Australia to tighten hate speech laws following Bondi massacre

Proposals reportedly include increased sentences for the promotion of violence, the creation of a register of organisations whose leaders have espoused hate and the introduction of a new racially-aggravated hate speech offence for preachers and community leaders expressing extreme views.

The planned measures come after it emerged that Naveed, 24, was a follower of Wissam Haddad, a Sydney-based extremist linked to the British convicted terror preacher Anjem Choudary and the city’s pro-Isis networks by Australian security services.

Haddad, who runs the Bankstown prayer centre and Dawah Van street preaching service in Sydney, rose to prominence for his extreme and antisemitic sermons, including labelling seventh century Jews “mischievous”, “treacherous” and “vile”.

Security officials reportedly told ABC he was mentored by Choudary, who has been serving a life sentence since 2024 after becoming the first person in the UK convicted of “directing an organisation concerned with the commission of acts of terrorism”, and has “longstanding ties to Australian terrorists and foreign jihadist leaders”.

Haddad has denied this, but security sources reportedly told ABC that he is viewed by Asio as “a senior Australian jihadist leader, with longstanding involvement in [Choudary’s] ALM network”.

Responding to the claims, Haddad told ABC: “If I am a leader of violent extremism, why is it that people on the grapevine are saying these words, but law enforcement don't have the same information?

"Either the people who are speaking in this way know more than law enforcement, or law enforcement doesn't know what it's doing. Which of the two is it?"

He denied being part of ALM, but called both Choudary and the group’s founder, Omar Bakri, “brothers in Islam”.

“Both of them are people who are going through a struggle for speaking the truth … and have a lot of benefit for Islam,” he went on.

The new hate speech laws will also be accompanied by Australia’s most significant tightening of gun laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, after police confirmed that Sajid, 50, was a licensed gun club member and owner of six firearms.

Proposed changes include a regular review of licenses and limits on the number of weapons individuals can own.

However, John Howard, who was prime minister at the time of the Port Arthur shooting, has insisted that the new laws should not act as a “diversion” from tackling rising antisemitism in Australia.

"I do not want this debate post this horrible event to be used, the focus on guns be used as a pretext to avoid the broader debate about the spread of hatred of Jewish people and antisemitism,” he told ABC.

"If the prime minister, immediately after the attack of the 7th of October 2023, had called an all-points cymbals and drum national press conference, convened a meeting of the national cabinet, he could have done that.

"From the beginning, people of the Jewish community would have felt there is somebody on their side. He didn't do that."

Howard also criticised Canberra’s decision to recognise a Palestinian State, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed “poured fuel on this antisemitic fire”, labelling it “needlessly provocative and dumb”.