Is Australia Creating a Tiered Legal System in the Name of Combating "Hate"?
If intimidation, harassment, or violence are the real concerns, then those acts should be criminalised and punished, regardless of who the victim is.
State premiers across Australia are currently racing to introduce the nation’s toughest antisemitism laws. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has now claimed the title, announcing that his government has passed the strongest such legislation in the country.
The rush follows a broader national push. The federal government recently passed the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, while several states have introduced their own measures. New South Wales strengthened restrictions on terror symbols and expanded police powers. Victoria began reviewing firearm laws and vilification statutes as part of a five-point plan to tackle antisemitism. Queensland went even further, banning certain slogans, introducing speech restrictions deemed hateful, and expanding offences related to hate speech, terrorist symbols, firearms trafficking, and attacks on places of worship.
Few Australians would disagree with the goal of preventing violence, intimidation, or harassment. And yet, Australia already has the laws in place to punish all that and then some. So the question is not whether such behaviour should be punished, but what new powers these laws introduce that were not already covered by existing legislation.
The Problem of Ethnic Framing
What’s more, why are these laws framed around the protection of a specific ethnic or religious group?
If the provisions apply to everyone equally, then grounding them in ethnicity is unnecessary. But if they do not apply equally, then the law is explicitly granting special protections to one subsection of the population.
Neither option is particularly ideal for a nation supposedly built on the principle of equal rights for all citizens.
Australia is not a federation of ethnic enclaves. It is a nation whose laws are meant to apply equally to all Australians. Jews, like every other group, are citizens within that broader national community. Laws that single out one group for special protection—however well-intentioned—will inevitably raise questions about influence, fairness, and equality.
If intimidation, harassment, or violence are the real concerns, then those acts should be criminalised and punished, regardless of who the victim is. A law that protects Australians equally would already protect Jewish Australians along with everyone else. So, what rights or privileges, exactly, do “antisemitism” laws extend to Jewish ethnicity and religion that are not extended to all Australians alike?
Expanding Definitions and Expanding Power
The problem becomes more serious when governments attempt to legislate around a concept as contested as “antisemitism.”
Last year The Australian reported on a sweeping federal plan led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, and special envoy Jillian Segal to combat antisemitism nationwide. Among other measures, border officials would be trained to identify and deport “antisemites,” while universities and cultural institutions could lose funding if they failed to combat antisemitic bigotry.
But this raises the obvious question as to who will decide what counts as antisemitism?
The term is increasingly politicised and expansive. Activist organisations have already labelled a broad range of things as inherently antisemitic, including the New Testament, Norse runes, the Celtic cross, Thor’s hammer, and phrases such as “It’s Okay to Be White” or “Christ is King.”
Whether one agrees with those classifications or not, they demonstrate how elastic the concept can become when it is embedded in law. Once the state begins policing ideas through a contested ideological definition, the potential for misuse only increases.
Equality Before the Law
What’s important to remember is that Australia already has laws against violence, harassment, intimidation, vandalism, and incitement. Those laws apply regardless of the victim’s race or religion. If someone threatens a synagogue, attacks a mosque, vandalises a church, or assaults a person in the street, the criminal law already provides mechanisms for punishment.
If a foreign national commits such crimes, the government already has the power to deport them.
In other words, the tools already exist.
Introducing ethnicity-specific legislation does not strengthen justice; it can actually have the opposite effect. The moment the law begins distinguishing between groups, it risks undermining the principle that makes it legitimate in the first place: impartiality.
A legal system that protects everyone equally can be trusted. A legal system that appears to favour some groups over others invites suspicion.
The Backfire Effect
Ironically, ethnic-specific laws often harm the very communities they claim to protect.
When the state publicly frames legislation around the protection of one group, it can create the impression that this group enjoys privileges unavailable to others. Over time, that perception risks breeding resentment and backlash.
Instead of reducing social tension, such laws risk amplifying it.
Communities begin asking why some forms of hatred receive unique legal attention while others are addressed only under general law, or even not at all.
None of this benefits Jewish Australians—or anyone else.
A Better Principle
A stable and fair society rests on a simple foundation: the law must be ethnically-blind and impartial.
Violence should be punished because it is violence. Threats should be punished because they are threats. Incitement should be punished because it is incitement.
The identity of the victim should not determine the seriousness of the crime.
Australia does not need a patchwork of ethnic-specific laws—antisemitism laws, anti-Chinese laws, Islamophobia laws, or any other group-specific statutes. What it needs is a legal framework that defends Australians as a whole and applies equally to everyone who lives under it.
Such a system would still protect every minority community. In fact, it would protect them more effectively, because it would do so without creating the perception of unequal privilege.
The Foundation of Social Order
Equality before the law is the foundation of public trust in the legal system.
Once the law begins dividing citizens into categories of protection, that trust weakens. Few things would undermine social order more than a two-, three-, or four-tiered legal system—one in which it is illegal to do to one man what it remains legal to do to another.
You can have no trust in that kind of system to produce just results. And when trust erodes, social cohesion follows.
The answer to ethnic-targetted violence is not ethnic-specific legislation, but a legal system that protects all Australians equally, regardless of their background.
Anything less risks eroding the very social cohesion these laws are meant to uphold.