave it' with no consultation and then change it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. We sit here with another bill coming this afternoon. I don't think anyone in this chamber is absolutely for or against either of these bills—they are nuanced, some of these positions—but we have to make a binary choice: yes or no.

On this ammunition bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill, I hear people getting up from the other side and saying, 'This bill will stop noncitizens getting firearms.' It will not. It has nothing about that whatsoever, but they want to pretend it does. It doesn't do that. That is a state basis because, as was said before, states and territories have the point on this. When we are talking about a buyback program that doesn't have the buy-in of all the states yet—we have a number of states saying they are not involved. It goes against the gun accord. It goes against all of these things. And it is wrong.

There are so many hunters up in the Hunter Valley, where I come from. I could name some of my friends who have weapons now who have to give them back. I talked about that Taipan straight pull, the Taipan X, from Southern Cross Small Arms. It is not a self-loading rifle. It is not a repeating rifle. It is a straight pull. It is potentially a pump pull. It is a good sporting weapon for recreational hunting and pest eradication. Now that is illegal in New South Wales and, not part of this, now you can't import it either. So, if I am a hunter, if I am a target shooter or if I am a sport shooter, I am limited in what I can get. There are still questions about all the weapons used in the Olympic events, especially the pistols, and being able to import all parts of these things. It is a positive thing that there is finally funding, after 3½ years, for the national register. That is a good thing—I don't pretend it is not—but we have had 3½ years to fund that.

To all my friends, to all those people out there and to the 64,000-odd people that we got in trouble for carrying the non-compliant petition for earlier today, I say to you: I am sorry that we haven't been able to stop this to make this better. There are definitely things that we support in it, like the ASIO checks and the national register, but there is some stuff in there that has just been in the bottom drawer on a wish list of a bureaucrat who doesn't like guns and wants to get them out. It is not the crossbench's fault. It's not the Greens' fault. It is not this side's fault. It is the Labor Party's fault for wanting the problem—a political problem—to go away quickly and not a policy solution. To the 940,000 registered gun owners out there: I am sorry for what is happening to you. It is being done unfairly, it is being done quickly and it is being done without due process. I will not vote for that. I cannot vote for that. You need to know who is to blame for that, and it is solely the government.

Gun reform is certainly not the whole solution to keeping us safer, but it is a crucial first step taking away one of the most dangerous tools used to cause harm. It is a step that I would have assumed uncontroversial in the wake of the tragic events in Bondi. That is why this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, has the support of the Australian Greens.

Right now Australia's firearms laws contain serious loopholes that allow gun owners to endlessly recycle the same justification to accumulate dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of guns. No sensible regime should allow what are basically private arsenals of this scale to exist in our suburbs. It is entirely indefensible. A farmer needs access to a gun, sure—one gun, a few guns—for legitimate purposes. But 100 guns—why? To the opposition senators opposing these reforms, I ask a simple question: why does a farmer need 100 guns?

This isn't just about whether ownership is technically lawful; it is about scale, concentration and risk. It is also about the very real possibility of firearms being stolen or misused. Every year more than 2,000 guns are stolen. That is one gun every four hours. Most illegal guns come from thefts of legally owned firearms. To put it simply, the more legal guns there are, the more illegal guns end up in the wrong hands.

We cannot talk honestly about gun reform without recognising the warning signs that have too often gone unheard. For decades women and domestic violence survivors have warned us about the danger of firearms in violent homes. They've told us again and again that access to guns escalates threats into fatalities, yet our own gun laws have remained too weak and too fragmented.

We also cannot ignore the influence of the gun lobby in this country. Per capita it spends amounts comparable to, and by some measures even higher than, the NRA in the United States. Just like in the US, that influence has worked to stall reform and normalise dangerous levels of gun ownership in Australia. How many debates do we have to have in this place where major party and One Nation politicians argue positions against the interests of their own communities because of dodgy political donations? Fossil fuels, gambling, guns—take the donations away and then honestly tell me that you would oppose these reforms.

We are watching, in real time, the consequences of weak gun laws elsewhere: rising political violence, extremism becoming normalised and mass shootings being treated as inevitable. When Australians see mass shootings in America, we look at the lack of action from politicians in the pockets of the gun lobby and thank our lucky stars that we don't have politicians like that here. Well, we do. A mass shooting happens and we have politicians opposing gun laws while accepting donations from the gun lobby. Is this the Australian Senate or is this America? They are not values that Australians accept. That is not the future Australians want.

It is time our policy and our leadership catch up. The Greens have always consistently recognised that legitimate needs must be respected in gun law reform and that any reform must reflect that reality. But the Greens do not accept and do not believe the Australian public accepts that any one private citizen has a genuine reason to own dozens or hundreds of guns. The buyback contained in this bill will begin to right this course.

When I think about what happened in Bondi, I feel a deep mix of grief and anger. I feel grief for the lives lost, grief for the families and communities who will never be the same and anger—real anger—that once again we are here, after another act of devastating violence, asking ourselves what we could've done differently. I also feel an overwhelming responsibility, and the Greens feel an overwhelming responsibility, not to reach for platitudes or hide behind symbolism but to act decisively and seriously in a way that genuinely reduces the risk of this happening again.

If we mean what we say when we say, 'This isn't us,' then we must be prepared to take difficult, concrete steps, and taking dangerous weapons off our streets and out of our communities isn't radical; it's rational. It is the most basic act of harm prevention and it is an essential first step in stopping violence like what we witnessed in Bondi.

In Victoria, my home state, there are around 960,000 registered firearms that are owned by more than 236,000 people. These numbers are higher than before the Port Arthur massacre. As the daughter of a fourth-generation farmer, I understand deeply that there are legitimate reasons for firearm ownership in this country. Farmers participate in legitimate regulated activities, and no-one is disputing this. But I feel alarmed when I look at this data because what we are seeing goes far beyond legitimate use.

We know from Port Arthur what decisive gun reform can achieve. After that tragedy, Australia acted and it saved lives. Recently, our neighbours in Aotearoa showed that governments could act swiftly and with moral courage after an Islamophobic mass shooting was carried out by a white Australian. Those reforms sent a clear message: the tools of mass violence do not belong in our society. What a shame it is, then, that this reform is not treated as a shared national responsibility today. What a shame that the National Party would rather engage in culture wars than commit, across party lines, to getting unnecessary guns out of our communities and off our streets. This issue should not be partisan.

Today, I also recognise—after work from the Greens, my colleagues—the agreement to establish a national firearms safety council as another step towards meaningful gun safety, and I want to thank my colleagues Senator Shoebridge and Senator Larissa Waters for their leadership in that area. These reforms must be our first step, but, of course, we can't pretend that they're the only ones. When I look at my home state of Victoria, particularly in the weeks of horror after Bondi, I feel something else. I feel pride—pride in its diversity and pride in its resilience. In the days and weeks after Bondi, I saw communities come together across faiths and across cultures. Solidarity matters. It reminds us that removing the tools of violence must go hand in hand with confronting hatred, extremism and social fracture before they take hold.

Let me be very clear. Suppressing democratic freedoms and protecting some groups over others or vilifying migrants will not make us safer. It will do quite the opposite. Knee-jerk reactions from Labor that follow the coalition down this twisted path of culture wars and divisions do not make us safer. They will not make us safer. So, yes, we must take back firearms as tools of destruction and violence and chaos, but we must make sure that what we do today isn't just symbolic but serious, grounded in evidence, in courage and in a refusal to accept the slow drift towards violence as normal.

I've returned this week hopefully with the same intent as other senators, that what we should be doing here in this shortened day is to take actions to reduce the risk of the horrific events of 14 December happening again. I don't support this bill because I don't see a significant link here between the tragedy of what we saw and what we are doing here today. In fact, much of what we are doing here today seems completely irrelevant to those issues and perhaps instead is in pursuit of a broader agenda that seeks to demonise the otherwise legal, recreational use of firearms in this country.

I've listened to some of the debate this afternoon and this evening, and I have heard it said often that the evil monsters that committed these acts on 14 December would have been breaking the law if we had passed these laws. One of the assailants was a foreign citizen. If we pass these laws, foreign citizens won't be able to have guns anymore, so December 14 couldn't happen. I can't accept that level of naivety as a reason to pass laws that restrict the rights of the rest of our law-abiding Australians. Those two murderers were breaking the law already. They were terrorists. They were murderers. They were killers. They were criminals. The idea, then, that somehow passing a law to make something illegal is going to stop crime does seem the height of naivety. If it's that simple, why don't we just pass a law banning all crime and then everything will be peaceful—apparently.

Those two individuals we now know were very committed to do the evil they did. They trained to do what they did. They possibly went to the Philippines and continued that training. They went to great lengths to commit the acts of evil that they did over a month ago. The idea that somehow in the future any two similar murderers with a warped mind and evil intent could not somehow find a way around the laws we're passing today indicates that we are not approaching this issue with the seriousness of what happened over a month ago.

There are millions of illegal firearms in this country. There are possibly hundreds of thousands of them in Western Sydney, where these two murderers came from. The idea that they couldn't get their hands on something that was illegal is absurd. It's totally ridiculous. Whatever provisions are here are not really going to tackle the major issue that confronted this nation over a month ago. Yet it was this issue of gun law reform, as the government describes it, that the Prime Minister first latched on to in his response. Within days of this terrible event, the greatest terrorist attack in Australia's history, the Prime Minister was latching on to the issue of guns, almost certainly, transparently, as a means to avoid having to confront the more difficult issue for himself and his political party of the spread of radical Islamic extremism inspired by antisemitism that this government has done far too little about. The Prime Minister's initial bumbling of this issue has left a bad taste in the mouths of those Australians that do use guns for work, that use guns for pleasure—it's not illegal to do that. There has not been good faith from the Prime Minister or the Labor Party on this issue, because, from the get-go, they sought to demonise gun owners as somehow contributing to the risks of this event when that was, to most Australians, completely absurd.

Now, because of the public pressure and because that initial response was so cynical and was so transparently desperate, the Australian people didn't buy it. They didn't buy it. I think the Australian people could see, after the Port Arthur massacre, a prime minister who was taking on his own political base, who was tackling a difficult issue. There were assault and semi-automatic weapons available out there to the general public then. So he saw a legitimate issue that the then Howard government was taking on—a tough issue, but one they took on. This time, very clearly, the Australian public saw that this was very political and not really a serious response to what happened. Yet here we are just a few weeks later, and the first bill the government has proposed after splitting their broader bill—it's a complete shambles, which we'll get to later—tackles not the root cause of what happened on 14 December; it tackles a whole lot of ancillary issues that don't go anywhere close to what happened on 14 December or the days leading up to it. It has led to the demonisation of a million Australians who own firearms, sometimes because they have to for work or sometimes because they enjoy the pastime and the pursuit.

Just in the previous speech, we heard that this is not a time to demonise fellow Australians or divide fellow Australians, that we've all got to come together and unify, except if you own a gun. If you own a gun, apparently you can be demonised, you can be judged and you can be prejudged. You can be prejudged such that, because you may collect guns or have more than five—apparently the people who, I think, have never shot a gun seem to understand how many guns you need—you're an evil person, you're a terrible person, you're a risk to society, you're a public enemy. Don't give me this rubbish of uniting. Don't give me this veneer of saying, 'We're all Australians,' after this event when you make your response to it transparently politically divisive.

It divides some Australians against others. I completely understand that as someone who doesn't own guns and has rarely shot a gun. I don't mind doing it—it's a bit of fun—but it's not my main pastime in life. We've got to get over this idea that just because I don't do it or I don't like it, I should take it away from a fellow Australian and stop them doing it. There are a lot of people in this country that legally pursue these things. We cheer them on when they win gold medals at the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games. We're happy for them then. But, when it suits us politically, we'll say that they're the problem to distract everyone from the more difficult discussions that we might get to later tonight, which are also being glossed over and are another story.

You can tell, as I said before, the government is not serious about this. It is not taking this issue with the due consideration it should be, through both the completely irrelevant provisions that are in this particular bill and the fact that, in the last day or two, the government's had to drop a whole lot of changes because it didn't consult properly on its initial bill released only a week ago.

This bill had restrictions on how many shells you could hold in a vest. I think it was limited to 30 rounds in a particular vest. You wouldn't be able to, in the initial drafting of this bill, import a vest that had more than 30 rounds. It took someone pointing out to the government that, if you want to practise for the Olympics and compete at the AIS down the road, you actually do need more than 30 rounds to do that. No-one had checked that! No-one in the government had checked that. Now, thankfully, they've removed that provision, but the problem, when you do these last-minute amendments, is you start, as a legislator, to think: 'What other gremlins are in this bill? What other things haven't they thought of properly here?' That is so, so silly. It should have been picked up in early consultations, which clearly did not happen before we got here.

This bill also, for some unknown reason, goes after people who use gel blasters. Now, I'm not the expert on this. I have shot a gun, as I've said, but I don't know if I've ever shot a gel blaster before. There's a group in Rocky, where I live, who I know do it all. They seem like good people. They put on parties and events and team-bonding stuff you can do. Good luck to people. Why is that in this bill? I don't know. I don't know if we're having a committee stage. Is everything just getting guillotined? Perhaps the minister can tell us. Has there ever been an incident with a fatality in this country involving a gel blaster? Has a terrorist organisation or group ever sought to acquire gel blasters to commit acts of terror? They do it with cars, they do with homemade bombs, and now, unfortunately, they've done it with some guns. But have they done it with gel blasters? If not, why is that in here?

This goes to show that this has obviously been a laundry list of things that certain people have wanted to get done, and they've just chucked it in. They've just chucked it in this bill because they didn't think people would be watching. Worse, in quite a contemptible fashion, they have used a national tragedy, the worst terrorist attack on our shores ever, to pursue an unrelated agenda under the guise of trying to do something about terrorism. That's what's happening here. That's what the government has done to people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens.

The government here hasn't thought through the provisions around a national gun buyback. They're trying to force this through. It's very much putting the cart before the horse, because most states haven't even signed up to a buyback yet. There is time to put funds in place if and when that ever happens, but, by rushing this here, the government, seemingly, has not considered why ammunition wouldn't be part of that buyback, like it was in the original buyback. That's not included at all. Some simple details have been glossed over by this government.

For all these reasons, the National Party and the Liberal Party will not be voting for these laws. They will not appreciably reduce the risk of a terrorist attack happening again on our shores. Terrorists are unlikely to be the kinds of people that are going to obey the law in any event. It would be much, much more sensible for us to focus on the root cause of what's happened here, at Bondi, which is these evil ideas, the antisemitic ideas, the divisive ideas, the hateful ideas, that lead to violence. Focus on that instead of reducing the rights of other Australians who have done nothing wrong.

On the gun issue, on the issue itself, clearly what should happen is a renewed effort to clamp down on organised crime. As I mentioned before, there's a lot of focus on the fact that there are more legal firearms in Australia since Port Arthur, although I'm indebted to my colleague Senator McDonald, who has pointed out that there are actually many fewer per person. Per person, the number of firearms in this country has fallen. You don't hear that. But, for all the focus on the legal firearm market, there's almost an ignorance, an unwillingness, to look at the fact that we have enormous numbers of illegal firearms in this country. These are controlled largely by criminal gangs and organised crime, which is growing like Topsy in our country right now because we've created enormous lines of businesses for these groups through our ineptitude on tobacco policy, our pigheadedness on vaping policy and our distractions from illicit drugs and substances, which have given those organisations enormous streams of money to import all kinds of contraband into this country, including, presumably, illegal firearms out there.

This brings me to my final point. I worry a bit about rushing something like a national gun buyback. How are we going to be sure that this won't be abused as well? We have seen the Commonwealth government—not just this government—fail to run basic programs time and time again. The NDIS has become a pot of gold for people doing the wrong thing—as, seemingly, has some of the childcare funding that has massively increased recently as well. I worry here that setting up a gun buyback scheme in a rushed fashion, without considering all the details of it, could easily be an ability for people—what's stopping someone from importing a gun and then going to sell it in the buyback and making heaps of money? That did happen, apparently, in the first round of the buyback, but it could be on steroids here because we've rushed this, haven't got the details right and are still changing it within hours of this bill passing this evening. That's why we should reject this bill.

We should, if we have to, support my colleague Senator McKenzie's amendment to push this to a Senate inquiry, consider it more detail and get the details right. But, right here, right now—tonight—this is not going to reduce the risk of another terrorist attack. It's only going to take away rights from Australians, and for that reason it should be voted down.

To every law-abiding firearm owner and to every Australian watching what is happening right now: One Nation's position on this legislation, on this policy issue, is very straightforward. One Nation supports law-abiding gun owners. One Nation believes we should be punishing extremists and not punishing law-abiding gun owners. The Albanese Labor government has dumped on us this major gun reform package, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and they are expecting everyone to simply accept this while ignoring the normal processes of scrutiny.

The truth is the people who will be affected by this first will not be terrorists or criminals; it will be you. It will be farmers. It will be regional Australians. It will be pest controllers. It will be sporting shooters. It'll be collectors. It will be licence holders—law-abiding citizens who have never committed a crime in their lives and who would never commit a crime. They will be the ones who will be punished. These are the people that do the training. They keep their firearms secure, they comply with inspections and they live by the law. To those people: know that you are not the problem and we have your back.

One Nation knows that criminals do not line up for gun buybacks. Criminals do not register illegal weapons. Criminals do not care about new paperwork, new rules or new announcements. They operate in the shadows, through trafficking, importation and organised crime, and they will keep doing it while the government is focused on quick headlines instead of criminals. I'll say it again. One Nation's position is straightforward. We support law-abiding gun owners. One Nation believes we need to punish extremists, not shooters. We need to punish the root cause of the things that happened in Bondi—radical Islamic extremism—not law-abiding Australians who have never committed a crime in their life.

If the Albanese Labor government is genuinely concerned about public safety, it needs to be honest about this. It needs to be honest about what is driving the violence that we saw in Bondi and this extremism. We should be confronting it directly. We should not be dodging it with vague language and political slogans. Unfortunately, what we've seen is Labor's instinct has been to punish people who are already doing the right thing—law-abiding Australians who have never committed and never would commit a crime in their life.

The other issue here is One Nation is not prepared to sign you up for a blank cheque. We actually don't know how much this is going to cost. We know that a lot of the states are rejecting this proposal. We know that Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania are not on board with this.

Here is what One Nation wants instead: we want policies that actually target criminals and protect the public. That is how you improve safety, not by scapegoating farmers and licence holders, not by punishing law-abiding Australians and not by pretending criminals and terrorists will comply with a gun buyback. Again, to the law-abiding firearm community: One Nation hears you, and we will stand with you. And to the wider public: do not be fooled by this farce. Do not be fooled, because real safety comes from confronting the cause of the threats and enforcing laws against criminals, not cracking down on the people who are already abiding by the law. One Nation opposes this buyback, and we will keep fighting for common sense and fairness. We will keep standing with farmers, regional Australians, pest controllers, sporting shooters and collectors. We are not about to support a policy where we don't know how many billions it's going to cost—and it's in the billions. How many regional hospitals could we be funding?

