Albanese Administration Identifies Target Groups in Effort to Curb Hate Speech

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The Albanese government has plans to introduce a new legal framework to proscribe and prohibit the activities of what it terms as hate preachers, amid concern over extremist influences following the Bondi Beach terror attack.

First flagged last week, the government has now named the specific groups it wants to target with updated hate speech legislation: neo-Nazi organisations, and radical cleric groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Tuesday: “We want to make sure that those hate preachers who have managed to keep themselves just on the legal side of Australian law, that the threshold is lowered so that those statements that every reasonable Australian has viewed as horrific and as having no place in Australia will become criminal.”

Australia is poised to take a more assertive stance against groups that, while adhering to the letter of the law, remain at odds with the values of its communities. This shift in policy will see thresholds lowered, facilitating the inclusion of organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and certain neo-Nazi groups under a new regulatory framework. By doing so, authorities aim to address entities that have historically skirted legal boundaries but have never truly aligned with the broader societal ethos.

While details on how those groups will be restricted are so far limited, Burke said “the intention of the legislation is to be able to stop them from operating”.

“A number of the consequences that currently apply to organisations that are listed as terror organisations would effectively be a very close to exact match here,” he added.

“We want those organisations to not operate. They hate Australia.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Islamic political party established in 1953.

“‘Tahrir’ means liberation and the name is indicative of our work, which entails liberating the Muslim world, intellectually first, then politically, economically and in all other respects, from the subjugation of kufr (unbelief) and its people,” the party’s Australian webpage states.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, in particular, has long been a topic of discussion due to its ideological stance. The organization advocates for Islam as the singular way of life prescribed by Allah, yet it refrains from actively seeking to alter governmental systems in Western nations. This intellectual promotion of its beliefs continues to be a point of contention within the context of Australian society’s values and norms.

The government is facing pressure from critics who say it has not done enough to curb a surge in antisemitism since October 2023.

Officials say the proposed regime would allow authorities to list organisations promoting hate even if they do not meet the legal definition of terrorism.