Review on The Submission on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026

As a security specialist with decades of experience in threat assessment, risk mitigation, and protecting public order, I approach this draft bill with a pragmatic eye toward its real-world effects. Policies that promise safety often falter when they ignore the incentives they create, leading to inefficiencies, overreach, and unintended harms. This legislation, presumably aimed at curbing hate and extremism through expanded criminal offenses, migration controls, customs bans, and firearms restrictions, risks doing more damage than good.

Drawing on principles of balanced incentives, where rewards for good behaviour and deterrents for bad must align without stifling liberty, I see predictable breaches of legal norms, constitutional safeguards, and practical security. The bill's vague definitions and broad powers will suppress legitimate discourse, drive threats underground, and erode the very social cohesion it seeks to protect.

At its core, the bill introduces aggravated offenses for urging violence or threats based on race, national, or ethnic origin, with penalties up to 12 years for religious leaders or those targeting children. It criminalizes racial vilification by prohibiting public promotion of hatred or superiority, imposing 5-year sentences. Prohibited "hate groups" can be listed by the Minister without procedural fairness, leading to bans on membership (7 years), directing activities (15 years), or providing support (15 years). Hate symbols face expanded bans, with reversed burdens of proof and subjective tests for offensiveness. Migration amendments allow visa refusals or cancellations for mere associations or statements that "might" incite discord, while customs prohibit "violent extremist material" without clear exemptions for lawful resistance. Firearms controls, including buybacks and import bans on high-capacity items, tie into broader security but add layers of automation and data sharing that invite abuse. The government has consistently been hacked, and reports of staff accessing data improperly is prolific.

These provisions breach international legal standards in ways that are not just theoretical but predictably harmful. Under frameworks like the ICCPR, restrictions on expression must be precise, necessary, and proportionate, principles rooted in ensuring that laws serve justice without arbitrary power. The bill's use of terms like "promoting" hatred, rather than "inciting" it, expands beyond Article 20's mandate to ban advocacy of hatred leading to discrimination, hostility, or violence. "Glorification" or "praising" could capture historical analysis, political critique, or even support for self-determination in conflicts, such as resistance to occupation under international law.

This vagueness violates Article 15's requirement for legal certainty, making it impossible for individuals to foresee prohibited conduct. As a security professional, I've seen how unclear rules chill information flow: people avoid sharing intelligence on emerging threats for fear of misinterpretation, weakening prevention efforts.

Ministerial listing based on "reasonable necessity" without court oversight or evidence thresholds invites executive overreach, echoing patterns where power concentrates without checks. Groups could be banned for isolated acts or mere advocacy, breaching Article 22's right to association. Without procedural fairness, no hearings, no appeals before listing, this risks arbitrary detention under Article 9, as membership alone becomes criminal. In practice, such bans don't eliminate threats, they only incentivize covert operations, making profiling and surveillance harder. Making my colleagues and the security industries job harder. Data shows that suppressed groups fragment into smaller, harder-to-track cells, increasing radicalization risks among the alienated. Consider statistical trends, areas with heavy speech restrictions see a massive rise in underground activities, per patterns in crime data from similar policies both here and abroad.

Constitutionally, the bill treads on Australia's implied freedom of political communication, derived from the need for informed electoral choices. By criminalizing statements that "might" disrupt community harmony, it burdens core democratic discourse. The explanatory memorandum claims compatibility with human rights, citing safeguards like good-faith defences for journalism or religious quotes. But these are narrow, and ripe for judicial overreach. The defence for public interest is evidentially burdensome, and religious exemptions stigmatize faith communities by implying special leniency. This uneven application offends equality principles, violating Section 116's bar on religious tests. In security terms, it creates perverse incentives, leaders will self-censor teachings on moral responsibility, reducing community resilience against extremism. Worse, the subjective "fear of harassment" standard for vilification, judged from a group's perspective rather than a reasonable person's, introduces immediate implied bias. Pluralistic societies thrive on objective rules. Subjective ones breed division, as one faction's offense becomes another's crime.

Migration and customs provisions exacerbate these issues. Visa powers based on unproven "risks" or associations, without conviction, breach non-refoulement under the CAT and ICCPR Article 7, risking returns to persecution. We need to reform the activist judicial members, not remove the human rights from refugees. The lowered "might" threshold for discord is disproportionate, ignoring remorse or context, and could exclude experts or dissidents whose insights aid security.

Customs bans on extremist material lack exemptions for material aligned with UN Charter rights, like self-defence or resistance to denial of self-determination. This overreach could criminalize educational resources on historical conflicts, hindering threat understanding. From a profiling standpoint, broad bans misallocate resources, where border agents chase symbolic items while real threats, smuggled weapons or online radicalization, slip through. Specificity is the key, this Bill is far too broad.

Firearms amendments, while less directly tied to hate, and should never have been in the same Bill in my opinion, only compound constitutional concerns. Automated background checks via ASIO and ACIC, using spent convictions, infringe privacy under ICCPR Article 17. The secrecy offense (2 years) for unauthorized disclosure chills whistleblowing, and ministerial certifications to withhold notices evade accountability. We should be fighting a war against corruption, not whistleblowing. Australia's lack of a federal bill of rights amplifies this, without explicit protections, such powers erode due process. Predictably, this incentivizes black-market arms, as buybacks historically recover only about 30% of targeted weapons. Security suffers when law-abiding citizens face hurdles while criminals adapt. The good and fair will hand their in, the criminals will not, and many guns handed in last time, ended up in the hands of criminals, lets not repeat that debacle.

The bill's haste, with rushed consultations over holidays, only invites errors, failures and overreach. Predictable outcomes include suppressed debate on vital issues, like foreign policy or cultural integration, fostering public resentment. Statistical facts reveal that societies with high vilification convictions see drops in reported hate incidents but rises in unreported violence, as victims distrust authorities. It drives a wedge between communities and law enforcement, undermining broken-windows approaches where early interventions build trust. Instead of targeted deterrence, it creates a dragnet that captures innocents, wasting resources on low-risk cases while high-threat actors evade.

This bill breaches legal and constitutional lines by prioritising expansive power over precise justice. It ignores incentives, heavy penalties deter speech but not intent, vagueness breeds arbitrariness, and lack of proportionality erodes liberty. As a security professional, I urge rejection or a massive pragmatic overhaul, narrow to incitement, add judicial oversight, implement judicial reforms, and broaden defences, and sunset clauses for review. They were provided this type of authority during the Covid response, and proved they had no credibility, no integrity and no empathy. True safety comes from empowering individuals with responsibility, not a government with unchecked authority. Only then can we foster a society where threats are met with vigilance, not fear. From the author.

The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security and Risk Consultant with 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. Sam has trained over 1,000 entry level security personnel, taught defensive tactics, weapons training and handcuffs to policing personnel and the public. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organisations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.