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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.”
Organizations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and neo-Nazi groups have long operated within the boundaries of Australian law, managing to remain legally compliant while not aligning with community values. Under a proposed new framework, the criteria for designating such groups as recognized organizations will be relaxed, allowing for their inclusion in an official list.
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.
Although Hizb ut-Tahrir does not seek to alter Western governments’ systems from within, the group actively promotes Islam as the sole divinely sanctioned way of life, as prescribed by Allah.
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.