Pursuant to the order agreed to yesterday, the time allotted for debate on this bill has expired. I will now put the question before the chair, and then put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill. The question before the chair relates to the second reading amendment, on sheet 3607, moved by Senator McKenzie. The question is that the amendment be agreed to.

I will now deal with the second reading amendment circulated by Senator Thorpe.

Senator Thorpe's circulated amendments—

SHEET 3614

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) supports National Cabinet's agreement of 6 December 2023 to deliver the outstanding reform arising from the 1996 Port Arthur massacre of the establishment of a National Firearms Register;

(b) notes that:

(i) stolen licensed firearms are a primary driver of the illegal firearms market in Australia, with theft of legally owned guns being the single largest source of illegal firearms, averaging approximately 2000 firearms per year, or one every four hours,

(ii) due to inadequate monitoring and inconsistent reporting requirements across States and Territories, significant data gaps remain regarding the sources of illegal firearms, including potential diversion from law enforcement, private security, correctional services and military armouries,

(iii) including firearms held by law enforcement, private security, correctional services and the military in a national firearms monitoring framework, including full life cycle management covering procurement, expenditure, storage, transfer, loss, theft and disposal, would enable consistent data collection, improved tracing and stronger accountability, and

(iv) monitoring and oversight of these firearms should occur through an appropriate mechanism; and

(c) calls on the Government to:

(i) subject the firearms holdings and armouries of law enforcement agencies, security providers, correctional services and the Australian Defence Force to comprehensive, nationally consistent monitoring, oversight and reporting frameworks,

(ii) establish an appropriate oversight mechanism, including incorporation within the National Firearms Register, a dedicated firearms oversight register, or allocating responsibility for national firearms data integrity, analysis and reporting to an independent statutory body such as the Productivity Commission, and

(iii) publish data, updated in real time where practicable and subject to appropriate safeguards, to support transparency, public confidence and evidence-based policy".

Question negatived.

by leave—President, I record the Greens's support for that second reading rather than calling for a division.

I will now deal with the second reading amendment circulated by Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman and Tyrrell. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3611 be agreed to.

Senator David Pocock's, Senator Lambie's, Senator Payman's and Senator Tyrrell's circulated amendment

At the end of the motion, add "but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) this bill includes complex legislative changes that make significant amendments to the import, control, management and possession of firearms, across a variety of legislation,

(ii) independent senators have had the final text of the bill for less than 24 hours,

(iii) the Government only undertook very limited consultation on the exposure draft legislation, only provided three days for public submissions on the bill and a week for parliamentary consideration and public consultation,

(iv) time for parliamentary debate of this bill has been significantly curtailed with many senators not afforded an opportunity to speak on or ask questions about the bill on behalf of their communities,

(v) concerns have been expressed about potential unintended consequences of the bill, a lack of procedural fairness in elements of the bill and uncertainty around definitions such as 'firearms and explosives manufacture material', and

(vi) firearms reform can and should also help address the scourge of domestic violence; and

(b) calls on the Government to ensure that the buyback schemes under this bill occur at a rate of fair market value, include ammunition, and include compensation for impacted businesses".

I will now deal with the Committee of the Whole amendments, starting with the amendments circulated by the Nationals. The first question is that subsections 54E(3) and (4) and subsections 54J(4) and (5) in item 24, division 1 of part 5, and part 6 of schedule 2 stand as printed.

National Party of Australia's circulated amendment s

SHEET 3595

(1) Schedule 2, Division 1, page 62 (line 2) to page 64 (line 22), to be opposed.

_____

SHEET 3597

(2) Schedule 2, Part 6, page 78 (line 1) to page 79 (line 21), to be opposed.

_____

SHEET 3602

(2) Schedule 2, item 24, page 24 (lines 21 to 32), subsections 54E(3) and (4) to be opposed.

(5) Schedule 2, item 24, page 28 (lines 17 to 28), subsections 54J(4) and (5) to be opposed.

The question now is that the remaining amendments on sheets 3597 and sheet 3602 and the amendments on sheets 3593, 3594, 3601 and 3603 be agreed to.

National Party of Australia's circulated amendments—

SHEET 3597

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 3), omit "Parts 1 to 6", substitute "Parts 1 to 5".

_____

SHEET 3602

(1) Schedule 2, item 24, page 23 (line 34), omit "subsections (3) to (5) (about exceptions to subsection (1))", substitute "subsection (5) (about an exception to subsection (1))".

(3) Schedule 2, item 24, page 28 (line 7), omit "Note 1", substitute "Note".

(4) Schedule 2, item 24, page 28 (line 10), omit note 2.

_____

SHEET 3593

(1) Schedule 2, item 3, page 8 (lines 6 and 7), after "to the extent that", insert "subitem (3) applies to the compensation and".

(2) Schedule 2, item 3, page 8 (after line 10), after paragraph (1)(a), insert:

(aa) providing for the payment of compensation that:

(i) is at a fair market value for all property surrendered by a person in accordance with the scheme, including for firearms, firearm parts, firearm accessories, ammunition, ammunition components and other equipment; and

(ii) covers administrative costs associated with the surrender of that property, including warehousing and distribution costs; and

(iii) extends to meeting claims made by an entity during the buyback period for the State for loss of business and hardship, including loss associated with the operation of a business becoming untenable or unviable as a result of this Act or the national firearms program; and

(3) Schedule 2, item 3, page 8 (after line 14), at the end of the item, add:

(3) This subitem applies to compensation paid by a State only to the extent that the compensation is paid consistently with a scheme of the State covered by paragraphs (1)(a) to (b).

_____

SHEET 3594

(1) Schedule 2, item 3, page 8 (after line 14), at the end of the item, add:

Participation notices

(4) Despite subitem (2), the AFP Minister may only approve a compensation scheme set up by a State if the State has given the AFP Minister, before the end of 28 February 2026, written notice (a participation notice) of the State's commitment to participate in the national firearms program.

(5) The participation notice must:

(a) be in a form approved by the AFP Minister and be accompanied by any information required by the form; and

(b) set out details of:

(i) the kinds of firearms and other property to be surrendered under the scheme or prohibited by the State in accordance with the national firearms program; and

(ii) the State's measure for reducing the number of firearms in the community, including any restrictions on the number of firearms that may be owned by individuals.

(6) The AFP Minister must make the participation notice publicly available by publishing the notice, before the end of 2 March 2026, on the Australian Federal Police website and in the Gazette.

(7) The AFP Minister may approve a form for the purposes of paragraph (5)(a).

_____

SHEET 3601

(1) Schedule 2, item 212, page 83 (after line 31), after subsection 474.45J(1), insert:

Licenced owners

(1A) Subsection 474.45G(1) or 474.45H(1) does not apply to conduct engaged in by a person in relation to material if:

(a) the person holds a firearms licence that is in force under a law of a State or Territory; and

(b) the material is:

(i) information on reloading ammunition; or

(ii) a firearms manual for a firearm the person lawfully owns; and

(c) the conduct is in connection with the person accessing the material.

Note: A defendant bears an evidential burden in relation to the matters in this subsection (see subsection 13.3(3)).

_____

SHEET 3603

(1) Schedule 2, Division 4 of Part 5, page 68 (after line 26), at the end of the Division, add:

171A Operation of amendments

(1) This item is for the avoidance of doubt.

(2) The amendments of the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956 made by this Division do not have the effect of prohibiting without exception the importation of category H articles.

Note: For example, in the case of an article covered by item 9 of the table in Part 2 of Schedule 6 to those Regulations, the article may be imported if the importation complies with the sports shooter test, the international sports shooter test, or any one other test mentioned in column 3 of that item.

by leave—President, I just want to note my opposition to 3594, 3597 and 3602.

I will now deal with the amendments circulated by Senator Thorpe. The question is that the amendments on sheet 3592 and 3606 be agreed to.

Senator Thorpe's circulated amendments—

SHEET 3592

(1) Schedule 2, page 77 (after line 10), after Division 8, insert:

Division 8A — Jacketed hollow point ammunition

Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956

202A After regulation 4F

Insert:

4FA Importation of jacketed hollow point ammunition

(1) The importation of jacketed hollow point ammunition is prohibited unless the importation passes the specified person test set out in item 2 of Part 1 of Schedule 6.

(2) To avoid doubt, this regulation applies despite regulation 4F.

(3) In this regulation:

jacketed hollow point ammunition means ammunition that is or involves a bullet that expands or flatten easily in the human body, including a bullet with a hard envelope that does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions.

_____

SHEET 3606

(1) Schedule 1, page 4 (after line 7), after item 4, insert:

4A After subregulation 4F(3A)

Insert:

(3B) The Minister must, as soon as practicable after the end of each quarter, cause to be prepared a written report on the importation by a law enforcement agency during the quarter of a firearm, a firearm accessory, a firearm part, a firearm magazine, ammunition, a component of ammunition or an imitation of an article to which an item in Part 2 of Schedule 6 applies.

(3C) A report under subregulation (3B) must include the following in relation to each article imported:

(a) the name and type of the article;

(b) the name of the law enforcement agency that imported the article;

(c) the date on which the article was imported.

(3D) The Minister must table a copy of a report under subregulation (3B) in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the report is given to the Minister.

4B Subregulation 4F(4)

Insert:

law enforcement agency means:

(a) the Australian Federal Police; or

(b) the Police Force of a State or Territory.

quarter means a period of 3 months ending on 31 March, 30 June, 30 September or 31 December.

Question negatived.

I will now deal with the amendments circulated by Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman, Thorpe and Tyrrell. The question is that the amendments on sheet 3609 be agreed to.

Senator David Pocock 's , Senator Lambie 's , Senator Payman 's , Senator Thorpe 's and Senator Tyrrell 's circulated amendments—

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 1), omit "Sections 1 to 3", substitute "Sections 1 to 4".

(2) Page 2 (after line 19), after clause 3, insert:

4 Review of operation of Act

(1) The Minister must cause an independent review to be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by this Act.

(2) Without limiting the matters that may be considered when conducting the review, the review must consider the operation and appropriateness of the mandatory minimum sentences in table items 1AA, 1A and 1B in the table in section 16AAA of the Crimes Act 1914 for offences against the following provisions in the Criminal Code Act 1995:

(a) subsection 80.2BE(1) or (2) (advocating force or violence through causing damage to property);

(b) subsection 80.2H(1) (public display of prohibited Nazi symbols or giving Nazi salute);

(c) subsection 80.2HA(1) (public display of prohibited terrorist organisation symbols).

Consultation requirement

(3) The review must provide for public consultation, including providing for public submissions over a period of at least 2 calendar months.

Expert panel conducting the review

(4) The review must be conducted by an expert panel comprised of 3 members appointed by the Minister.

(5) The Minister must ensure that the members of the expert panel collectively possess experience or knowledge in all of the following fields:

(a) firearms regulation and law enforcement practice;

(b) policing;

(c) criminology;

(d) national security;

(e) intelligence;

(f) agriculture;

(g) invasive species management;

(h) cybersecurity;

(i) administrative law.

(6) A member of the expert panel must not be any of the following:

(a) a person engaged under the Public Service Act 1999;

(b) a serving member of the Australian Defence Force, the Australia Federal Police or an Australian intelligence agency;

(c) a current or former member of the Parliament, or a current or former member of a Parliament of State or Territory;

(d) any other person who has a material conflict of interest in relation to this Act.

Timing of review

(7) The review must commence no later than 2 years after the day this section commences.

(8) The expert panel must complete the review before the end of the period of 12 months beginning on the day the review commences.

Minister to be given report of review

(9) The expert panel must give the Minister a written report of the review as soon as practicable after the review is completed.

Minister to table report of review

(10) The Minister must cause a copy of the report of the review to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 10 sitting days of that House after the Minister receives the report.

Government response to recommendations

(11) If the report sets out one or more recommendations to the Commonwealth Government:

(a) as soon as practicable after receiving the report, the Minister must cause a statement setting out the Commonwealth Government's response to each of the recommendations to be prepared; and

(b) within 6 months after the day the report is first tabled in a House of the Parliament, the Minister must table a copy of the statement in each House of the Parliament.

The question is that the amendment to the motion that the report from the committee be adopted be agreed to.

S enator David Pocock 's , Senator Lambie 's , Senator Payman 's , Senator T horpe 's and Senator Tyrrell 's circulated amendment—

At the end of the motion, add "and the provisions of the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 March 2026".

The question now is that the remaining stages of the bill be agreed to and the bill be now passed.

I move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill now be read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Bondi attack and antisemitism

14 December 2025 will be marked in history as one of Australia's most horrific and most tragic.

Fifteen innocent lives were lost, many more injured, and a national conscience was left forever scarred.

This Thursday, 22 January, will be observed as a National Day of Mourning.

Flags will fly at half-mast, and Australians will pause to honour the victims and reflect on the courage and compassion shown in the face of unimaginable horror.

Australia's many diverse communities are connected through generations by an invisible string that binds them to the culture, practices and beliefs of those who came before them. This vein of history brings richness and a sense of identity but, when confronted with hate, can be a source of trauma and pain of memory.

Australia is proudly home to a significant population of Holocaust survivors.

Many of those attending the Chanukah event survived, or were descendants of those who survived, that darkest period of modern history.

They stood side by side with others who had fled persecution.

They came to Australia seeking safety, a refuge from this most insidious hatred.

Seeking a community that saw their Jewish heritage as a contributor to the richness of the Australian character.

That sense of safety has been shattered.

As a community, as Australians, it is our responsibility to rebuild that trust.

Violent extremism starts with words

The violent terrorist attack we saw in Bondi did not occur spontaneously.

Violent extremism starts with words.

Words of hate.

Spread throughout the community by pernicious individuals and organisations.

This hatred is corrosive to a multicultural democratic society.

This Bill targets those that support violence, in particular violence targeted at a person because of their immutable attributes.

This conduct is criminal, but more than that, it is the seed of extremism.

The roots of terrorism.

It must be stamped out with the full force of the law.

Organisations that proffer these hateful ideologies must be outlawed and their composite members held accountable. Indeed, some of the cowards who spread hate as part of one such group have announced they will be disbanding in anticipation of the effectiveness of these laws.

Those that seek to exploit their position of trust, or radicalise our youth, must be met with serious penalties.

Visitors to our country who espouse these hateful views will be removed.

We must take our responsibility as a Parliament to stamp out hate incredibly seriously.

Government response

The Government has announced a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion to examine the roots of hatred and division, and to strengthen the bonds that hold our society together.

But we cannot wait for its findings to act. Waiting a year gives in to the very people this Bill seeks to target—and leaves the safety of Australians exposed.

Today, the Government introduces the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026—a legislative package designed to combat hate, dismantle extremist networks and prevent violence before it occurs.

Criminal amendments

This Bill will increase penalties for those advocating or threatening violence against groups because of their protected attributes.

It will also ensure even greater penalties are available for those that exploit their position of trust as a religious official or other leader to spread violent extremism, or seek to radicalise children.

The Bill will introduce an aggravated sentencing factor for Commonwealth offences motivated by hatred based on race or national or ethnic origin.

Courts will be required to consider hate motivation when sentencing, ensuring any sentence acknowledges the additional harm to society caused.

The Bill will introduce a new framework to allow certain organisations to be listed as prohibited hate groups where they engage in hate crimes, or support or advocate the commission of these offences.

These groups which seek to spread hate, fuel division, and stoke violence, have avoided criminality for too long. They have no place in our society and this Bill will provide the Government with a mechanism to outlaw them, and to criminalise their activities.

In relation to the definition of a hate crime at subsection (5), the Government confirms that the provision is directed at serious conduct or the threat of serious conduct of a criminal nature.

As noted at paragraph 97 of the Explanatory Memorandum, we are not capturing conduct, or the threat of conduct, that includes being subjected to any force or impact that is within the limits of what is acceptable in everyday social interaction or to life in the community. It must be serious harm to a criminal standard under the current law.

For the avoidance of doubt, this provision does not trespass into legitimate free speech, including the implied freedom of political communication. It does not seek to capture lawful debate, robust criticism, religious discussion, or genuine political advocacy. And it does not target legitimate comedy, satire, or artistic expression.

What it does target is serious conduct of a serious nature, whether occurring in Australia or overseas, where the Director-General of ASIO must be satisfied the conduct would, or is likely to, increase the risk of politically motivated violence or promote communal violence. That threshold is deliberately high. It ensures the definition is tied to security risk and public safety, not mere commentary, and not mere offence.

The line is drawn where it should be drawn: at serious harm—harm of a kind that meets a criminal standard threshold. Harm by an organisation that impacts national security—that is Director General of Security's concern. That is the test. Not discomfort. Not disagreement. Not merely "I didn't like what was said.

Two years ago, this Government introduced offences for the public display of Nazi and terrorist organisation symbols. These symbols are representative of, and are used to convey, ideologies of hatred, violence and racism which are incompatible with Australian values.

This Bill will strengthen these offences and associated police powers to ensure greater operational effectiveness, including expanding the offences to capture symbols of any prohibited hate groups that are listed under the new framework.

Migration amendments

The Australian Government remains committed to protecting the community from the risk of harm posed by non-citizens who engage in hate motivated conduct or offences relating to the spread of hatred and extremism.

The current character framework is a key component of Australia's migration system, protecting the community from the risks posed by non-citizens with criminal histories or criminal intent, as well as non-citizens who may vilify a segment of the Australian community, incite discord or otherwise threaten public health, safety or good order.

The Bill will strengthen the legislative framework in the Migration Act by introducing specific grounds to enable the refusal or cancellation of a visa, if a non-citizen:

These new grounds will expressly capture conduct that spreads hatred and extremism, including in circumstances where a hate crime may have been committed, but there has been no criminal justice outcome.

The Bill will also amend the Migration Regulations so that if a non-citizen is refused a visa on character grounds, they are subject to the same permanent exclusion from Australia that currently applies when a visa is cancelled on character grounds.

Together these amendments will strengthen the character framework and ensure that when a non-citizen is involved in spreading hatred and division, their visa may be refused or cancelled.

Legislation alone cannot combat hate

This Bill did not come together on its own. To that end, I acknowledge the constructive engagement of the Jewish community, legal representatives, members of civil society and other advocates who helped shape the development of this Bill. Your feedback has been thoughtful and considered.

I also acknowledge the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for its scrutiny of the Exposure Draft that led to this Bill, and recognise the tireless work of the secretariat who supported the inquiry.

Finally, I acknowledge the work of the Attorney-General's Department, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel who crafted this Bill with expertise and care.

This Bill should not be a moment for division or political point scoring.

This is a moment for national unity.

The colour of someone's skin or the God they pray to is not determinative of their worth.

Legislation alone cannot rid prejudice from people's minds.

