Parliament has passed gun reform and hate speech laws following the Bondi terror attack.
The bills passed in a special sitting on Tuesday night, tightening gun ownership rules and increasing penalties for “hate preachers”.
On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the hate speech measures were “not as strong as we originally put forward but no doubt, the strongest... that have ever been in place in Australia”.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the Liberal Party had to “step up to fix” both bills with amendments to “close loopholes”.
Coalition partner The Nationals broke with the Liberals on the hate speech bill.
Bondi
On 14 December, two gunmen opened fire at a Jewish community event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing 15 people and injuring many more.
Hundreds had gathered to celebrate the start of the Jewish festival of Chanukah.
The mass shooting was declared a terrorist attack. In the wake of the attack, Albanese vowed to change gun and hate speech laws.
New laws
Initially, the Government sought to pass one bill covering both issues: gun reform and hate speech. However, widespread opposition forced it to split the bill into two.
The gun reform bill includes a national buyback scheme, and a new condition requiring firearm licence holders to be Australian citizens.
Under the buyback scheme, owners who surrender their guns will receive compensation, and the Australian Federal Police will oversee the destruction of surrendered weapons.
The Greens supported the gun reforms in the Senate, with Senator Steph Hodgins-May saying: “Taking dangerous weapons off our streets... is an essential first step in stopping violence like what we witnessed in Bondi.”
The Liberals, Nationals, and One Nation voted against this bill in both houses.
Several Senators from these parties suggested the bill would unfairly impact legal gun-owners who own weapons for farming or hunting.
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An amended version of the hate speech bill also passed Parliament last night.
Originally, the Government wanted the bill to make it illegal at the federal level to incite or promote hatred on the grounds of race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, unless someone is directly quoting from a religious text.
The Coalition and the Greens opposed this clause for different reasons — the Coalition could not agree on its possible impacts on freedom of speech, while the Greens wanted to see it expanded to other groups.
Without their support, the Government could not pass the bill, so it dropped this element.
Under the bill, a person found guilty of committing a hate crime as part of their role as a religious or spiritual leader faces up to 12 years in prison.
The Home Affairs Minister will have the power to refuse or cancel a visa for a non-citizen who is associated with a terrorist or hate group.
A new national framework will allow the Government to formally list “prohibited hate groups,” similar to how terrorist organisations are listed.
Ley said on Wednesday morning that the Liberals had worked to “narrow the scope of this bill to deal with... antisemitism and tackle radical Islamist extremism”.
Nationals
The Nationals broke with the Liberals on the hate speech bill in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
In the lower house, only one Nationals MP (former leader Michael McCormack) voted in favour of the bill, while the rest abstained.
In the upper house, Nationals Senators proposed a series of amendments, such as giving groups seven days to “disavow violence and extremism” before being listed.
After these amendments failed, four Nationals voted against the bill.
Unlike the Labor Party, the Coalition does not require its MPs to always vote with the party — unless they are in the Shadow Cabinet.
Three of the four Nationals MPs who voted against the hate speech bill – Bridget McKenzie, Susan McDonald, and Ross Cadell – are Shadow Ministers. (McDonald is in Queensland’s combined Liberal National Party, and chooses to sit with the Nationals).
The Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning that all three have drafted letters to resign from the frontbench.
