Victorian government to crack down on hate speech, review gun laws following Bondi terror attack
Premier Jacinta Allan was joined by Deputy Premier Ben Carroll and Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny to announce the plan. (ABC News)
In short:
The Victorian government has unveiled a five-point plan designed to crack down on antisemitism and hate speech.
The proposed laws will aim to hold online platforms accountable for anonymous hate speech and restrict protests in the immediate wake of terrorist events.
But the opposition has called on the government to take stronger action, pushing for a protest permit system.
The Victorian government has unveiled a five-point plan to combat antisemitism in the state, aiming to tighten hate speech laws and increase police powers in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack.
Last Sunday's horrific mass shooting in Sydney has sharpened the focus on the steps taken to tackle antisemitism, including in Victoria, with Melbourne home to the country's largest Jewish population.
Among the Victorian government's proposed reforms are laws to hold online social media platforms potentially liable for hate speech, forcing them to identify users, and giving police the ability to stop or move on protests following a designated terror event.
Premier Jacinta Allan said tackling antisemitism would require a whole-of-community effort.
"There is no one law that can change it all. It's as complex a challenge as we have ever faced," she said on Monday.
"This is not a Jewish problem to fix. This is everyone's problem."
The plan entails:
- Strengthening hate speech and anti-vilification laws
- New police powers targeting protests immediately after terrorist events
- A review of Victoria's gun laws
- Appointing a new commissioner to implement an anti-extremism strategy
- A long-term goal of returning to "normality" for the Jewish community
Ms Allan said Victoria was already home to Australia's strongest anti-vilification laws and promised that the "proposals today will make them even stronger".
The premier stressed the government was working urgently to implement the plan, and said it would be engaging with legal experts over the coming weeks to determine how each point of the plan would work in practice.
Parliament in New South Wales was recalled this week in order to fast-track tougher laws on gun ownership and protest activity in the wake of last week's devastating attack.
Crackdown on anonymous hate speech, protests
Monday's proposals take aim at online hate speech, with the government cracking down on anonymous online social media users, chat forums and comments sections.
Ms Allan said the laws would make online platforms liable for hateful material and could compel the platforms to hand over users' identities.
The government will also remove a current requirement that the Director of Public Prosecutions consent to police prosecutions for criminal vilification.
Police powers will be strengthened, with officers granted special powers to stop or move on public protests within a yet-to-be-determined timeframe following a designated terrorist event.
The laws are similar to those proposed in NSW this week.
But Ms Allan said her government would not implement "undemocratic" laws designed to stop protests altogether.
Victoria will also look to take national cabinet's lead on gun laws, with a limit on open-ended firearms licensing among the measures flagged.
Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay has been commissioned to examine the state's current gun laws and consult with authorities.
And a new commissioner will be appointed to implement a strategy countering violent extremism.
Ms Allan said the strategy would look at outreach and education programs to prevent the emergence of extremists, "including people with far-left and far-right religious or other ideological motivations".
Finally, Ms Allan said a "council of eminent Victorians" would be convened to plan a "pathway to normal" for members of the state's Jewish community.
"Our ultimate long-term goal is a return to a sense of normality for members of Victoria's Jewish community,"she said.
Ms Allan urged the opposition to support the new laws and "make it absolutely clear where the Victorian parliament stands on hateful behaviour".
Naomi Levin has thanked the government and opposition for engaging with Victoria's Jewish community since the Bondi attack. (ABC News)
CEO of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, Naomi Levin, said both the premier and opposition leader had engaged extensively with the Jewish community over the past week.
She said today's announcement was promising.
"What we saw last week was the culmination of an intensive period of increasing antisemitism and I think all Victorians, not just Jewish Victorians, recognise that this cannot be allowed to go on," she said.
"I feel that there is amazing goodwill in the Australian community broadly to do more to tackle hate and extremism, if nothing else so that those 15 people who were killed at Bondi did not die in vain."
Ms Levin described anonymous online hate as a huge problem.
"That level of anonymity is giving people license to say whatever they want and we know that words lead to violence.
"Words radicalise, they create extremism and ultimately that ends up with terrible situations like we saw last Sunday."
She welcomed the new laws that aimed to secure convictions for criminal vilification and greater police powers to move on extremist protesters.
"We're in discussions with the government and with the opposition around some interim measures to deal with protests between now and when parliament resumes in February.
"There are potential flash points between now and then, particularly around Australia Day, and we'd like to make sure that all Australians are protected from any protesters who seek to come in and do harm on those days."
Opposition pushes for protest permit system
The government's announcement came shortly after the opposition urged Jacinta Allan to recall parliament and take a bipartisan approach to tackling antisemitism.
Opposition leader Jess Wilson was joined by several members of Melbourne's Jewish community as she unveiled her party's three-point plan, saying antisemitism in Victoria needed a greater response than the premier had so far offered.
"What we saw in Bondi had a sense of inevitability about it," she said.
"The Jewish community has been warning that this is the consequence of allowing antisemitism to fester in our streets."
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson urged the premier to recall parliament. (ABC News)
The measures she called for included tackling hate and antisemitism by banning speech that amounts to incitement, temporarily funding security at Jewish schools and synagogues and giving police greater power over protests with a permit system.
"We want to empower Victoria Police to be able to say this is not the time or place for division on our streets,"she said.
The second prong of the plan included implementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — which has been criticised by some human rights groups — across the public sector.
Finally, the plan called for a bipartisan steering committee to identify legislative gaps allowing hatred and antisemitism to take place.
Ms Wilson was joined by frontbenchers, a Rabbi and the descendant of a Holocaust survivor as she made the announcement outside an independent Jewish school in Melbourne's south.
The co-chair of the school's board, Daniel Houseman, said the institution had significantly increased its security presence over the past two years and was spending about $650,000 a year on security guards.
"This comes at a pretty extraordinary cost to us as a school and it's something that, at the moment, parents are often bearing," he said.
Victoria's opposition has pushed for a protest permit system in the past, but the idea has previously been knocked back by the state's police commissioner.
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said on Monday that he still rejected the proposal, but supported a clampdown on protests in the direct aftermath of terror attacks.
"I haven't changed my mind on the permit system, but I'm sure there's something else we can do," he said.
"I'm more focused on having the ability to veto protests when they're not appropriate."