Hate spreads, it fosters, it takes root, every time it is not called out.

It is our collective responsibility to stamp out this hatred out wherever we see it.

Our nation is strongest when we choose respect over division, and we must continue to invest in a community where everyone belongs. Where everybody can thrive.

The passage of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill will be a decisive step forward in achieving this.

It will send a loud and unequivocal message to all corners of this country that we must stand united in the face of racial hatred.

But more importantly, passage of this Bill will send a message that light will prosper over darkness.

The passage of this Bill will give us hope that Australia will continue to be a place of tolerance and that our diversity can be displayed with pride.

I commend the Bill to this chamber.

What a sorry road we've travelled as a country to this point in time. By that, I refer to the years leading up to the massacre at Bondi on 14 December last year, an event we've talked about in this place in an appropriately respectful way, both in our condolence motion yesterday and, of course, in relation to the legislation that has just passed the House in the form of the firearms laws.

The event on 14 December was not a standalone event. It didn't just happen in isolation. The sorry road this nation has traversed I referred to are the years of antisemitic behaviour that have been allowed to flourish in this country unabated, unchecked and unchallenged, and which resulted in those events in Bondi just over a month ago—events which have changed this nation forever, deeply wounding the Jewish community in a way many of us can't even begin to imagine.

Of course, as a starting point, it's important to remember not only that this is the worst terror event that has happened on Australian soil in our history but that, of course, it was one motivated by hate, targeted at a group of people defined by who they are—the Jewish community. It was a targeted event relating to Jews celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah, the festival of light, that so many people referred to in their condolence speeches yesterday.

As I said before, what led to those events on 14 December was more than two years of failure to stand up against, to stamp out and to challenge the source of antisemitism which has been ravaging our world. We only have to turn our minds back to 7 October 2023, those terrible events, the atrocity in Israel committed by Hamas—again, targeting Jewish people in an act of pure antisemitism where so many people lost their lives. It was the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Two days later on 9 October, we saw those terrible, despicable events on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, where we had individuals revelling in what had occurred in Israel—the deaths of so many innocent people. They were events that went unchallenged, unchecked and unabated and were allowed to occur.

Over the next two years, 2023 and 2024, we saw countless events and incidents of the targeting of Jewish businesses, Jewish schools and Jewish daycare centres. Of course, now we know that, in unbelievable scenes, we have schools and daycare centres with sentries, guards, at their doors to protect the young people inside, who are children—people who are not going to cause harm to anyone else but, sadly, who are a target of harm in our community. In the years 2024 and 2025, there were those despicable attacks on synagogues, places of worship—firebombings while people were inside, graffiti and the like. These sorts of things are not what mark our country or what make it great; these are things that lead to the events we saw occur in Bondi at the end of last year. They were allowed to happen—unchecked, unchallenged, unabated—and here we are today, after years of sad activity which culminated in those terrible events in Bondi.

Inaction by government, even as we reached the crescendo of the antisemitism crisis that's ravaged our country, is what has fed this beast and kept it going. From the very beginning, there's been a failure of response. There has been no response with resolve, no response with strength and nothing in the way of a clear response to the actual events that led to this. There was no attempt by the government to even send a message to those who would perpetrate harm and who would direct hate at Jewish Australians. There was no attempt to show what was right and what was wrong. On so many occasions over the last two years, there was no attempt to take decisive action when it counted. Indeed, even after Bondi, the response was wanting. The initial response was, of course, in relation to firearms laws. To an event driven by hate, driven by ideology and with Islamic extremism at its heart, the response was about gun laws. Can I say that, while reforms to gun laws may well be important, they were not going to be the fix to this issue. That is something that, thankfully, the government heard and altered course on. There were the ignored calls for a royal commission from family members of the victims, Jewish community leaders and members of the entire parliament from across the political spectrum that were finally heeded. Then there was a failure to work across communities and the spectrum of parliamentary parties on the laws.

We had this truncated and rushed process relating to legislation—done the wrong way around. The consultation was not done at the beginning; it was done at the end. Interaction with other members of parliament to gain insights on what might be possible and what should be included in the laws was done at the eleventh hour, after laws had been tabled. We ended up with a mashed-together, hastily-put-together set of laws including gun reforms, which are very distinct from, as per Labor's first attempt, laws to govern speech, laws to deal with hate groups and laws to deal with hate symbols. All of it was a complete hotchpotch, designed in secret with no input, with the Prime Minister and this government saying: 'Take it or leave it. You've got a week to read the nearly 500 pages of documentation, and we're going to pass it.' Here we are, that one week on, having dealt with this.

I give credit to the government for having come back here quickly. That was something we were all calling for—urgent action. But, in addition to urgent action being taken and the urgent recall of parliament, we wanted laws that actually hit the mark and that passed muster, and, frankly, they were fails. What we're doing now, at the eleventh hour, is trying to fix this government's mess—the mess and the attempt to legislate that they got so terribly wrong.

I want to acknowledge the thousands of emails that I and, I know, many colleagues have received over the course of the last few days from members of our community who are very worried about the reach, the scope and the extent of the laws we are debating here today. Their concerns were not unfounded. Their concerns have not been ignored either, I should say. We've heard what's been said, and, as opposition, we have acted.

Thankfully, of course, Labor's hate speech laws, which were part of this, the racial vilification laws, were dumped. They were an appalling approach for how to respond to this issue. The unintended consequences of those laws as drafted, with seven days to try and understand what these laws would do and what impact they would have on people's capacity to exercise that loved element of our society, freedom of speech, were impossible to determine. Officials at the committee inquiry into this, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry, could not give clarity around what the impact of those laws would be. So they've been dumped. They're gone. They're not part of this, and that is, thankfully, a very good outcome. We could never support laws of that nature with such a wide scope.

What's left in the laws? There is the new aggravated offence for religious or spiritual leaders who advocate or threaten violence. The opposition has been able to agree with government on some changes to what was originally proposed, and that included the tightening up of the definitions of who would be included as a religious official or a spiritual leader. This is to end doubt and to ensure that there is a clear cut-out for who would be impacted by this. The application and operation of those laws would be reviewed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security after two years.

It is important to point out that these laws don't create a new penalty. The existing criminal code provisions apply to people as they did before these laws passed. It is not catching new people out. It is not applying new laws to people that didn't apply yesterday. If people want to threaten violence and use their position as a religious leader to do so, they will have an increased penalty. That's what these provisions do. I think they're sensible, and, sadly, some of the misinformation out there around what these provisions do has confused a lot of people. This is not about restricting freedoms or unduly penalising people. This is about dealing with people who use their position as a religious leader, as we've seen with some of the hate preachers, to incite violence in the way that they have.

It increases penalties for using a postal or similar service to menace or harass, increasing that penalty from two to five years. It introduces aggravated grooming offences for adults radicalising or recruiting children. Again, I think that's a very sound measure to have in place. There is a sentencing aggravating factor for hate motivated offending. It strengthens the hate symbol offences that we passed at the beginning of last year, lowering the fault element to recklessness, and it extends the bans to symbols of prohibited hate groups—which I'll talk about in a moment. It gives police stronger powers to remove and seize symbols, and, again, the opposition sought a two-year review of these provisions because altering fault elements, lowering thresholds and reversing evidentiary burdens is a significant measure. Again, after a period of operation, we want to make sure this is operating properly and not unduly impacting on people in a way it should not.

The one that has of course garnered most interest is the one relating to the establishment of a hate group listing regime. There are several elements to this which I think are important to point out in the limited time available to me. So there is no capacity for misunderstanding, we have sought to update the definition of a hate crime that would constitute an offence against a provision of the law under the Commonwealth Criminal Code and, related to that, a number of state and territory provisions. We have insisted that there is a consultation with the Leader of the Opposition and that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Security and Intelligence review this provision after two years. That is on top of the fact that the director-general of intelligence has to make a recommendation to the minister who then can only list a hate group by way of a legislative instrument which is disallowable. The thresholds in law are incredibly high—and for the most serious of offences—for a hate group to meet them and be listed. This is not about targeting pro-life groups. This is not about targeting people who might be seeking to advocate for a particular cause. This is about people who are targeting a group identified by ethnic, national or racial origin and are seeking to harm them in a violent way as stepped out under the Criminal Code. There is to be no mistake about that.

Of course, there are other provisions around the immigration laws and changes to the Migration Act around refusing visas to those who do spread hatred and extremism in our country, including involvement in a hate crime, hateful public statements or links to terrorist and prohibited hate groups. Can I tell you, that is an important part of these laws. We have dealt with the concerns that have been raised through the information that I have offered to the Senate tonight—by making amendments, by tightening definitions and by putting in place review mechanisms to ensure that we minimise risk and that this does not unintentionally catch groups of Australians who should not be caught. This is about dealing with those people in our community who hate Australia, who hate the way our country operates.

If you don't vote for these laws, the net effect is that we will be left with a regime where groups like Hizb ut-Tarir will be able to continue to operate in this country. Let me remind you that Hizb ut-Tarir would not be listed as a prohibited hate group if these laws don't succeed through the parliament. In 2017, a video was uploaded to Facebook by Hizb ut-Tarir. It involved two panellists who stated that men are permitted to hit women, preferably with a scarf or a piece of fabric or a short stick. One panellist refers to being hit by a man as a beautiful blessing. This group also went on to talk about women being segregated and argued for women being seated in the back of a room in public meetings. This is something journalist Alison Bevege successfully sued Hizb ut-Tarir for—for segregating her at a meeting. This group defended a man in his 20s who tried to marry a 12-year-old girl in 2014. This is a group that wants to take down Western norms. They're a group that spreads hate. They're a group that is linked to insidious individuals overseas. If we don't want to have a regime in place to deal with groups like this who have no place in our society, then voting against these laws is what you should do.

Voting against these laws enables people who come here to spread hate to stay here on a visa. We can't deal with them. They can come in. We can't stop them. That's why these laws are important. It's important to take back control of this situation so we can actually deal with the hate these people have brought here.

I rise today in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. On 14 December last year, Australians experienced the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil at Bondi Beach. Fifteen people were murdered by terrorists with hate in their minds and guns in their hands. The impact of that day will stay with us for a very, very long time.

But it must also be a turning point. This attack did not happen in isolation. Australia has witnessed an alarming rise in antisemitism, hatred and extremism in recent years. We have seen this at Bondi and at countless attacks on Jewish institutions, including attacks on synagogues in my home state of Victoria and a neo-Nazi rally in front of the New South Wales parliament.

This bill is focused on a practical package of reforms. It is designed to stop the spread of hatred, disrupt extremist networks and protect social cohesion in our communities. Firstly, the bill will introduce new aggravated offences to ensure that very serious penalties apply to those in positions of influence and authority who commit hate crimes. What leaders say matters. When religious leaders, preachers or other figures of influence use their authority to encourage violence against protected groups, the harm is profound. These individuals, who are trusted by others, and their words carry weight. That's why this bill introduces aggravated offences that specifically apply to offenders who seek to radicalise children. This bill sends a clear message: exploiting young people to spread violent ideologies will be punished severely.

Secondly, this bill seeks to increase penalties for hate crime offences by increasing the maximum penalty of imprisonment for base offences from five years to seven years and from seven years to 10 years for offences which involve an added threat to the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.

Thirdly, the bill requires courts to treat radical or ethnic hatred as an aggravating factor for Commonwealth crimes. This means, if the motivation for the hatred of a group or a member of a group is based on race or ethnic origin, courts must consider that when deciding the sentence.

Fourthly, the bill will create new rules in the Criminal Code that allow certain organisations to be officially listed as banned hate groups. Once an organisation is listed, it will be a crime to run it, belong to it, recruit people to it, raise or receive money for it, support it in any way or take part in training connected to it.

Organised hate groups are dangerous because they recruit, fundraise, train and spread propaganda. Left unchecked, they create an environment where violence festers and is normalised. This bill gives the government the ability to disrupt these groups before they cause further harm. The bill will also strengthen and expand the prohibited hate symbols offences in the Criminal Code to further protect Australians from the significant harm caused by the public display of these symbols.

Finally, this bill will strengthen Australia's migration laws to better protect the Australian community from noncitizens suspected of engaging in hate motivated conduct or extremism. This bill enables a proportionate and targeted response to hate motivated conduct and extremism to safeguard our national security and social cohesion in this country.

There are a number of reasons that I support this bill. But I want to take a moment to also reflect on the missed opportunity that we have had this week, here in parliament—a moment in time that we've had to actually do something that'll protect so many Australians—relating to the antivilification measures that were contained in previous iterations of this bill that were removed.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack at Bondi, the coalition argued that there needed to be stronger laws to combat antisemitism, and we agreed. There should absolutely be stronger laws. We responded with a proposed law that included an antivilification measure which would've criminalised serious forms of antisemitic rhetoric and the promotion of racial supremacy.

I remind those opposite that that measure that was in the bill was recommended by the special envoy for antisemitism, Jillian Segal, and countless leaders within the Jewish community. The coalition cannot claim to stand with the Jewish community on one hand and on the other hand refuse to support laws specifically designed to protect the Jewish community from racial vilification. You cannot do that; it is absolute hypocrisy to see that. But that hypocrisy is not new from the opposition.

We saw the coalition call for urgent action, saying, 'Bring back parliament the week of Christmas,' and then, when we called back parliament in January, apparently we're rushing. We're rushing when we take a couple of weeks to get those laws right. The coalition are calling for the full implementation of Jillian Segal's report, but, when they have the opportunity to actually support it, there are more backflips over there than at the Olympics. The absolute hypocrisy from those opposite is incredible. Why not give Jewish Australians and so many other Australians extra protections?

The coalition owes all Jewish Australians an explanation as to why it called so strongly for the full support, for the full implementation, of Jillian Segal's report and then backflipped like nobody's business when it had the opportunity to actually do something that was going to actually protect them. It's absolute weakness from Sussan Ley—absolute weakness.

Words absolutely matter. Hateful words about someone's race don't just wound an individual; they normalise hatred towards an entire community. I don't know where the coalition think hatred starts. It feels like they think it starts just at the part where you get hatred that turns into violence. But there are a whole bunch of things that happen that lead to somebody ending up being violent, with hate in their hearts, towards another group. It starts with the small things people say to vilify other groups that really normalise that hatred towards another group, and it goes unchecked.

Vilification laws could actually hold some people accountable for the things that they say that normalise that hatred and targeted attacks towards other groups. But you didn't want to do that. You didn't want to do that because you are seemingly okay with the vilification of groups, the damaging attacks on groups of people in Australia—other Australians. As long as it doesn't lead to violence, go for your life. Jewish Australians, like all Australians, deserve to be safe, feel safe and be respected in this country. Antivilification laws would have helped achieve that objective. The Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, and the coalition failed all Australians when you failed to rise to the occasion. Words absolutely matter, but so does action. You had the opportunity to rise to the occasion and you failed. You failed all Australians this week, especially those of us who belong to communities that are targeted and attacked all the time, and we won't forget.

What happened at Bondi Beach on 14 December last year was an appalling and horrific act of hate and violence that has shattered our Sydney community and the country and no-one more than the Jewish community. We continue to stand in solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters in their grief. Yesterday, in this chamber, we were able to pay our respects and condolences to those whose lives were taken. From today our job as public representatives is to do everything in our power to stop this kind of violence from ever happening again.

The Greens have long pushed for strong gun laws. This is an evidence-based, tried and tested response that reduces gun violence. We were pleased and proud to support the gun reforms that passed today, and we made them even stronger. We will always work to get dangerous weapons off our streets. I have never been silent on what needs to be done to combat hate, racism and extremism. I've spent my political life focused on antiracism and on fighting extremism and the far right, but this bill is not the way to do it. This bill is not a responsible response. The sham process that the government has undertaken on this bill is as appalling as the bill itself. That there wasn't even a pretence of consultation for some of the most extreme changes to our criminal laws shows just how little the government thinks of the community.

From the beginning the draft bill was quickly exposed to be deeply flawed, divisive and dangerous. It was clear that these laws were designed to protect some and not others. With this bill the Albanese government has thrown Muslims and migrants under the bus. After Labor was forced to back down on the dangerous vilification section of this omnibus bill, they made a terrible, last-minute deal with the coalition to make other parts of this awful, rushed bill even more divisive and more dangerous. Labor did a deal with the coalition—the coalition who want the right to be bigots. This bill will have a chilling and draconian effect on political debate, on protest, on civil rights and on people speaking up against human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel or by any other nation-state. This is not social cohesion. This is not unity. This is not equality. This is deeply disappointing but not surprising, and this is not the first time that Labor has betrayed communities.

Over the past month, the Bondi tragedy has been politicised by large sections of the media and politicians. The anger, frustration and sadness at the weaponisation of this attack have been reiterated to me countless times by many of my Jewish friends. In what should have been a time for solidarity and kindness, this horrific tragedy was seized upon to clamp down on, demonise and silence a movement of peace and justice. The vile murderers who perpetrated the attack had no connection to Palestine, were not Palestinian and had no link that we know of to the pro-Palestine movement, but politicians and the media saw the perverse opportunity to remove a thorn from their side. There seems to be a concerted effort to force some kind of sick binary, as if one cannot both be against the terror attack at Bondi and show solidarity with Palestine. This is a disgusting lie meant to smear and silence.

Let me say this clearly and unequivocally: standing against a genocide is not antisemitic. Being outraged and protesting the killing, starvation and torture of hundreds of thousands of people is not antisemitic. Calling for this government to combat racism in all its forms is not divisive. Calling for this government to end its complicity in genocide is not divisive. However, it is divisive to pretend to care about international law while inviting the President of Israel, a state committing genocide in Gaza, to this country. It is divisive to design laws that say to all but one community, 'Your safety does not matter.' It is divisive to celebrate multiculturalism and then to introduce laws that blatantly scapegoat and demonise migrants.

We know that these laws are not being introduced in a political vacuum. They come after over two years of Israel's genocide in Gaza, after two years of draconian crackdowns on protestors. The absolute lengths that have been gone to to silence Palestinian and Palestine solidarity voices have been immense, aided by a predominantly right-wing and pro-Israel media and political class and also by the Labor government. This bill is yet another example of the Albanese government's authoritarian crackdown on supporters of Palestine. This censorship was on full display in recent weeks with the Adelaide Festival board uninviting Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers' Week, with her mere existence as a Palestinian apparently a problem for them. This was a racist decision that has resulted in the entire festival being cancelled and the board finally being dragged to issue an unconditional apology to Randa. These are, indeed, dangerous times, when there is a whole-of-government assault on basic human rights.

