Bondi massacre: Anthony Albanese welcomes gun reform, hate law bills passing, despite weakened result

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed the passing of the “strongest hate laws that have ever been in place in Australia”, following Labor’s gun legislation passing the upper and lower houses, despite bills not going as far as he hoped.

“I stood in the courtyard last month and said we would develop laws that were as effective and as strong as possible,” Mr Albanese said.

“I said that those laws would include the adoption of the recommendations of the Special Envoy of antisemitism and the exposure draft that we released on 12 January did just that.

“It wasn’t possible to get through all of the recommendations of Jillian Segal’s report that would have included a racial vilification provision.”

Mr Albanese said, with the Greens, Labor was able to strengthen fire-arm laws.

“With the support of the Liberals, and some crossbenchers as well, (we secured) support for strengthening the provisions on hate speech.”

The Prime Minister said the laws were “not as strong as we originally put forward”, but said “the strongest hate laws that have ever been in place in Australia” being achieved was “a good thing”.

“At Bondi, the terrorist had hate in their hearts but guns in their hands. We said we wanted to deal with that with urgency and with unity,” Mr Albanese said.

“We acted to deliver both. There’s been advances on both.

“My Government listens. We work through problems methodically. We find solutions and we have done that.”

Mr Albanese said that his Government has prioritised “national unity and national healing”.

“We want to make sure that light triumphs over darkness.”

The Prime Minister previously announced Tuesday, 22 January, would be a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, which claimed the lives of 15 innocent people.

“We need to come together and tomorrow will be another day in which I want to see national unity,” Mr Albanese said.

“The day of mourning will be an opportunity for all Australians to stand with those who are grieving, those who lost loved ones, family members, and members of the Bondi Chabad community, but others as well.

Mr Albanese invited Australians to put a candle in their front window, or outside their home, on the day of mourning to show support.

“This period has been one of the most difficult in our nation’s history, coming to terms with this. We continue to take action required to keep Australians safe.”

The hate speech legislation, which passed late on Tuesday night, aims to restrict the ability of hardline radical groups to incite violence against people based on their faith, while also making it easier to deport extremists and deny them entry to Australia.

The Government’s bill went through with the support of most Liberals during a late-night Senate sitting, but the Nationals voted against it after raising concerns about its potential impacts on freedom of speech.

Jewish groups have backed the hate crimes legislation as a welcome first step in cracking down on inflammatory language but believe it could go further.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said the measures to shut down hate groups, which would likely include the National Socialist Network and radical Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, were a good move.

“These are very, very sinister organisations who for years have been promoting extremist ideology and anti-Semitism, and have been doing so in a way to very carefully skirt around the law,” he told AAP.

The Government was forced to strip out a number of tougher provisions, which would have created new criminal offences for racial hatred, to get the bill through parliament. Mr Leibler said Labor should revisit the issue.

“We are about to commence a royal commission into anti-Semitism. No doubt the royal commission will investigate some of these issues,” he said.

“I don’t think that we as a society can afford to abandon the possibility of strengthening hate speech laws.”

- with AAP