Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday that his government will seek to further expand restrictions on so-called “hate speech” in the wake of the Islamist terror attack against Jewish people on Bondi Beach in Sydney.
Speaking from the capital of Canberra on Monday, Prime Minister Albanese said his cabinet will seek to reach “as broad an agreement as possible” to implement stricter speech restrictions. The planned legislation will seek to counteract the “unprecedented radicalisation” of young people in Australia, he said, according to state broadcaster ABC.
His announcement came in the wake of an apparently ISIS-inspired terrorist shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, which saw 15 people shot and killed. The two suspects, father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram, are reported to have received military training in the Philippines and are believed to have had longstanding ties to ISIS-aligned groups.
Despite no reported indications that the Indian migrant and his Australian-born son were radicalised online, the Labor Party government apparently seems intent on further restricting speech in the already censorious country.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, who will be tasked with leading the legislative push, said that there will likely be a new criminal offence created for “inciting hatred” as well as a new aggravating offence for adults who attempt to radicalise or otherwise influence children online.
“This change is critical,” Rowland said. “Since 2001, 120 people have been convicted of terrorism offences and 10 were children. However, today, 17 of the 33 people before our courts are minors.”
“This unprecedented radicalisation of our youth must stop.”
Meanwhile, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said that there are also plans to create a “hate” register of banned organisations. The register would proscribe groups that do not meet the current threshold for terrorism while still banning them from operating in the country. He cited the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir and the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network as potential first targets.
“These organisations, for a long time have been able to take hate right to the threshold without using the words ‘violence’ and escape any further terrorist listing,” he said.
Amid the move to further crack down on speech, critics have circulated comments from Chris Minns, the leader of New South Wales, the state where the attack took place. Months before the attack, Minns admitted that censorship was necessary to allay tensions caused by mass migration.
In March, the NSW premier said, “We don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in peace.”
On top of planning new speech rules, the leftist Albanese government has also vowed to implement more controls on guns, with attacker Sajid Akram having been a legal owner of six guns despite Australia’s strict gun laws and his son was tied to ISIS figures. Despite Akhram having immigrated to Australia in the late 90s, there has been no discussion of restricting immigration from the leftist government.
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