The laws that we are debating today are flawed, fraught and near friendless. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has said the laws will irreparably damage our democratic and legal system. The Human Rights Law Centre has stated that the bill risks crystallising and perpetuating an invidious public discourse which casts migrants and refugees as a presumptive threat to national security. The Jewish Council of Australia criticised both the process and the content of the bill, noting that the fight against antisemitism is not served by rushed legislation, which is not evidence based and which may lead to the targeting of religious and migrant communities. The Islamic Council of Victoria has stated that the bill risks exacerbating existing patterns of overpolicing, racial profiling and disproportionate public, media and police scrutiny of Muslim communities under the guise of countering hate and extremism.

Community groups and legal experts have been near unanimous in their assessment that these laws are fundamentally flawed. They provide for extraordinary ministerial powers, with limited guardrails and protection. They provide a clear pathway for governments to shut down protest and political dissent. They rely almost exclusively on criminal penalties that decades of evidence tell us do not succeed in combating hate. They unfairly and inappropriately target the Muslim community while at the same time exceptionalising one form of hate for protection and ignoring other forms of hate such as that faced by LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people and other marginalised groups. We cannot work backwards to amend a bill that is so fundamentally messed up.

One of the most concerning aspects of the bill is the proscription of hate groups—the provision by which the minister does not need to provide an individual or a group procedural fairness, dispensing with the rules of law and natural justice. Greg Barns SC spoke today, describing this provision as 'the sort of stuff you get in authoritarian countries'. The retrospectivity of this provision is terrifying—allowing the consideration of conduct that occurred before this bill will even commence, which could result in imprisonment for 15 years, when the conduct at the time wasn't even illegal. The provisions can and will easily be used to shut down protest and political activity that the government does not support. We have seen in the UK the danger and absurdity of misuse of proscription and terrorism laws, with thousands of people arrested for engaging in peaceful demonstrations against genocide and in support of Palestine action. I am yet to find a single legal expert, academic or human rights expert in favour of these provisions.

It is clear from the context of the bill, and the speeches that were made here yesterday, who these laws will protect and who they will target. Some of the things that were said in here yesterday about Muslims and Islam were shameful, disgraceful and vile. Of the faith groups consulted prior to the bill being provided publicly, it was only the Australian National Imams Council that was not shown the bill—knowing full well that Islamophobia has risen drastically in recent years, with Muslims being physically attacked, spat on and verbally abused in public with increasing frequency and ferocity. I know firsthand that this hate has reached new levels for the Muslim community. The government's briefing records very clearly show that the Muslim community has been left out in the cold—but then, we have always been the government's lowest priority.

Extremism in any form should never be tolerated. Exceptionalising one form of bigotry over another does not make anyone safer. My friend, Barbara Bloch, a member of Jews Against the Occupation 1948, told me:

I would like this parliament to mourn the loss of these lives, investigate the circumstances that allowed these heavily armed men to make their way to Bondi, undetected, and commit those acts of savagery. Then, please take a deep breath and also consider the impact of these laws not ONLY on Jewish lives but also on others—and remember that for Palestinians both in Australia and in Palestine/Israel, their struggle is also not over.

At the end of the day, we cannot criminalise our way out of hate and racism. Expanding the carceral system is not the way to keep people safe. We know this system is used against First Nations people. We know how the system has been used against activists and protesters. We know who this legislation is going to target if it is passed.

Discrimination and racism are institutional and structural in our country, and we must root them out as such. It is not just about one individual here or another one there; it is about overhauling the system and changing society. The National Anti-Racism Framework provides a road map to move towards an anti-racist society. It does so in a way that acknowledges the deep roots of structural, institutional and systemic racism, including antisemitism and all forms of racism in this country, and it rightly places truth-telling and First Nations justice at the heart of anti-racism work. This framework has been gathering dust on the government shelves for over a year now while racism has been getting worse and worse. The Prime Minister should today announce funding for the framework and begin its implementation. Combating hate and extremism must be work that is grassroots and community led, with significant commitment to and investment in community to change hearts, minds, behaviours and attitudes.

Let me say this: despite what many of those in here would have you believe, hate and extremism is not some problem that is imported here from afar. We saw that clearly and devastatingly in the Christchurch mosque massacre, where 51 Muslims were murdered in cold blood while praying by an Australian white supremacist who was radicalised right here in this country. Violence, too, is not imported from far away. Australia was built on the genocide of First Nations people, with colonialism and oppression continuing today. We also know that a woman is a murdered by an intimate partner every eight days in this country. The inclusion of migration law changes in this legislation does nothing but demonise migrants and feed far-right, white supremacist rhetoric that migrants are the problem.

The utter hypocrisy of the Labor and Liberal parties is here on full display. To pretend to celebrate multiculturalism, praise migrants when it suits them and then propose laws like this is just disgusting. The Bondi attack has devastated the nation. Our response to it should be carefully considered to show compassion, care and solidarity at a time of crisis. We should, as a society, try to achieve the structural and cultural change needed to reject hate and extremism and weed it out at its roots. This legislation definitely does not do that. Scapegoating migrants does not make anyone safer. Undermining the right to protest does not make anyone safer. Criminalising those who raise their voice against injustices is just plain wrong. Saying that one group is worthy of protection while others are not does not make anyone safer. The Greens vehemently and strongly oppose this bill.

Do you know what? This is the last thing I will say. No matter what you try and do, we will not be silent in the face of genocide. We will continue to call out hate and racism wherever we see it, and we will continue to fight against injustice, inequality and an imperial system. (Time expired)

I don't know about you, but I'm very happy to support laws that are going to give the relevant minister in this country the ability to actually chuck out violent Islamic extremists. That's actually what the laws that we are looking at tonight, in the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, will do.

But, before I address those laws, let's talk about the journey to get here. Australians should never forget what Mr Albanese tried to do after Australia's largest terrorist attack. Let's be clear. He tried to push through the biggest expansion of criminal speech laws this country has ever seen. What's worse is he tried to do it in less than one week, before Australians had had time to properly read it, understand it or speak up. But guess what? Australians did speak up, and the coalition—the Liberal Party and the National Party—stood firmly with them. So I say this to all Australians: congratulations, Australia. Just like us, you saw what the Prime Minister of Australia was trying to do to you. You saw through the spin, you looked at the substance and—well done, Australia—you stopped the Prime Minister of Australia.

As we stand here tonight and debate the legislation that is now before the Senate, let us be very, very clear, because there's a lot of misinformation out there tonight. Labor's hate speech package—the original package that would have silenced you, Australia—has been abandoned. Well done, Australia. You stood up, we listened, you forced Mr Albanese to take action and that bill has been scrapped. But, I have to say, here's a basic question that all Australian should ask themselves: after 15 Jewish Australians were murdered in the largest terror attack this country has ever seen, on Bondi Beach, why was the Prime Minister's first instinct to rush laws through that would have potentially silenced ordinary Australians while, at the same time, refusing to clearly name the ideology that drove the terrorist attack? Here's the bit that the Australian people can't get past: the package he wanted us to put through ran through hundreds of pages, and guess what? Not once in those 500 pages did it name what actually happened, the real threat—violent, Islamic extremism. Let's be very clear: if you can't name the threat that Australia is confronting, Prime Minister, guess what? You actually can't address it.

Let me say this plainly because, quite frankly, Australians are sick and tired of the Australia Labor Party and the Prime Minister dancing around the truth. Australia must confront violent Islamic extremism, not excuse it, not relabel it—as they tend to do so as to not offend the violent Islamic extremists—and not pretend it is something else. But definitely don't try and make laws around it whilst refusing to name it. Let's be very clear here. This is an ideology that glorifies murder, that celebrates terrorism, that targets Jews first. Australians, wake up and understand this: it is not confined to the Jewish people. They start with Saturday; they go after Sunday. For all of the Christians out there, wake up. You are Sunday. That is what they do. They target the Jews first and then they go after anybody else who stands in their way. This extremist ideology hates democracy and it hates the Australian way of life. That is the threat.

But, sadly, instead of focusing on this threat right from the start, Labor's original approach took a slightly different tangent. They wanted to introduce laws that actually risk chilling lawful speech and worse—I find this so offensive—it built in a dangerous loophole dressed up as a religious teaching defence that the hate preachers would have exploited. Quite frankly, I think the Australian people expect that a law meant to stop hate should never give the hate preachers in this country a roadmap to avoid accountability but that is what the Prime Minister of Australia did. He gave, by the drafting, the hate preachers—the people that we want to stop in this country—a 'get out of jail free' card. As I said, good on you, Australia, congratulations. You saw through the Prime Minister, you saw he was trying to silence you, you had the support of the coalition and we successfully defeated that bill.

Let's talk in plain English about what this bill before us today does, because there is a lot of misinformation out there tonight. First, as I said—and this is why I am supporting it—it makes it easier to kick extremists out of Australia using the visa system. This is the message of the coalition: if you come here to glorify extremist violence, if you want to threaten Australians or radicalise others, I don't care but you should not get a visa. If you are already here and you are doing that, I do think the minister should be given the power to take your visa from you. But I also think that the minister should be able to go one step further, which is what this legislation does. It says, 'Guess what? You are never ever coming back into the great country of Australia.' That is what this bill will deliver. It would give the minister clearer power to refuse a visa, to cancel a visa and to permanently exclude people who, quite frankly, are coming to Australia to poison our community.

I will also say this: to anyone who votes against this tonight, you need to be upfront with the Australian people about what you are doing. A no vote is a vote against refusing visas to hate preachers. A no vote is a vote against cancelling visas where someone is glorifying violence. And a no vote is a vote against keeping these people out for good.

So, amongst all of the misinformation that's out there tonight, let me be clear: I'm voting for laws that make it easier for the relevant minister—Labor or coalition—to throw extremists out of this country and to keep extremists excluded from this country. Why would I do that? I do it because the coalition's position is simple: Australia is not a sanctuary for violent extremists. We will not give people visas when they're glorifying terror or they are trying to radicalise others. And if they are here, yes, we do want the minister to have the power to remove them and keep them out.

The second thing this bill tonight does is in relation to violent extremist hate groups. Again, there's a lot of misinformation out there tonight, so let me be clear. Despite what people are saying, this is not about opinions; this is about organised, dangerous hate groups that recruit, intimidate and create the conditions for hate motivated violence.

One of the issues in Australia is that the terrorist listing threshold is incredibly high, as it should be. What that has therefore done, though, is leave a gap where vile hate groups can operate in plain sight. They are recruiting, radicalising and fundraising and they are intimidating communities, but they fall just short of a terrorism label. People have seen it. They've seen it of late with the Neo-Nazis. These are people who worship Hitler and glorify genocide. They don't just hold vile views; they build networks, they recruit, they threaten and they target minorities to spread fear. This part of the bill helps close that gap. It creates a way to prohibit organised hate groups and makes it illegal to take part in them or help them—this is very important—when they are tied to serious hate-driven criminal conduct.

That takes me to a group that, quite frankly, I can't wait to see listed. That is Hizb ut-Tahrir. Let's be very clear about what this organisation is. For anyone who wants to vote no tonight, this is an extremist Islamic organisation. It rejects democracy, it rejects Australian law and it openly pushes for a global Islamic caliphate run under sharia law. I'm sorry, but to anyone who's saying, 'Oh, this legislation goes too far,' I can tell you right now that I don't think that is just a slightly different opinion to what I might have. Their whole agenda is to replace the Australian way of life, and, quite frankly, I want that stopped.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's message is a simple one: Australia's system—our parliament, our courts, equal rights for men and women, and our freedom to choose our religion or, alternatively, to not have any religion at all—is illegitimate and it must be replaced. Sadly, this group doesn't need to set a bomb off to be dangerous. Their danger is their vile, extremist ideology—the propaganda that radicalises, that spreads hatred and that tells young Australians that our democracy in our great country is the enemy. I don't know about others in this chamber, but I have no desire to see groups that want a global caliphate under sharia law, like Hizb ut-Tahrir, operating in Australia. Quite frankly, if you come here to undermine our democracy and replace it, you should not get a platform. You should not get protection and you definitely should not be allowed to organise—like they have done, and will continue to do if this legislation does not pass tonight—in the great country of Australia. Here's the reality, again, for those colleagues who will vote no tonight: if you vote against this hate group regime, you will need to explain plainly why you are prepared to let Neo-Nazi organisations and Hizb ut-Tahrir keep operating freely in Australia, because that would be the practical effect—more space to recruit, more space to radicalise, more space to intimidate and, what is worse, more poison in our communities.

Many out there—again, there's misinformation—are claiming this is an attack on free speech. It isn't. That was the Prime Minister's original bill. That was the bill that Australians said no to and we successfully killed off. What we are voting on tonight is entirely different. This targets organised extremist groups that fall just short of a terrorist listing but still cause real harm. It is important that the minister, whether they are from Labor or the coalition, has the power to act against these vile extremist organisations. Here is the line, and it is the right line.

This is not about outlawing unpopular opinions. It is not about shutting down robust debate. It is not about religious discussion, genuine political advocacy, comedy, satire or art. And it is certainly not about the police knocking on your door because of a harsh Facebook post or because you criticised the government. The coalition would never support that. This is directed at serious conduct of a criminal nature and serious harm of a criminal standard under existing law, and it only applies where the Director-General of Security is satisfied the conduct would or is likely to increase the risk of politically motivated violence. That is a high bar, and it should be a high bar. So, for anybody out there thinking that we're attacking free speech, the test is not whether someone said something offensive; it is whether what someone said increases the risk of violence—not of discomfort, not of disagreement, not of, 'I didn't like what was said.'

Australia is a free country, but it is not a sanctuary for extremists, and it should not be a safe operating environment for vile extremist hate groups. Australians want to see Islamic hate preachers gone, they want to see the minister given the ability to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir and they want Neo-Nazis off our streets. These laws will achieve that, and that's why I'm supporting them.

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. These laws come at a tragic time for our nation—14 December 2025 was a day when Islamist inspired terror came to Australia's shores and when terrorists with ISIS flags murdered Jewish Australians celebrating the first night of Hanukkah and others enjoying one of our most iconic beaches. It was an antisemitic attack—an act of pure evil—and it was the deadliest terrorist attack in our nation's history. They murdered 15 innocents and injured dozens more men, women and children. It was an attack on a community, on a nation and on every Australian. That day, the two attackers came with hatred in their minds and with lethal weapons in their hands. Today, this parliament is working to address both the motivation and the method of the attack, and we are sending a powerful message that there is no place for antisemitism in this country, there is no place for spreading hate in Australia and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia.

This legislation continues our commitment to implementing the recommendations of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. However, this legislation does not reflect one key recommendation of the special envoy. Ms Segal recommended that the government strengthen federal, state and territory legislation addressing antisemitic and other hateful or intimidating conduct, including with respect to serious vilification offences and the public promotion of hatred and antisemitic sentiment. But, colleagues, these laws will not include racial vilification laws, which the Labor Party has long supported and which the government sought to bring forward. Those opposite have walked away from a key ask of the special envoy and a key ask of so many in the Jewish Australian community at this time.

I want to quote from my friend the member for Macnamara's speech earlier today. He said:

… after the Leader of the Opposition came to my electorate, last week, stood up in a synagogue and said that hate needed to be confronted and that there needed to be consequences. She said that if she were the prime minister, there would be. Within hours, the Liberal Party refused to support laws in this place that would do exactly that.

The Leader of the Opposition demanded that the government implement the Segal report in full, yet the Leader of the Opposition is blocking the government from doing precisely that. The Leader of the Opposition demanded hate speech laws, and then opposed them. The Leader of the Opposition demanded the return of parliament and then, when parliament was recalled, was against it.

Yesterday in the Senate we heard these words:

This parliament has a responsibility to ensure Jewish Australians can live freely and securely in the weeks, months and years ahead, to ensure community institutions are protected, to ensure threats are taken seriously, to ensure the law is enforced and to ensure that those who incite hatred—

those who incite hatred—

and glorify violence are met with consequences.

That was Senator Cash yesterday, and, Senator Cash, on this we agree. But, of course, we are not able to pass reforms which are directly targeting those who incite hatred because the Liberal and National party senators will not support reforms to combat racial vilification. They will not support them. And to even consider today's important legislative reform, we have narrowed the scope of the legislation at the coalition's request. So, it will be for the coalition to answer to the Jewish Australian community when instances of vile hate face no consequences.

Australians want their leaders to lead. They do not want self-interest. They do not want politics. They do not want division. And Australians want to stand with and behind the Jewish Australian community at this time of profound grief. We saw this unity in previous national crises like Port Arthur, the Bali bombings, the Lindt cafe siege. But not for Bondi. Instead of reaching for that higher ground, for national unity, the opposition sought to drag us down with division. But Australians see what the Liberal and National parties are doing. They see through it.

We know that the attackers at Bondi targeted Australian Jews because of who they are, and we know they were inspired by hateful, violent, intolerant and extreme ideology that has no place in our country. We will not give the terrorists what they seek, which is a divided nation turning Australian against Australian. For Jewish Australians, particularly those that came to Australia seeking refuge, their sense of safety, their sense of security has been shattered, and the trust they had in this country, in an Australia that values Jewish contributions to a multicultural society, needs to be rebuilt, and it is our collective responsibility to rebuild it.

So tonight, in this Senate, is the next step in ensuring that we work to stamp out the violent and hateful ideology that inspired this attack. The new laws being debated here specifically target those who seek to spread hatred, including those who seek to disrupt social cohesion in our community. The laws also create a regime for listing organisations that engage in hate speech or promote violence or racial hatred. The bill amends the Migration Act to introduce new grounds enabling a minister to refuse and cancel visas on the basis of hate motivated conduct and offences relating to the spread of hatred and extremism, and this is as it should be.

Organisations that proffer hateful ideologies must be outlawed and their members held accountable. We know one such group has already announced an intention to disband in anticipation of the effectiveness of these laws. Our Senate, our parliament, can send a strong message to a grieving nation tonight, and we must. We stand together against hate, and, together, light will prevail over darkness. I commend the bill to the Senate.

This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, comes as part of the Labor Party's response to an appalling antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach that took the lives of 15 Jewish members of our community. This parliament, barely an hour ago, passed laws that directly respond to critical elements of that attack by addressing some of the loopholes in our national firearms laws that allowed hate to be armed that day. Whilst it wasn't unanimous, we did get the majority needed, and that was good work to make the community safer.

Much of this bill, however, includes scapegoating migrants and attacking peaceful protests and protest groups, and it's not a legitimate response to the Bondi attack. It wrongfully conflates caring about international law, protecting the vulnerable and having a conscience about world events with the cruel ugliness of antisemitism. The Australian Greens have deep concerns about the politicised content included here. We do not have any comfort that it is going to substantially address any form of hate in this country, and that includes antisemitism. We're also concerned that the amendments to the migration laws are designed to directly place migrants in the frame in this debate and to blame migrants and multicultural Australia for the failures of intelligence and security agencies.

