Following last Sunday’s terrorist attack at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australian federal and state Labor governments are rushing to meet demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Australian Zionist leaders to crack down on antisemitism. Above all, this is to be the pretext for banning all opposition and protests against the ongoing Israeli crimes and atrocities in Gaza.
As has happened since the genocide began in October 2023, opposition to Zionism and its historic crimes is being falsely conflated with antisemitism, even though many Jews have joined the anti-genocide protests in Australia and around the world, rejecting the lie that the criminal Netanyahu regime represents them.
Over the past two days, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New South Wales (NSW) Premier Chris Minns have announced sweeping anti-democratic legislation to expand the existing powers to ban anti-genocide demonstrations and to criminalise so-called “hate” or “divisive” speech—essentially any condemnation of the actions of the Israeli regime.
Minns said the NSW state parliament would be recalled next Monday in an emergency session to rush through legislation, yet to be even drafted, to outlaw protests that could “add to community disharmony” and to impose limits on the number of firearms a licensed shooter can own.
The foreshadowed changes to the gun laws, which are also being planned nationally, are a bid to bury the still unexplained fact that in 2023 the NSW police gave alleged Bondi Beach shooting gunman Sajid Akram a licence for six firearms.
The gun licence was granted just four years after the domestic political spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) reportedly investigated his son Naveed Akram over his connections to Islamic extremist groups linked to Islamic State.
Father and son used four of these weapons to kill 15 people and to injure more than 40 others at a “Chanukah by the Sea” event for children at a beachside playground, marking the start of the eight-day Rabbinic Jewish festival of lights.
Sajid Akram was killed by police. Naveed Akram was shot but survived and is still in hospital under police guard. He was charged yesterday with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing a terrorist act.
Minns’ anti-protest proposals are a bid to outlaw, not only anti-genocide opposition but any political dissent regarded as a threat by governments and security agencies. The NSW premier said the laws would empower the state’s police commissioner to reject applications for protests “on the grounds it will both stretch police resources and, secondly, add to community disharmony and as a result, a combustible situation in the state.”
NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said the legislation would give the police commissioner and police minister powers to “declare areas where they fear that a public assembly is likely to cause a reasonable person to fear harassment, intimidation or violence, or to fear for their safety or pose a risk to community safety.”
These formulations could extend to any demonstration or strike rally against a government, including over social spending cuts, job destruction, inequality or war preparations.
Minns claimed that the “reforms” would not target any one group but he particularly singled out demonstrations protesting “international events.” That was an obvious reference to the anti-genocide marches in Sydney and across the country, which have become the largest ongoing anti-war demonstrations in Australian history.
Minns said the legislation would apply as a “blanket ruling” after the government and the police issued a terrorism declaration—as they have done this week.
Albanese went further, pledging to bolster “hate speech” laws that his government pushed through in February, create new powers to cancel or reject visas of people who spread “hate and division” and adopt all 13 recommendations of a report by Labor’s antisemitism special envoy, Jillian Segal.
Segal, a longstanding Zionist lobbyist, has set out plans to de-fund universities, arts organisations and public broadcasters that fail to suppress allegedly antisemitic dissent, and change school curricula and teacher training in line with Zionist propaganda.
Speaking in Canberra after a meeting of his cabinet’s National Security Committee, Albanese vaguely outlined the changes. They would include an aggravated “hate speech” offence for preachers and leaders accused of promoting violence, increased penalties for hate speech allegedly promoting violence and making “hate” an aggravating factor in sentencing crimes for online threats and harassment.
Albanese said the legislation, also yet to be drafted, would include a regime for proscribing organisations whose leaders engage in hate speech, promoting violence or racial hatred, and a new federal offence of “serious vilification” based on race.
Standing alongside Segal, Albanese said his government “adopts and fully supports” all her recommendations. Segal’s plan insists on the adoption by governments and universities of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which essentially prohibits any criticism of Israel as a racist state.
Albanese apologised after being accused by Netanyahu and the previous Liberal-National Coalition government’s treasurer Josh Frydenberg, of being personally responsible for the Bondi Beach shootings, supposedly because the Labor government had not taken stronger action to halt the anti-genocide demonstrations.
In fact, the federal and state Labor governments have previously done everything they could to block the near weekly mass demonstrations throughout Australia against the Israeli massacres, including the 300,000-strong march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3.
“Governments aren’t perfect, I’m not perfect,” Albanese told reporters. “It is clear we need to do more to combat this evil scourge [antisemitism], much more. I, of course, acknowledge that more could have been done, and I accept my responsibility for my part in that as prime minister of Australia.”
This apology followed the latest denunciation by Netanyahu, who wrote in Hebrew on social media: “I stated that these heinous acts are a direct result of rampant antisemitism, which is fuelled by a flaccid policy of the authorities in the country and of the Australian government.” Netanyahu said the Australian government must “act immediately and with all the tools at its disposal to eradicate terrorism and restore security to the Jewish communities.”
Netanyahu’s far-right government, supported and armed by the US and all the major capitalist powers, including the Albanese government, has directed the killing of at least 70,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, over the past two years.
Netanyahu’s offensive was echoed by Frydenberg, claiming to speak on behalf of the Jewish community. Addressing a gathering at Bondi Beach, the ex-treasurer declared: “It is time for [Albanese] to accept personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old child. It is time our prime minister accepted accountability for what has happened here.”
Frydenberg issued seven demands, including to ban the “hate preachers,” outlaw “extremist organisations” and “stop the protests.” He called for prosecutions of people who join the widespread chants on the demonstrations of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Frydenberg falsely branded this slogan, which calls for an end to the oppression of the Palestinian population, as “very violent.”
The Labor governments are moving with great haste to adopt these measures. Vast police-state powers adopted over the past two decades under the false banner of combatting terrorism are being expanded to seek to silence the opposition of workers and youth to genocide, war, social inequality and austerity.
A mass working-class movement is needed to defeat this assault on basic democratic rights, defend the right to protest, and take forward the fight for the socialist alternative to the capitalist system that breeds racism and terrorism, dictatorship and war.