This was an email to IPA members that was distributed on 22 January 2026, on the state of freedom of speech and political communication after the ‘Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026‘ was legislated.
This is a long email, and I am asking you to read all of it carefully.
What has just happened in Canberra is a really big deal, and you will only learn the truth about the so-called anti-hate group laws from the IPA.
This email will let you know what the IPA has been doing, provide context for the laws, outline why claims about ‘safeguards’ for freedoms are misplaced, and provide you with analysis of everything that is wrong with the laws.
You will see at the end (which I hope you will read until!) that there are lots of reasons to be optimistic, and it is important you understand that the massive public pushback against these laws is a sign that we are winning on freedom of speech.
First, the IPA is the only organisation in Australia that has been all over these terrible laws from day one. You can read the submission we put in on the original legislation here. You can read Adam Creighton’s excellent article published in The Australian here. In addition, you can read my article in the Daily Telegraph here, and watch my explainer video here.
You can also watch IPA research fellow Margaret Chambers’ video here from last week, which also covered the anti-vilification laws, later dumped by the government. You will see it has already been viewed over 230,000 times. And all of our digital content on this has been viewed 2.3 million times.
Make no mistake, the IPA was the driving force behind stopping these laws from being even worse than they now are. The original laws, for example, would have seen Australians going to jail, as we have seen in the UK, for social media posts about migration which were claimed to vilify someone on the basis of their race. Thank you for your support which has allowed us to do this work.
I was in Canberra from Sunday this week with my colleagues Morgan Begg and Margaret Chambers, where we briefed dozens of MPs on these terrible laws.
The legislation which passed on Tuesday night is an abomination. The passage of the so-called anti-hate group laws is an act of bipartisan cowardice, and a failure of our political leaders which has left Australia less free, less safe, and less unified.
While the primary blame is on the Albanese Government for proposing these tendentious laws, we remain deeply disappointed that the Liberal Party supported the legislation and ensured its passage through parliament.
While it should be noted that a majority of Liberal senators at least abstained from voting for the legislation, thanks in part to our efforts, it is unsettling that more didn’t vote no. In fact, only Alex Antic took the principled stand among Liberals to vote against the legislation and should be applauded for this. As should One Nation, the Greens, Senator Canavan, Senator Pocock, Senator McKenzie, Senator Cadell, and Senator McDonald, and all of those who voted against the laws. (You can read how each lower house MP voted here and how each Senator voted here.)
Once again, we have seen the ‘uniparty’ in action with Liberal and Labor working together to suppress the freedoms of mainstream Australians under the guise of national security. We have seen this before, as with the COVID-era laws where Liberal and Labor worked hand-in-glove, or the misinformation laws which were originally a brainchild of the Morrison government.
To understand the context for these laws, it is important to understand that Labor could not care less about freedom of speech. Labor is the party of centralised control, socialist values, and nasty sectarian politics. These laws in draft form have existed for a long time, and Labor were looking for an excuse to pass them, which they found with the Bondi Massacre. The laws were pulled from the bottom shelf of a Minister or bureaucrat’s office, dusted off, with some vague and meaningless references made to antisemitism, and the Liberals gave it their blessing.
The line of argument from some MPs is that there are sufficient safeguards in place to make sure the scope of these laws is limited and cannot be abused. This is not true.
If you read nothing else, then you need to know this: if the government wants to ban a group, then that group will be banned. The legislation is being marketed as targeting Hizb ut-Tahrir and neo-Nazi groups, but the powers are much wider. Conceivably the ambit could include groups such as the IPA, Advance Australia, and Jewish organisations.
Let me talk you through this. The process for a group being banned is the following:
- The Minister for Home Affairs (currently Tony Burke) can declare a group a hate group if the Minister believes the group is engaged in committing or advocated committing ‘hate crimes’ (I will come back to how hate crime is defined).
There are no effective limits to this power: the Minister only has to believe the group is committing a hate crime. The hate crimes could have been alleged to have occurred before these laws passed, no conviction of a crime is required, and the Minister is not required to observe any requirements of procedural fairness in deciding whether or not the he or she is satisfied a group can be declared a hate group.
- In order to exercise this power the Minister must receive advice from the Director-General of Security of ASIO.
The Director-General of Security of ASIO is a political appointee and will inevitably be subject to political pressure to align with the government’s wishes. We should think about not who is in that chair right now, but who will be there in the future.
- The Leader of the Opposition must be briefed before a declaration takes effect.
Only a briefing needs to be provided. The Leader of the Opposition cannot stop the listing of a group. This amounts to nothing more than a notice to the Opposition of what the government will do.
- The Attorney-General must be consulted.
The Attorney-General is a member of the government and will follow the government’s line. (And remember, the current Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, was one of the chief advocates of misinformation and disinformation laws.)
- A review of the listing is to be undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.
A review cannot stop the listing, so this has no practical effect.
- The listing of a hate group is disallowable by Parliament.
Under the laws, a single house of Parliament can disallow a Minister’s declaration if the house does so within the disallowance period, which is usually within 15 days of the Minster’s’ declaration being tabled in the house. The bill has a provision to extend the disallowance period by up to 8 days under certain circumstances.
So this means that for a limited time, either the lower house or the Senate can, in effect, stop the Minister from listing a group. Obviously, the lower house will not do this because the government has the numbers in that house. So the only thing stopping the unfettered use of this power is the Senate. That’s it. That’s the only real “safeguard.” This is the same Senate, by the way, that just voted for these laws. I also wanted to outline some of the fundamental failures of the legislation, and outline the kind of scenarios in which the current or future governments could abuse the unprecedented powers that have been granted.
Contrary to proponents’ claims, extremist organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir has not been banned.