Again, we see how failures at ASIO and our security agencies are being used to weaponise against multicultural Australia and then to give those very agencies more and more secret powers. This parliament should be coming together now to make laws that bring communities together and that have their confidence and support. Instead, we have a last-minute major-party deal to create laws that can criminalise large segments of the community who are following their conscience and their hearts to stand up against genocide. I know who I am with in this debate and I'm proud to be with them. We will not sit quietly in the corner while these parties try to make it a crime to stand against genocide and for a free Palestine. We will remain in solidarity with the community—peaceful, principled and proud.

I want to say thank you to the thousands of people who made submissions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Of course, it's part of the club; it's populated just by Labor and the coalition, but the community engaged. This whole process was a stitch-up between the Labor and Liberal parties with committees like the PJCIS, but I want to thank the people who still took the time to ensure they were heard and that their detailed concerns about the proposed laws were on the record. I note the large number of Palestinian, LGBTQI+ and refugee organisations who raised strong concerns about the divisive and dangerous proposals in these bills. At all times, the timeframe for consultation was grossly inadequate. We genuinely appreciate every group who still made themselves available in these last few short days to talk with us about the proposed changes.

Every stakeholder we spoke to, every single one, raised new and more detailed concerns about these laws. The overwhelming response from all of them is that the original Labor Party proposal was too flawed, too politicised, too biased and too divisive to be fixed. I agree with them, my party agrees with them and millions of Australians agree with them, and we thank them for their time. With their collective help, we have prevented broken vilification laws passing that were biased in their application, broken in their reach and dangerous in their politics, and I want to thank all of those Australians who joined with us in that.

I note in particular the difficulty of this proposal for the many communities, including but not limited to the queer community and the disability community, who have long waited for this parliament to take their concerns about hate attacks against them seriously. This government brought them into this parliament, gave them encouragement and then just dropped them, like they've done so many times before. This government has again let down diverse communities in this process. They are more than disappointed with this government today. I want to let all of those vulnerable and diverse communities know—you have our word as Greens that we will keep working to ensure a comprehensive suite of measures are adopted, funded and resourced to reduce hate, provide support and make this country safe for all.

I thank the Law Council for their insightful analysis of the draft and the final laws, including in the few short hours we had them today. Likewise, I thank the Justice and Equity Centre, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Hindus for Human Rights and the Arabic Council, as well as lawyers from the Australian Lawyers Alliance—among many, many others—for their guidance. They have spoken with one voice. Indeed, they've been stronger than that. They've spoken with a diversity of voices. From multiple different perspectives, from multiple faiths and multiple communities and multiple parts of this country, they have said, 'Don't support these laws, for the damage they can do to society.'

In the last 24 hours, the bill has become even worse. The coalition amendments, far from the nonsense we heard from Senator Cash about 'limiting their scope' and 'saving people from overreach'—what nonsense! What rubbish we heard. What facile defences she's trying to build for whoever's in her perceived support base. Let us be clear about this: the coalition amendments expand the reach of Labor's already dangerous crackdown on legitimate free speech and political expression, and they do so in unprecedented ways.

Far from narrowing these laws, these changes expand the law to expressly cover conduct that falls far short of violence. The rushed changes expand the conduct that can lead to organisations being banned and their members—including 'informal members', whatever that means—going to jail for 15 years. They include references to seven different state and territory laws. That raises multiple constitutional issues and significant uncertainty as to how these laws will apply across the Commonwealth. That didn't narrow the scope of these banning provisions and proscriptive provisions; it massively expanded them. It massively expanded the thoughts and the speech that can be covered by these laws.

This Labor and coalition deal may lead to organisations being banned and people being criminalised across the country if they ridicule or express contempt for a group or a person. These laws cover much more than threats of violence; they extend to economic, social and psychological harm and are enforced not by courts but on secret reports from ASIO and the opinion of the Home Affairs minister. Labor and the coalition are expressly intending to capture acts and statements done in the past, with retrospective operations of these laws. Groups could be criminalised; people could see their actions criminalised. They could face lengthy jail time for actions or words said before these offences were even created. What was a rushed process last week, with poor process, excluding critical consideration, has now become a farce. Unprecedented legal changes are being made law without even a cursory review by experts or the community.

As Greens, we have used some general principles to analyse these changes. Laws that seek to protect only select parts of the community and expressly exclude protection for other vulnerable parts of our community are bad laws. They're divisive laws. Rushed, complex criminal laws are terrible process and risk criminalising conduct nobody would want to see people going to jail for—well, nobody except for their political opponents, that is. Removing procedural fairness from decisions that could potentially put people in jail for years or over a decade is plain dangerous. And let's be clear. Anything that Labor and the coalition agree on in a late night meeting with the toxic politics that they've been discussing in the last few years, especially when it comes to criminal law, is likely to be terribly compromised at best and downright Trumpian at worst.

We've spoken in the last hours to a number of lawyers and experts on the change to prohibited hate group laws. They had a long list of questions, a long list of concerns about the provisions, and they show that they are very far from clear and possibly completely unworkable. Is that how laws should pass through this parliament, on a wink or a nod, on the vibe of Senator Cash, on the nod of the Prime Minister, on the hope of the Attorney-General, on the toxic politics of whichever part of the coalition agreed to this?

We start by noting, as the law council points out, that the banning powers rely in part on underlying conduct that is in part already criminalised and in part has never before been used as legal tests. That will see the home affairs minister relying on secret advice from ASIO about potential future conduct of an organisation before banning them without any pretence of natural justice, without ever considering procedural fairness. In this case, the discretion given to the home affairs minister means the courts will not consider a listing and there's no independent oversight. The listing can occur on the grounds where the minister has reasonable belief that a person has engaged in a hate crime, and that can be satisfied by a range of state based vilification offences that only require a person to be critiquing or ridiculing. Again, I repeat that all of that is done by ASIO with a secret report never seen by those being targeted, never seen by the parliament, never seen by the public and by a minister who doesn't even have to tell the organisation he's thinking about doing this.

The second limit of the test requires that the minister is satisfied it's reasonably necessary to protect a part of a community from harm. That harm could include not just physical harm but also economic, psychological or social harm. Under these laws, the anti-apartheid movement would have been captured. Under these laws, federal ministers in the 1960s and 1970s could have threatened thousands of anti-apartheid activists with jail and banned their organisations because of their strident, correct and pointed criticism of the South African government and its hateful apartheid policy. They're people we now celebrate as proud human rights campaigners. In 2026, cross out 'apartheid' and write in 'free Palestine', and you'll see what these parties are trying to do.

Can I point out that in the short time that we've had these unprecedented proposed changes, lawyers have said to us that roping in the criminal offences of seven different state and territory laws, defining them as hate crimes and saying they apply under Commonwealth legislation creates immeasurable legal uncertainty. Does a test that used to only apply in Victoria now apply across the whole country? Are there seven different tests across the country, depending on where you live, for what you say? None of this has been answered by the government. It's chaos. It's bad in principle. Even with those laws, the government goes out of its way to say that only three categories of offensive conduct will be covered by those laws, writing out protections for other religious groups, for the LGBTIQ community, for gender and intersex. How have we got to this point?

Can I finish with this on migration. This bill dangerously lowers the threshold for visa cancellations from requiring a person would engage in hateful conduct to merely that they might. That's not a test. I want to thank the ASRC for their continued positive engagement with this. When the government says they need these changes to ban hate preachers from this country, they know that's false. Every single one of those could already be banned under the character tests. There are two separate legal provisions under the Migration Act that would fully cover all of the conduct that's covered in these migration law changes, and the government is lying when it says otherwise, and the coalition is covering itself with pretend political cover when it says otherwise. We won't accept those lies. It's a false narrative. At the core of the narrative on the migration changes, they want to blame migrants for the violence and failures of security agencies, for the gaps in our gun laws. We won't let them scapegoat migrants, we won't support these changes to the Migration Act, and we won't support the rubbish politics that is trying to give them cover when they do it.

At Bondi, on 14 December, two evil men, drawing on a perverted distortion of Islam that is the foundation of the terror organisation ISIS, committed a terror attack on our shores. For the record, ISIS is funded by Iran. Every part of its existence is to be abhorred. No Australian who shares in our nation's vast democratic success, shares in our collective wealth, which thrives in the fertile environment that is enabled by our democratic values, and benefits from our laws and the peace they bring can ever support ISIS or any organisation that harbours support for ISIS in any form. I don't think there would be any dispute here in this chamber or around the nation of the moral righteousness of that statement.

But it is a fact that one of the antisemitic, ISIS inspired gunmen—one of those evil men—who shot 15 fine citizens that afternoon, Sunday 14th, in Bondi was born and raised here in Australia. He was known, in some glancing way, according to reports, to the intelligence agencies of this nation. The other man, his father, was not a citizen of this country. Their actions and the actions of others like them tell us that something is wrong with our current laws. We must learn from Bondi that threats to our society come from both within and outside our nation and our population. That father-and-son act of terror demands that we face the reality of the country we are today.

We have to confront, through the myriad horrific images of people in Bondi on that fateful Sunday evening in December, the reality of our time. It's horrifying. People are scarred at a distance from media engagement, just by looking at the images of what happened in Bondi. There's a massive national provision of support for the mental health of the people who watched those images. But we have to look. We cannot turn away. It's horrifying for me that, in the moment when we could have confronted and responded to this challenge of our time, acted in unison, protected the best of what we are and been clear that we align together against the malign actors who would take this nation into the darkness of hate, there has been wholesale failure here in this parliament by too many who have not read the signs of these times.

I listened to many of the speeches yesterday on the day of condolence for the loss of life in Bondi. One of the words I heard very frequently in the speeches was well-intentioned and said by people who cared, who shed tears as they spoke. I don't doubt the sincerity, but how many times did people say Australians 'should' be able to do something? You 'should' be able to walk down the street; you 'should' be able to do this. Our job is not to wish and ponder and hope. Our job is to legislate, not to decry the reality and wish it were otherwise and do nothing. 'Should' isn't going to cut it. We actually have to do stuff, and the stuff we have to do here is to legislate. And we need to do it in a timely way in response to the challenges we face.

Reality must be faced, and our laws must meet that reality. We live in a time when foreign countries are involved in the attacks on our way of life. We can't just let that reality pass us by. It's part of the emboldening of the two gunmen on Bondi. The firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue, according to our ASIO public reporting, was advanced by Iran and their proxies, who they funded in our country. The Iranian ambassador was sent home, persona non grata. That is a serious diplomatic act. It was an extraordinary historical moment, but these are extraordinary times, and it gives shape to what it is that we're doing here tonight and why we have to do it. Senators, we cannot continue to do business as usual in a world that has changed.

That is why we need legislation that gives powers to this parliament and the parliaments that follow to protect the good people of this nation from the evil ones, be they born here or born somewhere else. These laws are needed to protect us from the ones filled with hate, from the ones spewing their vile hatred into our community. That is why I speak in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 this evening.

The bill before us is about addressing what became obvious to every Australian as we watched those images. Action is required now—not next month or next year but today. I noted the contribution of Senator Shoebridge just prior to my rising. There were many principles in there. He's a lawyer and a barrister, who obviously cares about the law—and I see Senator Scarr over there with the same respect and regard for the law. There's a degree of caution that we always want to apply, and we need to apply that. But there's application in a time of peace, order and long-term consideration, and there's action required in response to what we saw in Bondi. That's no time to sit back and navel gaze. This is a time for leadership, and the place where leadership has to happen for our country, this democratic nation, is right here in Canberra in this place. That is what this bill is about this evening.

It's vital and it's necessary that we pass this bill to tackle hateful groups. We cannot keep waiting while the next extremist individuals start or continue brewing a concoction of fear and hatred that targets decent, ordinary, law-abiding Australians. We've seen, under the current structure of laws, malign groups that have strategically flouted the law by staying just—ever so marginally just—under the current test of criminality. We cannot allow that to continue. Sadly, the resistance that we're seeing to the necessary change to protect the people of Australia, surely our first responsibility—we've seen members in this parliament seek division, find division, push for delay. I said yesterday:

… if not now, then when?

Hate will only spread and further entrench itself throughout our community the longer we wait in calling it out and the longer we wait in bringing about the legislative changes necessary.

The criminal amendments that are located within this bill will combat hate. They will dismantle extremism. They will ensure that violence clearly intended against individuals or groups based on race or national or ethnic origin is prevented before it starts. These amendments will include aggravated offences for leaders who promote or threaten violence against protected groups and for adults who radicalise children. It's got to stop, and it has to stop with legislation that needs to be passed in this place—and passed tonight.

This legislation offers increased penalties for existing hate speech offences involving the advocacy or threat of force or violence, because that needs to happen. This legislation has requirements for courts to consider hate motivation at sentencing and to consider the designation of organisations that fuel violence or hatred on the basis of race, nationality or ethnic origin as prohibited hate groups. 'Your time's up'—that's what this legislation says. 'You've played a dastardly game. The cost is a permanent stain on the history of this nation, but your time's up'—that's what this legislation says.

This bill will increase protections for our community from the risk of harm posed, particularly by noncitizens who engage in extremist conduct. Yet this parliament must acknowledge that this bill is not all of what was requested from the Jewish community, who urgently seek our response and protection. This bill, which was offered in one form last week and has been changed through amendments and agreements, doesn't contain many of the elements that would provide people with stronger protections from groups that want to spread hate.

The laws that tackle racial vilification have long been an ambition of many in our parliament. This would have occurred in this parliament if the coalition and the Greens had done what was really being asked of them by this nation in this most horrific moment: the largest terrorist massacre of Australians in our history. Of course, we have to continue to tackle hate at its source, and I urge the coalition and the Greens to look to their hearts and deeply consider whether they will continue to allow the filth to be espoused on our streets.

What we know is that hateful words metastasised into violence and into destruction. In our social media, these tropes, this hateful speech and the invitation for people to write hateful responses has turned what once was a source of connection into a social sewer. We're all swimming in it. That has got to change, and we can all do our part with regard to that.

In closing, I want to refer to a piece of correspondence that I received from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. A lot of the resistance to this antivilification that led to that section of the bill being removed is arguable but not defensible in this historical moment. I received with this letter a copy of Pope Leo XIV's first papal document. It's called Dilexi te. In Catholic theology, the term 'option for the poor' is for people discriminated against or suffering in any way. The Pope said:

… God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.

This legislation could have been absolutely a choice, a radical choice, in favour of the weakest. But it is weakened and, mark my words, we will need to return and attend to the racial vilification dimensions of this legislation that were so abruptly ripped from it because of inexplicable political resistance that should belong in another time.

Antisemitism has no place in Australian society. I condemn the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi. The murderers who carried out that atrocity have terrified Australia's Jewish community. Australians, no matter who they are, where they come from or who they pray to should feel safe and be safe to assemble and celebrate a religious holiday without fearing for their lives. The terrorists have also jeopardised the lives of Australia's migrant communities, who have already been subject to increased discrimination and abuse.

I support measures that will restrict access to firearms and reduce hate in our communities. Support for the latter is conditional on those measures being very specific and targeted at addressing hate, and reasonably appropriate and adapted to achieve that goal in line with the Lange Test adopted by the High Court in determining whether a law unduly burdens the freedom of political communication implied by the Constitution.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the class that proved itself most unable to rise to the occasion has been the political class. The politicking that occurred in the wake of the Bondi shooting has been sickening. On the night of the attack, the Leader of the Opposition offered the government her full and unconditional support in responding to the massacre. In the days that followed, the Leader of the Opposition, Ms Ley, moved away from this principled and decent position. She began to echo Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's suggestions that our Prime Minister and our government bore soul responsibility for the attack. At a time of national crisis, she chose to divide Australians. It was not long until openly bad-faith statements were being made, such as demanding that the Prime Minister recall parliament before Christmas, despite knowing full well that drafting, let alone giving proper consideration to such complicated legislative measures in that time frame, would be impossible. Now that the parliament has returned, she has decided that everything needs to be slowed down. It was wedge politics at its worst. Not long after the attack, the member for Canning, Mr Hastie, in the other place began making statements that immigration was the cause of this attack. No doubt it was the influence of Mr Hastie and others like him that pushed Ms Ley to politicise this issue. The conduct of Josh Frydenberg was similarly beyond the pale. Some of the people now calling for stronger hate laws were arguing a decade ago that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act needed to be repealed.

Australians will not forget how the Senate and the parliament responded to this crisis. The politicisation of this issue has extended far beyond anything that could be reasonably connected to this horrific attack. The New South Wales government has abolished freedom of assembly; instead, making the right to protest a privilege that it can dole out as it sees fit. The idea that Australians protesting against a genocide bear any responsibility for what happened is so cynical, so offensive. The adoption of a definition of 'antisemitism' by the federal government that sees no difference between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews is a decision that will further weaken social cohesion, not strengthen it.

The Australians who have marched against genocide are on the right side of history, and I will never apologise for calling for a Palestinian state, which was an action that ended my career in the Labor Party. It saw me hounded out of the party that, in recognising a Palestinian state last year, conceded that I had been doing the right thing all along. In the media, the campaign for a royal commission was as bad faith as the Prime Minister's struggle against it. The avalanche of open letters became farcical when a collective of Australian sports stars offered their opinion on whether letters patent should be issued.

At the same time, the Prime Minister dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. He said he did not need input from the families of the victims of Bondi and that he was listening to actual experts. This remark was so disgraceful—as were all the other meritless excuses offered during the fight against a royal commission. This was only succeeded by the utter goal of, after backflipping on a royal commission, pretending it was always the plan of his government. The Prime Minister saying, 'This hasn't been done up this morning; we have been working on this for weeks,' will be remembered as the 'we have always been at war with Eastasia' of this period. I sincerely hope that Commissioner Bell is able to hand down a report that will have practical effects in reducing antisemitism hate in this country and addressing flaws in our national security frameworks.

If you look at the draft Senate program that was published last week, it says that this chamber would be debating the 'Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026' today. We heard from the Prime Minister that nothing would be dropped and the bill would not be split. Since then, the highly contentious racial vilification offence has been dropped and the bill has been split. We have seen that the government will not move forward with proposals that do not have the coalition's support. Once again, as with the migration amendments in 2024, as with the electoral reform and as with the mandatory sentencing, the Liberals are governing from the opposition.

I have a range of concerns with these bills—some of which I outlined in my submission to the needlessly and dangerously rushed PJCIS inquiry—and, to summarise, there are a few points I'd like to raise. Much of the hate speech changes are window dressings, through increased sentences for existing offences and new aggravating factors for existing offences. The changes to the Migration Act would allow the minister to cancel or deny visas to people who might incite division. Stopping hatred is one thing—and it's a good thing—but kicking people out of Australia based on speculation is quite another.

Visa holders in Australia should be able to engage in peaceful protest as freely as Australian citizens can. The proposed prohibited hate group framework hands an unprecedented amount of power to the executive in a manner, as others have noted, that is similar to the Menzies government's ban on the Communist Party, which was rejected by the High Court and the Australian people in a referendum. If these powers to declare organisations fell into the wrong hands, the results could be catastrophic. I found it much easier to support reforms to our firearm laws, but I still have concerns with the broad drafting of the new firearm material offences. These provisions, like both bills, were rushed through parliament and through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which means that the deficiencies of the reforms will not be known until they become law.

Section 51 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that, as elected representatives of the people of Australia, we have the power—and I would argue, the duty—to enact laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth. It is the responsibility, however, of the entire apparatus of government to ensure that these laws are operating soundly. While we do not have the full picture yet, there are many questions that need to be asked of counterterrorism officials and, particularly, ASIO to identify where their processes went wrong.

The natural instinct of some, particularly our media class, is to demand more laws, but we must be considered in doing so. Knee-jerk legislation passed in response to an outrage is, at best, ill thought out and, at worst, harmful. Terrorism and antisemitism in Australia will not go away by sending a few bits of paper down Dunrossil Drive. It requires a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society push to not only foil terrorist plots before they occur but to tackle the causes of terrorism and close off the pathways that lead people towards extremism.

The Prime Minister has arrogantly decreed that, with unprecedented haste, these bills will pass through both houses on the same day they were introduced. This arbitrary deadline will lead to this parliament missing issues in the drafting that would have been spotted through a proper inquiry process. While I hope that this parliament enacts wise laws tonight, unfortunately, history shows that a lack of scrutiny leads to poorer outcomes. I urge all senators, all of my colleagues in this place, to conduct themselves deliberately, thoughtfully and with the interests of the nation and the people we represent in mind. Thank you.

Before I hand the call to Senator Scarr, I believe there's a second reading amendment in your name. Will you seek to move that now?

Yes. I, and also on behalf of Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman, Thorpe and Tyrrell, move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute:

"(a) the Senate notes that:

(i) this bill includes complex legislative changes that make significant amendments to hate speech and migration laws,

(ii) independent senators have had the final text of the bill for less than 12 hours,

(iii) the Government only undertook very limited consultation on the exposure draft legislation, only provided three days for public submissions on the bill and a week for parliamentary consideration and public consultation,

(iv) time for parliamentary debate of this bill has been significantly curtailed with many senators not afforded an opportunity to speak on or ask questions about the bill on behalf of their communities,

(v) there is strong community support for combatting antisemitism and all forms of racism, hatred and violent extremism however, a broad range of experts, community leaders, organisations and members of the community have expressed serious concerns about the bill and have called for more time for it to be considered,

(vi) serious concerns have been expressed about potential unintended consequences and the bill's potential to impinge on legitimate freedom of expression, especially in the absence of a federal Human Rights Act,

(vii) serious concerns have been expressed about the failure to extend new proposed protections to other groups with protected attributes creating a two-tier system of protections and potentially putting further stress on social cohesion,

(viii) there is ambiguity and uncertainty about many of the definitions and provisions including serious matters like retrospectivity and inclusion of a 'good faith' defence, the introduction of recklessness-based fault elements and a reversal of the burden of proof,

(ix) the bill lacks procedural fairness safeguards, particularly in relation to changes to migration law, and

(x) to be successful in advancing towards the Government's worthy ambition of national unity, Australians and their representatives need a fair opportunity to be heard, to consider such significant legislative changes and the time and political will to develop and negotiate amendments in good faith while respecting parliamentary process; and

(b) the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 3 February

I rise in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, taking on board Senator Payman's comments. I listened very carefully to Senator Payman's speech. I do so because I believe this bill is in the national interest. I sincerely believe there's an imperative that we pass this bill, and I believe there's a great risk—some people have been talking about the risks in some of these provisions, the risks of the process et cetera. I say: consider the risk of us not passing this bill. Consider the risk of us not including these additional offences in the Criminal Code. Consider the risks of us not strengthening the visa cancellation and refusal processes in the Migration Act. Consider how those risks could be manifested again in the future, as they were on the beach at Bondi on 14 December. That is a risk we have to all carefully consider. In doing so, and after great careful consideration, I support this bill. I sincerely believe this bill is in the national interest and in the interests of all Australians.

Before giving my detailed comments, I would like to first place on the record my regards and compliments to the staff of the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of Home Affairs. They have been working tirelessly in relation to this legislation and all of the extensive supporting material, so I really do want to acknowledge their efforts. It is only through their efforts that we're in a position this evening to pass this legislation in the national interest. Let me put that on the record.

There are a number of points I'd like to make in rebuttal to some of the arguments that have been made from those across the chamber. First, there were a number of speakers on the Labor side who attacked the coalition's issue with the hate speech law in particular—the proposed racial vilification offence. To them I say this: the coalition makes no apology, no apology at all, for deeply scrutinising that proposed offence. We make no apology at all, because it's our job to defend the balance we achieve in this place and this parliament between, on the one hand, the freedoms of all Australians, which we cherish, and, on the other hand, making sure we protect all Australians. So we make no apology for discharging that duty, which is our duty as members of this parliament.

Second, I believe that the Labor Party, the Labor government, should have consulted with the coalition as soon as possible before the briefing which occurred last Monday evening in relation to the proposed bill. If that consultation had occurred earlier, I think there would have been better prospects for us landing on an agreed position with respect to that particular clause.

Third, it isn't just the opposition that has raised concerns with respect to that hate speech offence, that racial vilification offence, which is now out of the bill. It wasn't just the coalition; it was stakeholders across the Australian community. Thousands of Australians made submissions raising their concerns to the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security in relation to that offence. Faith leaders—Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh—raised concerns about getting the balance right in relation to freedom of religion. They raised concerns. So don't criticise the coalition for listening to the Australian people or for listening to stakeholders including faith leaders that were saying that that clause in particular was too rushed. That's our job—to listen to the Australian people—and we did that.

The second point I want to make is on the comments which have been made in particular by members of the Greens and the crossbench in relation to the prohibited hate group sections. Those sections are incredibly important. One, they only apply if there has been criminal conduct or conduct in the nature of criminal conduct. That is an extremely high bar. Second, the director-general of ASIO has to identify a risk of politically motivated violence or the promotion of communal violence. Again, that is an extremely high bar. Third, there's a disallowance process. Any prohibition has to come before this parliament to provide an opportunity for all members of this parliament to raise their concerns and for it to be disallowed if a majority of the elected representatives believe it should be. There are checks and balances in relation to these provisions, appropriate checks and balances, and they only apply and will only apply in the most extreme of situations, in situations where they need to apply to protect the Australian people. The last point I make on the prohibited hate groups is this: there is a link to the provisions in the Migration Act, and the ability of the government to strengthen processes and procedures to cancel and refuse visas is dependent upon those provisions being passed, in part. You can't strengthen the provisions under the Migration Act without passing those other provisions. They're mutually complementary.

The third point I want to make is that this law applies for the benefit of all Australians. It applies equally to protect all Australians. Whatever their race, whatever their country of origin, whatever their ethnicity, this law applies equally to everyone. That includes our First Nations people, it includes the descendants of those who came to this country generations ago, and it includes our newest Australians. It applies to everyone equally. It doesn't matter what your nationality, whatever your race or whatever your country of origin is; you get the benefit of these laws.

I want to say something about Islamic State. There have been references to the ideology which appears to have inspired those responsible for the Bondi massacre. The reality is that the Islamist extremism that underpins Islamic State is a scourge around the whole world. It's a global phenomenon. Let me give you the list of terrorist acts which have occurred around the world as a result of that extremist Islamist ideology that underpins Islamic State. There have been terrorist attacks in Iraq, Belgium, Canada, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Denmark, Tunisia, Yemen, Turkiye, Kuwait, Egypt, Russia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Israel, Malaysia, Jordan, Sweden and Spain—all over the world—and the victims of those terrorist attacks have been people of all races, all ethnicities and all religions. Those terrorist attacks have targeted churches, synagogues and mosques. They've targeted Christians, Muslims, Jews and ethnic minorities all over the world—people of all faiths. They've attacked hotels, tourist sites and the Supreme Court of Afghanistan before the Taliban retook Afghanistan. They're attacking women and girls attending universities and schools. They're attacking the Save the Children office in Afghanistan. They're attacking voter registration centres. The extremism which underpins Islamic State is a scourge, and we need the ability to do everything that we can to protect all Australians, regardless of their race, their country of origin, their ethnicity or their religion—all Australians. This bill achieves that purpose in the national interest.

The fourth point I'd like to make is this issue that's been raised about the Migration Act being amended to change the word 'would' to 'might'. I want to put this in context and I want to read the particular section. Those listening to this debate, listen to this very carefully and tell me what your views are. This is the character test. This is from section 501(6):

Character test

(6) For the purposes of this section, a person does not pass the character test—

which means there are processes so that their application for a visa is refused or a visa can be cancelled. One of the subsections is:

(d) in the event the person were allowed to enter or to remain in Australia, there is a risk that the person would:

(i) engage in criminal conduct in Australia; or

(ii) harass, molest, intimidate or stalk another person in Australia; or

(iii) vilify—

et cetera, or—

(v) represent a danger to the Australian community …

At the moment, that provision says that, to trigger the character test, the minister or the department has to form a view that the person 'would' do those things. Is that the appropriate standard? I don't think so. I think that if you ask the Australian people whether or not it should be 'would' or 'might', just about a hundred per cent of the Australian people would say that it should be 'might'—that we shouldn't take that risk. Why should we take that risk?

People come to this country from all over the world because of our values, for safety. And the Greens and others are telling us that we should have to make a positive decision that that person 'would' actually pose a risk instead of 'might'. I think it's plain we can't afford to take those risks. We're talking about the lives of Australian people, and we saw a manifestation of what happens when people in this country, whatever their origin, actually engage in this behaviour. So I think it is reasonable and proportionate that that word 'would' should be changed to 'might'.

If there is a red flag raised with respect to someone who is seeking the privilege to come to our country, then there is both a preventive element to our responsibilities, to make sure that person doesn't have the opportunity to come to the country if they 'might' have an impact on the lives and security of Australians, and a protective element, if a person is in that category and they're currently in our country—preventive and protective. I think the amendment which is proposed is reasonable and proportionate, especially, as Senator O'Neill said, in the context of what happened at Bondi, which has brought us all together—15 innocent people shot dead.

I don't believe these laws will, in any way, unfairly apply to the vast majority of people who come to our country in good faith, who in many cases bring an appreciation for our freedoms—because they're coming from countries where they were denied those freedoms—and bring so many things to our country. In fact, these laws will assist to protect those people and all other Australians. I believe these laws are, in fact, reasonable and proportionate. We shouldn't have to wait for someone to commit a crime and to cause harm to Australians before we act. We shouldn't have to wait for that harm to occur before we act. We have to adopt a risk based approach in relation to immigration and in relation to cancellation and refusal of visas.

I note that the amendments proposed to the Migration Act reflect the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism's recommendations with respect to changes to migration laws, and the coalition made a promise—a commitment—that we would do everything we could to see those recommendations enforced. Ms Segal, in her report, recommended government actions to screen visa applicants for antisemitic views or affiliations, consistent with a risk based approach. As I've set out, the amendments to the Migration Act do just that. Also, ensuring the Migration Act and associated decision-making review processes effectively facilitate visa refusals or cancellations for antisemitic conduct and rhetoric—the proposed amendments do that. The coalition has engaged in good faith with the government in relation to these changes, and I'm very, very pleased that we're in a position this evening where this bill will be passed with the support of the coalition. That is in our national interest, and that is in the interest of protecting the safety of all Australians.

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. December the 14th, 2025, is a date that will forever be etched in the story of our nation. It was the first night of Hanukkah, a festival of light, family and celebration, that soon became a night of unspeakable, ISIS inspired, antisemitic terror. Fifteen innocent people were murdered and so many more were injured simply for being who they were.

That sort of targeted violence didn't appear out of nowhere. Antisemitism rarely announces itself with sirens. It accumulates, it normalises, and it spreads. As chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, said:

It is not just the Jewish community that is in mourning, our entire country is in mourning, and now is time for a national soul-searching.

Now, more than ever, we need unity across our nation. What happened at Bondi demands that we confront both the motivation of this violence and the method by which it was carried out. Our bill deals with both.

Earlier today, during our firearms bill, we debated the 'how'. This bill, in particular, deals with the 'why'. We know the motivation behind this atrocity was fuelled by hate, with antisemitism at its core. For Jewish Australians, that hatred is not abstract. It is lived. Last year, an annual report released by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded more than 1,600 anti-Jewish incidents in just a single year: Nazi swastikas painted on the fences of a Sydney synagogue in January 2025; firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024, while people were inside—an attack ASIO has linked to the Iranian government; a pig's leg thrown into a Jewish business in Sydney in August 2025. Just last night in Melbourne, a group of Jewish teenagers were allegedly abused in a drive-by incident by some vile people yelling, 'Heil Hitler,' out of a ute, almost running one of the boys over. Absolutely no-one should have to face any of this. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry's research director, Julie Nathan, put it perfectly:

We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society—

and become part of the mainstream—

where it is normalised and allowed to fester and spread …

That is why this bill matters. We're making sure visas can be refused or cancelled for people who promote hatred or support terrorists or prohibited hate groups. Where a visa is refused on these grounds, permanent re-entry bans will apply unless the decision is overturned.

We're introducing a new framework to ban organised hate groups, which allows us to go after these right-wing Nazi organisations. We're increasing the maximum penalties for hate based threats and violence, from five years to seven years for base offences and from seven years to 10 years for more serious cases. We're making it a serious crime for extremist leaders to use their position of authority to preach violence—up to 12 years imprisonment. We're introducing tougher laws for those who try to radicalise children. We're making racial hatred an aggravating factor when sentencing federal crimes. And we're strengthening the law against the public display of Nazi symbols and symbols from other prohibited organisations.

We know these laws won't erase hatred. We know there will still be those individuals with appalling and vile views. But they will make it harder for that hatred to be organised and spread, and harder to recruit. We're already seeing this in practice. Last week, Neo-Nazi group the National Socialists Network—the NSN—one of Australia's most prominent white nationalist organisations, announced it would fully disband. That disbandment includes co-projects like White Australia, the European Australian Movement and the White Australia Party.

We've also seen criticism of this bill from groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, who are deemed a terrorist organisation in the UK, Germany, India and many other countries. These reforms will make it harder for groups like theirs to operate. The National Socialists Network was directly called out last year by the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess, for the harm they pose to Australia. If the Nazis are taking a step back because of our stronger laws, you have to ask yourself, 'Why would anyone want to vote against this bill?' If radical organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir are complaining, that tells us something very important. Why would anyone vote against legislation designed to weaken organised hatred and protect Australians?

Last year, a childcare centre in south-east Sydney was set on fire and spray-painted with vile, antisemitic graffiti. We've seen synagogues and Jewish schools armed with security guards. We've seen cars set on fire and shops in the suburbs being vandalised with swastikas. This hasn't just been going on for the last two years; we've seen this kind of hate for decades now. Personally, I was raised Catholic. I grew up in a largely Anglo-Celtic community. We never had to face anything like this. I cannot imagine what it must be like to send your children to a school where security guards are part of everyday life, or what it must be like to explain to your children why their faith means extra precautions and why other children have to think about these things at all.

This is a time where we rise above politics, where we come together and act. This is what good governments and oppositions should do. We saw it after Port Arthur, after the Hoddle Street massacre and after the Lindt cafe siege. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chair, Peter Wertheim, has repeatedly implored for new protections and unity. He said:

How much worse do things need to get before we as a nation finally have the courage to tackle the deliberate promotion of antisemitic hatred that is the heart of the problem?

Those were his words.

Yet, even in a moment like this, there are those in this parliament who would rather play politics than focus on keeping Australians safe. Just last week, on 14 January, we heard Senator Bridget McKenzie single out Western Sydney as a so-called part of Islamic extremism, on ABC Radio National. She did it again today during our firearms bill debate, saying that Western Sydney suburbs are the cause of this shooting event. That's nearly three million people. To smear an entire region, to reduce millions of Australians, to a stereotype—just think about what that means. I've raised my kids in Western Sydney, like many others, and I've raised them there for 15 years. I've still got friends, family and relatives living in that area. I visit my duty electorates of Fowler and Lindsay regularly. The place is full of mums, dads, families, everyday Australians. To dismiss all of that with one sweeping label isn't just reckless. It's also lazy. It's lazy language, lazy politics and even lazier leadership which only deepens division further. Have a think about what you said. We all need to do better. Senator McKenzie needs to write those words.

We need to look instead to the bravery of those who showed us the very best of Australia during a dark period. That's what we need to do. Look at the courage and quick action of police officers, first responders and healthcare workers and at the selfless acts of everyday Australians who stepped forward to help others in moments of fear and chaos. Just days ago in Melbourne, a Muslim community leader, Imam Ismet Purdic, and his wife were allegedly hunted on the road in a racially motivated attack. Horribly, three strangers shouted racist abuse, threw rubbish at their car, blocked their path and forced them into a service station where his wife was threatened and he was punched in the face. Yet his response wasn't anger or division. He said:

My message for all of us in Australia is just to stay together to help each other to stay safe, and not to allow anyone, doesn't matter … his religion or beliefs, to break this peace, security and all [the] good values we believe in.

…   …   …

We must, as Australians, fight against hate, Islamophobia, antisemitism … we must stay together.

That's the Australia we know. That's the Australia we must stand up for and protect. That is why these reforms matter—to draw a clear line in the sand that hate won't be excused or allowed to grow unchecked. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Well, the people's parliament has descended into chaos today. We've been called to Canberra for an early sitting to vote on an amended bill that was introduced into the house this morning. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 is being rammed through parliament without Australians having a chance to form an opinion on it. It is my job to represent the people of Western Australia, yet I haven't been given time to read the bill and listen to Australians. This is not democracy.

And this isn't just any bill. Laws relating to terrorism in our country couldn't be more important. The first draft of the bill saw Australians be given only 48 hours to read and comment on it. Despite this, there were over 7,000 submissions, and those are the ones that got through. Now the updated bill is being rammed through without any time to scrutinise it. It's okay for others here to say: 'Everything's alright now. Trust us. We gutted the old one, nobody's losing any rights and we're all going to be safe. Kumbaya.' Well, if we had some time to review it and consider it properly, we could have had an informed opinion.

The cynic inside me is wondering: 'Why do you silence your political opponents? What are you scared of?' One Nation has been warning of the rise in antisemitism and radical Islam for years. Antisemitism has surged in Australia under the Albanese Labor government. This bill does not fix the problem. The gun laws don't fix the problem. This bill is a dog's breakfast and won't stop antisemitism. It won't stop radical Islam. What it will stop is legitimate criticism and nationalism. The bill barely mentions antisemitism other than in the title. It is a facade. We know the government already has the powers to stop Nazis and deport them and to stop anyone they want coming here. They don't even like world class tennis players or political commentators. They have done it.