The laws passed, yet Hizb ut-Tahrir is still in existence. There are no groups listed in the legislation. The laws create the ability for the government to do so, but whether it actually does so remains to be seen. When you hear MPs telling you they have voted to ban extremist groups, they are not being honest.
In fact, Hizb ut-Tahrir, far from having been banned, is now more active than ever in announcing it will be launching a legal challenge to the laws. In other words, extremist groups have been emboldened by these laws, and will use them to fundraise and recruit. This contrasts with the UK where it was simply declared a prohibited terrorist organisation, using existing powers.
There is no limit to the types of groups which can be banned.
Apologists of the laws point to Section 114A.5 of the legislation which says that the Director-General of Security of ASIO, in providing advice, must be satisfied the activities of the group in question would or are likely to increase the risk of politically motivated violence or the promotion of communal violence.
However, there are two fundamental problems with this view. Firstly, the section only says the Director-General needs to be “satisfied”, which is vague and subjective. The Director-General could be “satisfied” simply because he or she doesn’t like a certain group in our society.
Secondly, the group in question itself does not have to be advocating for violence, only that the existence of a group increases the risk of politically motivated violence. This is a very important distinction. It means that, say, an anti-immigration group could be banned because the existence of that group may prompt violent protests by others. It also means that a Zionist group could be disbanded because its activities could provoke a politically violent response by an Islamist group. Experience demonstrates how these laws would license victim blaming and be used by governments to target political enemies.
The laws will encourage extremist groups to form as political parties.
As I wrote in my article for the Daily Telegraph and in a briefing note to MPs, the laws have created a powerful incentive for Hizb ut-Tahrir and like-minded organisations at risk of being disbanded to re-constitute themselves as a political party in order to circumvent the laws.
There is a strong body of argument that political parties cannot be outlawed by declaration of the executive government, as for example Sir Robert Menzies attempted to do regarding the Communist Party of Australia. Since then, there has also been the discovery by the High Court in 1992 of the implied right to political communication, which further adds weight to the argument that political parties cannot be outlawed.
The laws will have the effect of turning Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which was used to shut down conservative commentators Andrew Bolt and Bill Leak, into criminal penalties.
The hate crime provisions in the legislation (at Schedule 1, Part 4, Section 114A.3 (2)) provide numerous definitions, including the following: A hate crime is conduct “that would, in all the circumstances, cause a reasonable person who is the target, or a member of the target group, to be intimidated, to fear harassment or violence, or to fear for their safety.” An organisation that is believed to engage in such vague conduct could potentially be declared a prohibited hate organisation by the Minister.
Recall, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) makes it unlawful to do an act that could offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate someone because of their race, colour, or national or ethnic origin. However, as bad as these provisions are, breaches carry civil rather than criminal penalties, meaning guilty parties cannot be sentenced to imprisonment. Conversely, the current legislation carries imprisonment of up to 15 years for breaching certain provisions.
The threshold for a hate crime is so low that it would have captured the No campaign against the Voice to Parliament.
One definition of a hate crime used in the legislation (at Schedule 1, Part 4, Section 114A.3(5)) is “conduct, or threat of conduct, (whether engaged in or threatened before or after this section commences) that involves, or would involve creating a serious risk to the health or safety of a section of the public,” and “that a person engaged in or threatened to engage in because of the person’s belief that: the targeted person or persons are distinguished by race or national or ethnic origin; or the targeted property is associated with a person or persons distinguished by race or national or ethnic origin.”
These provisions also need to be read in the context of the objects of the section which is to “protect the Australian community or part of the Australian community against social, economic, psychological and physical harm.” These are absurdly subjective and vague and could be weaponised against any group. For example, take the No campaign against the Voice to Parliament for example. It is obvious that a claim could be made that the actions of that campaign could have caused psychological harm to sections of the community, and that a member of the ‘target’ group would have been intimidated by the actions of the No campaign. All that would be needed would be for the Director-General of Security to merely be satisfied that there was a risk of political violence resulting from the No campaign, which could happen through violent actions of their opponents, and the No campaign could have been banned.
The process was a disgrace and an insult to every Australian.
These laws should have been opposed on the process alone. There was literally a two-day consultation process and laws that will have long-term and far-reaching consequences. Given the short time, it was almost impossible for MPs, the media, and civil society to understand the full implications of the laws. To call this disrespectful to the democratic process would not come even close to describing what has happened. It is little wonder that trust and confidence in politicians is at a record low.
To end with, and despite all of the very grave challenges we face, support for freedom of speech in the community has never been higher. Members of Parliament we talked with in Canberra were surprised by the public pushback against these laws. But they shouldn’t have been. Back when the IPA was leading the debate against Section 18C (which we still do), free speech was seen by most as something that doesn’t really affect their lives, but was more a concern of the journalist class. But everyone has now seen what has been happening in the UK, most Australians have self-censored, and have experienced censorship at the workplace and elsewhere.
The community is deeply cynical about so-called hate-speech laws, and these laws are deeply unpopular, as many MPs are now starting to learn as they defend their positions on social media.
What is also clear is that free speech and the culture wars are now back on the agenda, which is where we want them to be. And we now have more fellow travellers: we have two political parties on our side with the Nationals and One Nation, and, at times the Greens and independents such as David Pocock. It is only ten years ago that the IPA was basically a solo traveller.
Finally, it is clear that principled leadership will win out eventually, as it has before. Mainstream Australians have had principled victories in defeating the Voice to Parliament, on misinformation, and on the first incarnation of this bill.
As I close the email, today has been designated as an official day of mourning for the tragic loss of life at Bondi. Let us remember those who were murdered in cold-blood, and reflect on what kind of country we want to be. Thank you for reading this email, and thank you for your support. The IPA is the only organisation in Australia doing the hard intellectual yards to understand these laws and communicate this to the public and policymakers.