This bill is being rushed through this parliament without proper scrutiny or debate. We've come to expect this from Labor. It seems the least transparent government ever is at it again. It seems there have been a lot of backroom parties and One Nation wasn't invited. Now we will be told we didn't support the bill. Well, the bill is fundamentally dishonest, as it diverts attention away from Labor's incompetence. Australia doesn't need new laws; we need a government with the courage to enforce the current laws. As the government have already proven they can't enforce our current laws, we have no confidence in their being able to enforce this bill. Labor's incompetence has led to this mess, and now they are using it as an excuse to rush through a vague bill that doesn't define the very matters it should be addressing. The bill is so vague and rushed that the Australian Jewish Association was urging all members of parliament to reject the bill.

This bill, if passed, represents the greatest restriction on free speech that Australia has ever seen. It will result in drastic and draconian restrictions. Hate speech has always been about preventing discussions and censoring opponents. Banning free speech is not the answer, banning more of our rights is not the answer and banning more guns is not the answer. Banning terrorists is the answer.

At a time when Islamic terrorism is on the rise, Labor keeps importing more of it. Does 'ISIS brides' ring any bells? This is what is putting our country in danger. Every Australian needs to push for the deportation of the small number of radicalised terrorists that the government have allowed to migrate here. We must stop bringing in more. The Department of Home Affairs has revealed there are 230 potential terrorists living in Australia. They are taking part in anti-extremism programs—taxpayer funded, I'm guessing. One-third of them are under 18 years old, and 40 per cent are primarily motivated by violent extremist ideology. They must be deported. Australia cannot be a home for terrorists. The Labor government are deliberately creating this dangerous situation because it fits their globalist agenda. This bill fits their globalist agenda.

Just one day after the massacre, Labor went to the top drawer of their pet projects and pulled out their censorship and gun laws. The Commonwealth Criminal Code already criminalises the urging or advocating of violence against groups or individuals; threats of violence or property damage; and conduct intended to cause, or reckless as to causing, serious harm. These provisions have been in the Criminal Code since 2010. They are not new. Nobody has been prosecuted under sections 80.2A to 80.2BE ever—not once. Prosecutions have been made under state, but not federal, criminal law. Now, the penalties are being increased for provisions that have never been used. The constitutionality of this bill is in doubt. It will result in a referral to the High Court.

It seems to be the modus operandi of this Labor government: write a bill that isn't constitutional and ram it through the parliament, guillotining any debate and silencing dissenting voices. The Australian CDC Bill and the environmental reforms bills are examples of this. Now we have the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026—split, redrafted and forced through in one day. Australians are being force-fed globalist control. In the House of Representatives today, Labor voted against an amendment to the proposed bill to make the burning of the Australian flag a crime. Who do you people represent?

Prime Minister Albanese and the Labor Party have decided to deflect any and all responsibility at a time when people are at the depths of incredible grief and loss. One Nation are not going away and vow to expose this government's culpability. Albanese has got to go. I intend to move the amendment standing in my name, as circulated in the chamber.

The parliament is sitting tonight because Australia experienced an act of domestic terrorism on our shores just one month ago. This was the worst terrorism event in Australia in our nation's history. This is an event that will forever change our nation. Australians will never feel safe again after two hate filled Islamist extremists perpetrated a callous attack on Australian Jewish families at Bondi Beach on 14 December last year. This attack on Jewish families on our soil is an attack on all Australian families. An horrific event such as what occurred on 14 December calls for a demonstration of unifying leadership from our nation's government. And, unfortunately, it is what is likely to be the defining moment of the prime ministership of Mr Albanese, as he has systematically failed to rise to the occasion yet again.

He failed in the immediate aftermath of the attack by refusing to call out Islamic extremism and antisemitism in our country and, instead, sought to create a political diversion with this attack on one million law-abiding firearm owners. Australians have seen through that diversion, whether or not they are law-abiding firearm owners, and unfortunately the Senate, with the Greens and Labor joining together, has passed that legislation.

The Prime Minister initially refused to call a royal commission. He needed Jewish families to be publicly crying and begging him before he could bring himself to. The Australian legal fraternity, sports stars, community members, the opposition and crossbenchers were all calling for a royal commission so that our country could understand how such an abhorrent thing could happen in our corner of the Earth, which has been such a place of solace for the Jewish community.

He refused to call a royal commission in the same way that he refused to act on the growing antisemitism post the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas. The slaughter of Israelis and the spike in antisemitism are unparalleled. He instigated, under pressure, an antisemitism envoy who handed him recommendations for action six months ago. They are not in place. We've debated in this chamber his inaction ad nauseam for 2½ years. We've borne witness to the antisemitism in our own communities—whether it be Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or beyond—and it has fallen on deaf ears with the Greens, it has fallen on deaf ears with the Labor Party, and it has fallen on the deaf ears of this Prime Minister.

The real tragedy of the Bondi attack is that the government has had more than two years to respond and take action, and it has failed to do so. There are many things the government could have done to protect our Jewish community which don't even require legislation in this place. I've sat around a cabinet table, a national security committee and an expenditure review committee. You can make decisions in government. You can actually make things happen. This government could have assisted Jewish families in the aftermath of that and assisted them in paying for the armed guards that Australian Jewish children have to attend school with. That didn't require the Senate to come back. Hate legislation is not required to take practical action and to protect Australian children going to school—because, right now, the Jewish community is paying for armed guards at kindergartens and schools right across this country. That is unacceptable.

The government could have called out antisemitism and Islamic extremism without, on every single occasion, drawing this false equivalence with Islamophobia as if it is somehow equivalent. The data says no. Mosques are not being bombed, children attending Islamic schools are not being spat on, and our wonderful Muslim community in this country is not being shot as they celebrate Eid.

Instead of taking the invitation of bipartisanship from the coalition to come together in the face of this tragedy on the very next day and sit down as the parties of government, saying, 'Despite our philosophical and political differences, how do we address this scourge, and how do we address it in a way that meets community expectations?' this prime minister chose to play politics. He could've brought the opposition into his confidence to develop and agree on legislative changes to protect our Jewish community and the wider community.

The evidence of this failure has been writ large over the last five days. Poorly drafted legislation has been rushed through this parliament, and parliamentarians, in both houses and of all creeds and colours, have made the point that this is a bad way to legislate and it is a shame for our parliament to behave this way. We don't always agree, but we're in this place because we think parliament matters and the Australian people's views should matter. It's our responsibility and job to bring the diversity of views to the table in order to find solutions. We've had poorly drafted legislation rushed through the parliament that was guillotined in the House and guillotined in the Senate. There's been no normal scrutiny and no public advice from impacted stakeholders, community groups, agencies, experts, academics or the legal fraternity. There's been none of that.

Last week, the government's legislation was effectively friendless in the community. That forced the Prime Minister to split the bill. He said previously that it couldn't be separated. When the parliament rises tomorrow ahead of Thursday's day of mourning, the sad reality is neither of the bills set to pass the parliament enjoy bipartisan support. As an Australian who has strongly supported and been a close friend of our Jewish community for many years—I am a proud Zionist and I'm sure the haters will hate on me online as they do every time I say that—it pains me to witness the way this government is trashing the normal process of parliamentary scrutiny in a vain attempt to secure a fleeting political win off the grief of our Jewish community.

I want to commend the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, the shadow minister for home affairs, Senator Duniam, and the shadow minister for foreign affairs, Senator Cash, for the good-faith way they have conducted negotiations with the government on this bill. It's been a terrible example of legislative process, with over 500 pages of documents to do with the legislation subjected to committee investigation with almost no notice and critically important stakeholders provided with no genuine opportunity to scrutinise the proposed laws.

The report of PJCIS, our intelligence and security committee—which I've had the great honour to sit on in the past—had a dissenting report. The report was tabled far too late to contribute meaningful amendments. This is not the way it's supposed to work. That is why tonight, instead of sitting till tomorrow so all senators could have their say on this legislation and the bits they agree with, could outline the pieces that they don't agree with and could ask questions of ministers—which communities expect this chamber to be able to provide—all of that's being guillotined in a guillotined debate. Given the potential serious implications for the freedoms of Australian citizens, national security legislation deserves to pass a very high bar of scrutiny and expert development.

Unfortunately, despite the many positive elements of this legislation, the government has not been able to convince my party room, the National Party, that adequate safeguards are in place for the proposed hate crimes. We do want to ban extreme organisations that would seek to do our community harm. We would have liked to have been able to have the opportunity to participate robustly in a timely way with expert advice to get to that place. It is for this reason that I will foreshadow an amendment to the second reading debate on this bill to refer this legislation to the scrutiny of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee of the Senate for inquiry and to report swiftly by 2 March 2026.

This public process, unlike the sham PJCIS inquiry that was run, where submissions have not even all been uploaded. As the bill is passing the House of Representatives, stakeholders across this country took the time in the limited time they had to put in their views, and the public and senators, the House of Representatives, haven't been even able to avail themselves of that wisdom being made public in time for votes to be cast. This government makes a mockery of their Bondi response in how they treat this parliament and in how they treat the parliamentarians that Australians have sent here to work hard on their behalf.

Everything you need to know about this Prime Minister is writ large in the last month. It's all about the politics. It is still Sydney University student politics and it is an affront to those killed. The Bondi Islamic terrorist attack is an affront and an abuse of power against the million law-abiding firearm owners who have taken a hit because it sounds tough to get tough on gun laws when they're not the issue, because you are too gutless to even put the words 'Islamic extremism' in the bill that's supposed to deal with it. Of course the National Party supports tougher migration laws to get hate preachers off our streets, on a plane and out of our country to stop the harm of radicalisation. But this Prime Minister has used this opportunity to divide our country, to divide this parliament, for his own political advantage and that says everything about this man who we call Prime Minister.

Our Senate inquiry will give the parliament adequate time to properly scrutinise the bill, to call the expert witnesses, to have the debate in public and it will allow us to pass this very, very quickly. I urge senators to do the right thing, to support our push for a Senate inquiry and more time to get this right, because, as you have heard tonight, it's not right. The inquiry could allow community organisations to put forward their views and ultimately recommend any amendments that might be necessary to protect Australia's Jewish community. I will also be moving amendments circulated in my name to the bill, and Senator Canavan will also be moving amendments that have the support of the National Party. These amendments in their totality provide National Party MPs and senators with further confidence that adequate safeguards are in place.

In closing my contribution so other members can participate, I reflect the deep disappointment in a Labor Party government that is not able to bring the parliament a genuinely bipartisan set of legislative proposals that would have done justice to our parliament, our people and the slain from the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack.

This bill is being debated in extraordinary circumstances. It comes after the antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi, carried out on the first day of Hanukkah, a deliberate attack of targeted hatred that took innocent lives, traumatised survivors and turned a place of everyday safety into a scene of terror for Jewish Australians and the nation. In recalling parliament, our first action was to come together through the condolence motion to honour those who were killed and those whose lives were forever changed. Our next responsibility is to act.

This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, is about drawing clear lines around what Australia will and will not tolerate. It's about ensuring that those who seek to spread hatred, radicalise others or exploit positions of authority to encourage violence face consequences that reflect the seriousness of their conduct. This is about protecting Australians. The government originally developed an integrated package of reforms. That was the right approach. Hate does not exist in isolation. Extremism does not respect neat legislative boundaries. Criminal law, migration settings, firearms regulations and intelligence powers all intersect when it comes to public safety.

We govern in the parliament that Australians elected. Faced with the reality that the full package would not pass as one bill, the government made a clear and responsible choice: we split the legislation so the urgent and necessary reforms would not be delayed. This bill represents part of that original response that deals directly with criminal law and migration powers. It should not be read as a lesser response. It is a serious and substantial set of reforms.

This bill changes what happens when the hate moves from rhetoric into real harm. When a person in a position of authority uses their standing to advocate violence or threaten harm against a community, the law now responds with clarity. Influence brings responsibility. Where that responsibility is abused to radicalise or incite violence, the consequences are serious and reflect the risks created. When hatred escalates into threats, intimidation or violence, the law no longer treats those acts as isolated or incidental. Hate crimes are designed to do more than just injure an individual. They are intended to unsettle entire communities. This bill strengthens penalties so the law recognises that broader impact. Where a crime is driven by racial or ethnic hatred, courts are required to take that motivation into account at sentencing. That matters because crimes motivated by hate leave deeper and longer lasting harm, well beyond the moment the offence is committed.

The bill also addresses the organised nature of modern extremism. Groups that exist to promote or normalise hate based violence can now be disrupted before they embed themselves. The new listing framework targets recruitment, funding and coordination, supported by intelligence, advice, legal safeguards and parliamentary oversight. The public display of hate symbols is also dealt with more effectively. These symbols are used to intimidate, to glorify violence and to signal exclusion, including online. The changes in this bill strengthen enforcement in a modern context by preserving legitimate uses for education, journalism and historical discussion.

The bill further strengthens migration settings so that the people who seek to come to Australia to spread hatred or extremism can be refused entry or removed. Australia remains an open and welcoming country, but openness does not require tolerating those who seek to divide or incite harm. Taken together, these measures are not about overreach; they're about protection. They allow earlier intervention, clearer responses and stronger backing for communities who have been targeted by hate.

As a Tasmanian I cannot approach this debate without reflecting on Port Arthur. That tragedy changed our country. What followed was not perfect, but it was decisive. Across political parties and across jurisdictions, Australians chose safety over hesitation. That moment was defined by unity. We have, again, been confronted with a moment that demands the same resolve. Most people in this place understand that. Many have acted in good faith, but there has also been division. History remembers whether parliaments rose to the occasion.

This bill does not do everything—no single piece of legislation ever does—but it does something important. It moves the law forward. It responds to a real threat. The Jewish community has asked this parliament to act. This government has listened. Where consensus was possible, we have sought it. Where delay would have left Australians less safe, we have chosen progress. I commend this bill wholeheartedly to the Senate.

I rise today to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. I want to start by, again, remembering that we are here today because 15 people were murdered in a terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community in Bondi—the largest terrorist attack to happen on our shores. It was an attack designed to inspire fear and divide us. Jewish Australians, including here in the ACT, who were already concerned for the safety are now even more afraid. Parents have been left worrying about the safety of their children. Synagogues, schools and community centres, already needing constant security, have had to further upgrade protective measures—an unacceptable situation for any community in Australia.

We hoped such an attack would never happen on our shores, but it has, and we must respond with compassion and with unity. And, more than a right, it is the responsibility of our elected government to bring forward legislation and policy to respond to events such as these. It is what the community expects. However, it's also the responsibility of this Senate to review the government's bills, and particularly in a way that opens up scrutiny to the Australian people so that experts and the communities we represent can have their say and contribute to the laws that govern this land. That hasn't happened adequately in this instance. It's been farcical. We still have nine nongovernment senators on the speaking list to speak to this incredibly important consequential bill who will, likely, not get the opportunity.

Crossbenchers only received this bill, in this iteration, at 10 o'clock this morning, a mere 12 hours before being expected to vote on it. I too called for parliament to resume early so we could actually start this process and commence scrutiny, not to hastily legislate something in a single day and, for the Senate, in an afternoon and an evening. We should have done the condolence motion, introduced these bills, started the debate and then referred them to a Senate inquiry for more scrutiny and the time to properly consider, develop and negotiate amendments in good faith before voting in February or March. The crossbench, including the Greens, were not able to participate in the PJCIS inquiry—an inquiry that held two half-day hearings and only allowed three days for public submissions on the exposure draft legislation, which was already being changed less than a week after it was released. At the last election one-third of Australians gave their first preference to someone other than a major party, and, despite that representation, not a single crossbencher was allowed to ask questions of officials, experts and other witnesses at the inquiry about how these laws are expected to operate.

This bill is extremely consequential and potentially has big implications for people's freedoms to speak, to dissent and, potentially, to protest. It has implications for the kinds of protections vulnerable and persecuted groups are afforded and ensuring they apply equally to everyone. Rushing this process undermines trust in the government and in our political institutions. It undermines trust in this Senate, which should not act as a rubber stamp and should not conduct its business without debate.

Giving people a chance to be heard, coming together to work out what we can agree on and getting better at disagreeing well is so important when it comes to rebuilding social unity. We should be soberly considering changes to our national laws, out of respect for the people who have sent us here to represent them. We have a crisis of trust in political institutions, and the way this bill has been brought here today makes that worse. In moments such as these, where we are called to act together to improve community safety, good parliamentary process should not be seen as a barrier to good policy, but as an enabler.

In these moments, we have to listen to what the communities who sent us here are saying, and I fear that has not happened. My commitment to people of the ACT is to consider all bills in good faith and on their merits, and also to consult widely with experts and the community before I cast my vote on their behalf. This is a responsibility I take very seriously. In the time I've had available to me, I've done my best to do that.

Yesterday, I held three roundtable discussions, which included experts and members of the ACT community, about the firearms measures and on the exposure draft of this bill. This roundtable included leaders and a range of representatives from the ACT's Jewish community, Muslim community, Indian community, Chinese community, Canberra Palestinian community and South Sudanese community. It also included faith leaders, experts in civil liberties and human rights, women's safety organisations and campaigners for LGBTI rights. I also had the benefit of hearing from the ACT's Human Rights Commissioner.

While it's true to say that not everyone feels the same way about this bill, everyone was united in saying that the government should slow down and take the time to properly consult on the merits, impacts and risks of this bill. This was also reflected in a survey of Canberrans that I conducted over the weekend. Across about 1,000 responses, 75 per cent of Canberrans told me that they had serious concerns with the exposure draft of the bill and they thought it should be the subject of greater scrutiny before it passed.

Canberrans have told me that if we're going to pursue these laws then they need to be broader and protect those in our communities who are regularly the targets of hatred. This includes Jewish Australians, Muslim Australians, First Nations people, people with disability, the LGBTI community and all of our culturally and religiously diverse communities. Ninety-four per cent of people who took my survey said that this was a priority for them. They wanted equality under the law. A huge number of Canberrans—again, 94 per cent—told me that it was very important to avoid substantial restrictions on freedom of expression, including the right to protest. This is a challenging balance to get right, which makes it so important that we take the time to consult properly and carefully consider the drafting. Another concern raised included the religious text exemption. The visa changes and the listing of hate groups, both of which lack due process provisions, are among other concerns.

I want to take a moment to talk about the feedback I've received from the Jewish community in Canberra over the past month. Obviously, the Jewish community is not a monolith. Like any community in Australia, there are a range of views. There are many who feel that these laws to curb antisemitism are urgent, and who told me that in the wake of Bondi they felt isolated, alone, desperately worried for the safety of their community and desperately sad, but not entirely surprised, that years of growing antisemitism culminated in this most hateful attack.

They are calling for immediate measures to better protect them—this legislation, but also concrete measures like security upgrades and longer term initiatives like better education. There are others in the Jewish community who worry this bill may make antisemitism worse. I recently received a letter from 14 members of the Jewish community here in the ACT, and I thought, rather than paraphrase it, I would read part of it directly to the Senate. It says:

Our purpose in writing is not to minimise antisemitism or deny its reality. Antisemitism is real, it is dangerous, and it must be confronted seriously. But we are deeply troubled by the way Jewish identity and Jewish fear are being invoked to justify a legislative package that may reach far beyond the prevention of violence or intimidation, and into the regulation of political speech, protest, and association.

We have specific concerns about the substance of the Bill, including lowered intent thresholds for speech offences, expanded executive powers, and provisions that risk criminalising legitimate protest against the Israeli state and its conduct in Gaza. As Jews, we are particularly alive to the deep risks inherent in increasing the powers of the state to police language, behaviour and association—powers which have historically been used against our parents and grandparents.

We ask that you consider our views as Jewish constituents in the ACT. From our perspective, opposition to Israel's actions does not in itself amount to antisemitism, and we do not want our identity to be invoked as a justification for laws that risk weakening democratic freedoms for everyone.

We need to be able to recognise and respond to the rise in antisemitism in Australia. We need to acknowledge that the terrorist attack in Bondi was a repulsive act of antisemitism that targeted the Jewish community and that Jewish members of our community have been subject to the most vile and appalling treatment—from being spat on to having places of worship firebombed. I believe we can do that at the same time as we can recognise the hurt and ongoing hatred and discrimination being experienced by so many other people in our community as well.

The Bosnian Imam Ismet Purdic and his wife were attacked in Melbourne. Here in Canberra, the deputy chair of the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum, Diana Abdel-Rahman, was attacked in the street while wearing her hijab. Aunty Violet told my roundtable about her Ngunnawal people being called all manner of vile, racist terms, being subject to online abuse and being discriminated against institutionally—not to mention our appalling nationwide record on closing the gap and deaths in custody. These are a just few examples. They are by no means comprehensive, but they are illustrative of why protections need to apply broadly and why more needs to be done beyond a rushed and flawed bill.

Fundamentally, we can't legislate our way out of hate. Hate speech laws and antivilification laws have a place, but alone they will not solve the undercurrent of racism, extremism and violence in our society. This bill treats the symptoms; it is not the cure, and I feel that we, as legislators and representatives, do a disservice to the Australian community in not taking the time to consider the drivers of all forms of racism, discrimination and violence in this country that contribute to so many people feeling unsafe in our neighbourhoods and feeling like they are guests in their own country.

As a start, the government could actually respond to the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework, which presented 63 recommendations—back in 2024 now—on how to start to address this issue more comprehensively. We've heard nothing from the government about this, not even a response.

I cannot in good faith support this bill today. From the 12 hours in which I've had this bill, I cannot confidently say that the benefits outweigh the risks. I cannot confidently say that this bill strikes the right balance between stopping hate speech and preserving a person's rate to express themselves freely and to protest. I will try to move amendments that I think go some way to improving the bill, but I still feel overwhelmingly that more time should be taken to study its merits and its impact. I will also move an amendment that broadens the protections to capture other people who experience racism and violence every day, including to people with disability, LGBTI Australians, religious communities and our culturally diverse communities. I'll move another amendment to clarify that criticising the policies, actions or institutions of a foreign state alone cannot be taken as hate speech for the purpose of these laws. Protest and the right of people to criticise our government and foreign governments is not hate speech, and my amendment will make that clear. I'm also putting forward that an independent review of these laws commence in two years so that there is at least an opportunity for someone to review these laws properly.

Finally, I'll be moving an amendment to remove the mandatory minimum sentences for the hate speech laws which, shamefully, were passed last year. There is no evidence that they work and it is actually against the Labor Party's platform to support mandatory minimum sentences. They are antithetical to our good justice system. They make justice less transparent and less fair, and they should never have passed this place last year. It brings great shame on the Senate that, in 2025, we introduced mandatory minimum sentences in Australia.

I thank those of my Independent Senate colleagues who have agreed to co-sponsor these amendments. I hope other senators can see fit to vote for them on their merits as well.

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 is the first of many steps the coalition is taking to make sure that the national tragedy at Bondi never happens again. Now, let's get the facts straight: the intent of this bill is to designate and disrupt extremist ideological organisations that are radicalising Australian people to commit terror on our land. It will increase border control by deporting or refusing visas to people posing extreme risk to our national security.

In short, this bill is a response to the worst terror attack on Australian soil—an attack driven by extremist ideology that is fixated on the violent destruction of a group of people in Australia that have done nothing but exist and contribute to Australia in a peaceful way. We are here because the Labor government's approach to combating antisemitism has been woeful.

Pursuant to the order agreed to yesterday, the time allotted for debate on this bill has expired. I will now put the questions before the chair and then put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill. I will deal first with the second reading amendments, starting with the amendment moved by Senator Payman and also on behalf of Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Thorpe and Tyrrell.

On behalf of the Australian Greens, I request that part (a) be put separately to part (b). I confirm that we will be voting differently on those two parts.

The question is that the amendment on sheet 3612 be agreed to. The Greens have requested the amendment be split. We are dealing with part (a).

The question is that part (b) of the amendment on sheet 3612 be agreed to.

Identical second reading amendments have been circulated by the Nationals and by Pauline Hanson's One Nation. I will only put the question once in respect of those amendments. The question is that the amendments on sheets 3621 and 3625 be agreed to.

National Party of Australia's circulated amendment—

Omit all words after "That", substitute "the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 March 2026".

Pauline Hanson's One Nation's circulated amendment—

Omit all words after "That", substitute "the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 March 2026".

The question now is that the bill be now read a second time.

I will now deal with the Committee of the Whole amendments, starting with the amendment circulated by the opposition. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3617 be agreed to.

Opposition's circulated amendment

(1) Schedule 1, page 42 (after line 18), at the end of the Schedule, add:

Part 8 — Burning or desecrating the Australian flag

Criminal Code Act 1995

67 After Subdivision B of Division 80 of the Criminal Code

Insert:

Subdivision BA — Burning or desecrating the Australian flag

80.1AD Burning or desecrating the Australian flag

A person commits an offence if the person burns or desecrates the Australian National Flag (within the meaning of the Flags Act 1953).

Penalty: Imprisonment for 2 years.

I will now deal with the amendments circulated by Senator McKenzie on behalf of the Nationals. The question is that the amendments on sheet 3613 and 3616 be agreed to.

I ask that the amendments on sheets 3613 and 3616 be put separately.

The question is that the amendments on sheet 3613 be agreed to.

National Party of Australia's circulated amendments—

SHEET 3613

(1) Schedule 1, item 13, page 14 (after line 8), after subparagraph 114A.4(1)(a)(i), insert:

(ia) has glorified, morally supported or excused terrorism; or

(2) Schedule 1, item 13, page 14 (after line 12), after paragraph 114A.4(1)(a), insert:

(ab) if the AFP Minister has given the organisation a notice under subsection (6) asking the organisation to disavow violence and terrorism—there is no disavowal undertaking (see subsections (6) to (9)) in effect for the organisation; and

(3) Schedule 1, item 13, page 15 (after line 14), at the end of section 114A.4, add:

One-off disavowal undertaking process

(6) Before the Governor-General makes a prohibited hate group regulation specifying an organisation, the AFP Minister may give the organisation a written notice asking the organisation to disavow violence and extremism.

(7) The organisation may, before the end of 7 days after receiving the notice, give the AFP Minister a written undertaking (a disavowal undertaking) stating that the organisation:

(a) disavows violence and terrorism; and

(b) will not engage in, prepare or plan to engage in, or assist the engagement in violence or terrorism.

(8) For the purposes of paragraph 114A.4(1)(ab), a disavowal undertaking:

(a) takes effect for an organisation when it is received by the AFP Minister; and

(b) if, at any time after the undertaking is given, the AFP Minister becomes satisfied that it is reasonably necessary for the organisation to be specified by a prohibited hate group regulation to protect the Australian community or part of the Australian community against harm of any of the kinds referred to in paragraph 114A.1(1)(a)—ceases to have effect for the organisation when the AFP Minister becomes so satisfied.

(9) An organisation cannot give the AFP Minister a disavowal undertaking more than once (despite subsections (6) and (7)).

I will now deal with the second part of that question, which is the amendments on sheet 3616. The question is that the amendments on sheet 3616 be agreed to.

National Party of Australia's circulated amendments—

(1) Schedule 1, item 13, page 9 (lines 13 to 19), omit paragraph 114A.1(1)(a), substitute:

(a) protect the Australian community or part of the Australian community from politically motivated serious violence or the promotion of communal serious violence by prohibiting organisations that engage in, prepare or plan to engage in, or assist the engagement in, or advocate engaging in, conduct constituting a hate crime; and

(2) Schedule 1, item 13, page 10 (lines 4 to 9), omit subsection 114A.1(2).

(3) Schedule 1, item 13, page 12 (lines 28 to 31), omit paragraph 114A.3(2)(b), substitute:

(b) that would, in all the circumstances, cause a reasonable person who is the target, or a member of a target group, to fear violence.

(4) Schedule 1, item 13, page 13 (line 12), omit subparagraph 114A.3(5)(a)(i), substitute:

(i) causing serious harm that is physical harm to a person (the targeted person);

I will now deal with the amendments circulated by Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman, Thorpe and Tyrrell. As the amendments on sheet 3626 were not circulated within the required timeframe, they can only be considered by leave. Is a senator seeking leave?

I seek leave for amendments on sheet 3626 to be considered.

Leave granted.

The question is that the amendments on sheet 3626 be agreed to—Senator Bell?

I ask that the amendment on sheet 3583 be put separately, as we intend to vote differently on that to the others.

I'll put that one now. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3583 be agreed to.

Senators D avid Pocock 's , Senator Lambie 's , Senator Payman 's , Senator Thorpe 's and Senator Tyrrell 's circulated amendments—

(1) Schedule 1, page 42 (after line 18), at the end of the Schedule, add:

Part 9 — Repealing mandatory minimum sentences for hate crime offences

Crimes Act 1914

68 Paragraph 15AAA(1)(a)

Omit "1AA", substitute "1C".

69 Section 16AAA (table items 1AA to 1B)

Repeal the table items.

70 Subparagraph 16AAC(2)(b)(i)

Omit "1AA", substitute "1C".

71 Subparagraph 16AAC(3)(b)(i)

Omit "1AA", substitute "1C".

72 Application

The amendments of the Crimes Act 1914 made by this Part apply in relation to conduct engaged in after the commencement of this item.

I'll now deal with the remainder of those amendments. The question is that the amendments on sheets 3610, 3615 and 3626 be agreed to.

Senator D avid Pocock 's , Senator Lambie 's , Senator Payman 's , Senator Thorpe 's and Senator Tyrrell's circulated amendments—

SHEET 3610

(1) Page 2 (after line 16), after clause 3, insert:

4 Review of operation of Act

(1) The Attorney-General must cause an independent review to be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by this Act.

(2) Without limiting the matters that may be considered when conducting the review, the review must consider the operation and appropriateness of the mandatory minimum sentences in table items 1AA, 1A and 1B in the table in section 16AAA of the Crimes Act 1914 for offences against the following provisions in the Criminal Code Act 1995:

(a) subsection 80.2BE(1) or (2) (advocating force or violence through causing damage to property);

(b) subsection 80.2H(1) (public display of prohibited Nazi symbols or giving Nazi salute);

(c) subsection 80.2HA(1) (public display of prohibited terrorist organisation symbols).

Consultation requirement

(3) The review must provide for public consultation, including providing for public submissions over a period of at least 2 calendar months.

Expert panel conducting the review

(4) The review must be conducted by an expert panel comprised of 3 members appointed by the Attorney-General.

(5) The Attorney-General must ensure that the members of the expert panel collectively possess experience or knowledge in all of the following fields:

(a) human rights;

(b) hate speech;

(c) criminal law;

(d) law enforcement;

(e) civil liberties;

(f) constitutional law;

(g) migration law;

(h) national security;

(i) intelligence.

(6) A member of the expert panel must not be any of the following:

(a) a person engaged under the Public Service Act 1999;

(b) a serving member of the Australian Defence Force, the Australia Federal Police or an Australian intelligence agency;

(c) a current or former member of the Parliament, or a current or former member of a Parliament of State or Territory;

(d) any other person who has a material conflict of interest in relation to this Act.

Timing of review

(7) The review must commence no later than 2 years after the day this section commences.

(8) The expert panel must complete the review before the end of the period of 12 months beginning on the day the review commences.

Attorney-General to be given report of review

(9) The expert panel must give the Attorney-General a written report of the review as soon as practicable after the review is completed.

Attorney-General to table report of review

(10) The Attorney-General must cause a copy of the report of the review to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 10 sitting days of that House after the Attorney-General receives the report.

Government response to recommendations

(11) If the report sets out one or more recommendations to the Commonwealth Government:

(a) as soon as practicable after receiving the report, the Attorney-General must cause a statement setting out the Commonwealth Government's response to each of the recommendations to be prepared; and

(b) within 6 months after the day the report is first tabled in a House of the Parliament, the Attorney-General must table a copy of the statement in each House of the Parliament.

_____

SHEET 3615

(1) Schedule 1, item 11, page 8 (after line 28), after subsection 16A(2AAD), insert:

(2AAE) For the purposes of subparagraph (2)(mb)(i), a person's conduct is not taken to be motivated by hatred solely because it involves criticism of the policies, actions or institutions of a foreign state, or discussion of matters of international law.

_____

SHEET 3626

(1) Schedule 2, item 7, page 47 (after line 31), after subsection 500A(1C), insert:

Merits review

(1D) Despite anything else in this Act, Part 5 of this Act has effect as if a decision to refuse to grant, or to cancel, a temporary safe haven visa because of the application of subsection (1A) of this section is a reviewable migration decision.

(2) Schedule 2, item 11, page 49 (after line 34), after subsection 501(11B), insert:

Merits review

(11C) Despite anything else in this Act, Part 5 of this Act has effect as if a decision to refuse to grant, or to cancel, a visa because of the application of subsection (6A) of this section is a reviewable migration decision.

I will now deal with the Committee of the Whole amendments circulated by Senators David Pocock, Lambie, Payman and Tyrrell. The question is that the amendments on sheet 3587 be agreed to.

Senator David Pocock's, Senator Lambie's, Senator Payman's and Senator Tyrrell's circulated amendment s

(1) Schedule 1, item 10, page 8 (line 12), omit "distinguished by race, or national or ethnic origin", substitute "distinguished by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, or national or ethnic origin, or because of the target person or target group's personal association (whether as a relative or otherwise) with a person who is distinguished by any of those attributes".

(2) Schedule 1, item 11, page 8 (lines 24 and 25), omit "race, or national or ethnic origin, of the target person or the persons in the target group", substitute "race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, or national or ethnic origin of the target person or the persons in the target group or because of the target person or target group's personal association (whether as a relative or otherwise) with a person who is distinguished by any of those attributes".

(3) Schedule 1, item 11, page 8 (lines 26 to 28), omit subsection 16A(2AAD), substitute:

(2AAD) For the purposes of paragraph (2)(mb), it is immaterial whether:

(a) the target person; or

(b) members of the target group; or

(c) a person whom the target person or members of the target group have a personal association (whether as a relative or otherwise);

actually are distinguished by the particular race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality, or national or ethnic origin.

I will now deal with the Committee of the Whole amendments circulated by Australia's Voice. The question is that items 3, 6 and 9 of schedule 2 stand as printed.

Australia's Voice's circulated amendments—

(1) Schedule 2, item 3, page 44 (lines 1 and 2), to be opposed.

(2) Schedule 2, item 6, page 46 (lines 3 and 4), to be opposed.

(3) Schedule 2, item 9, page 48 (lines 1 and 2), to be opposed.

I will now deal with the amendment circulated by Senator Tyrrell. The question is that the amendment on sheet 3604 be agreed to.

Senator Tyrrell's circulated amendment

(1) Schedule 1, item 13, page 14 (after line 18), after subsection 114A.4(1), insert:

(1A) To avoid doubt, before the Governor-General makes a prohibited hate group regulation specifying an organisation, the AFP Minister must recommend that the Governor-General do so.

Note: The AFP Minister must receive advice from the Director-General before making the recommendation (see subsection 114A.5(2)).

Parliamentary approval

(1B) A prohibited hate group regulation does not come into effect until it has been approved by resolution of each House of the Parliament.

Question negatived.

I will now deal with the amendments circulated by Senator Canavan. The question is that the amendments on sheets 3622 and 3624 be agreed to.

I request that the two sheets be put separately, to facilitate a different vote from the Australian Greens.

The question is that the amendment on sheet 3622 be agreed to.

Senator Canavan's circulated amendment

(1) Schedule 1, item 13, page 14 (after 18), after subsection 114A.4(1), insert:

Parliamentary approval

(1A) A prohibited hate group regulation does not come into effect until it has been approved by a resolution supported by an absolute majority of each House of the Parliament.

The question is that the amendments on sheet 3624 be agreed to.

Senator Canavan's circulated amendments—

(1) Schedule 1, item 13, page 25 (after line 24), at the end of Division 114C, add:

114C.3 Cessation of effect of Part

This Part ceases to have effect at the end of 20 January 2029.

by leave—I, and also on behalf of Senator Thorpe, move the amendments on sheets 3588 and 3590:

SHEET 3588

(1) Schedule 2, item 4, page 45 (after line 19), after note 1, insert:

Note 1A: As per the judgement of the Federal Court in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, criticism of the practices, policies, and acts of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force or Zionism is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, not hate speech.

(2) Schedule 2, item 7, page 47 (after line 19), after note 1, insert:

Note 1A: As per the judgement of the Federal Court in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, criticism of the practices, policies, and acts of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force or Zionism is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, not hate speech.

(3) Schedule 2, item 10, page 49 (after line 17), after note 1, insert:

Note 1A: As per the judgement of the Federal Court in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, criticism of the practices, policies, and acts of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force or Zionism is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, not hate speech.

_____

SHEET 3590

(1) Page 2 (after line 16), after clause 3, insert:

4 General provisions about the purpose and application of this Act

(1) The purpose of this Bill to provide protections from vilification for people experiencing systemic injustice and structural oppression, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

(2) Nothing in this Act is intended to limit or threaten the ability of people to engage in protected political expression as protected by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights done at New York on 16 December 1966.

(3) Nothing in this Act is intended to limit or threaten the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as protected by:

(a) Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights done at New York on 16 December 1966; and

(b) Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights done at New York on 16 December 1966; and

(c) the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 13 September 2007.

(4) As per the judgement of the Federal Court in Wertheim v Haddad [2025] FCA 720, criticism of the practices, policies, and acts of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force or Zionism is not inherently criticism of Jewish people and is protected political speech, not hate speech.

The question is that the amendments as circulated by Senator Thorpe and moved by Senator Payman on sheets 3588 and 3590 be agreed to.

The question is that the remaining stages of the bill be agreed to and the bill be now passed.