It’s time for the Federal Parliament to vote on changes to the law in response to the Bondi terror attack. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Australians will find out today if their Federal Parliament is for or against stronger hate speech laws and tougher gun control in the wake of the awful Bondi terrorist attack.
It looks like a deal might have finally been reached late on Monday night (19 January) between the Federal Government and the Opposition, but let’s wait to see how the numbers fall.
Since 14 December last year, when 15 innocent people were gunned down purely because they were Jews, there has been much grief and anger, but also a fair bit of politics at play.
Labor was too smart by half in trying to lump gun reform in with hate laws, in with migration changes, in with racial vilification action.
If Anthony Albanese’s aim was to find a unity ticket across the parliament and get all his desired changes through with one easy vote in each chamber, he was naive in the extreme.
If, however, the Prime Minister’s intent was to wedge the Coalition, he was only partially effective and the plan ultimately backfired.
The Liberals and Nationals have certainly been fighting among themselves over the legislation the government first flagged.
Toughening up gun ownership laws was never something the Nationals (and half of the Liberals, for that matter) were going to stomach.
Sussan Ley’s tenuous grip on the Opposition’s leadership meant she couldn’t ride roughshod over her party.
Instead, she battened down and opposed not only the gun laws but the whole package of reforms being proposed.
It has been as though the Coalition couldn’t be satisfied.
The Opposition Leader demanded – repeatedly – a royal commission. She got it.
She called every day, all day, for parliament to be returned early. It was.
She wanted the government to spell out strong actions to protect Australia’s Jewish community. It did.
None of this – none of the PM’s capitulation – was good enough for the Opposition Leader and her merry band of naysayers.
Ley even used her condolence motion address in the House of Representatives on Monday to get political and start casting blame around.
The legislation, as it was originally and hastily drafted, is now a completely different animal.
Labor had to do something to salvage what the Opposition Leader had labelled unsalvageable.
There are now separate bills comprising four elements of the original bill.
Two elements are to do with firearms, and they will pass the Senate with the support of the Greens, who were always keen for more gun control to be enacted.
Those components are about getting weapons off the streets and dealing with the tightening of gun ownership laws.
The other elements, of now separate legislation, go to migration.
In a nutshell, giving the Home Affairs Minister greater power to cancel or not allow visas on character grounds, and also provisions to more strongly deal with hate organisations such as neo-Nazis and radical Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Whether that passes the Senate is yet to be seen, but it seems set to, as some sort of agreement has finally been reached.
The racial vilification elements of the legislation have been dropped.
Neither the Opposition nor the Greens were going to support it.
As the PM said during a media interview on Monday: “The racial vilification elements were things that were recommended by the Envoy on Antisemitism.
“The Opposition said that they supported the Antisemitism Envoy’s report and wanted it implemented in full.
“But when it came to us presenting the laws, they walked away from them. That’s up to them to explain why they did that.”
The Opposition indeed has some explaining to do because, to date, it has only said what it is against.
Today, the Coalition must let the country know if it is actually for any of the reforms that have been put forward.
Its Home Affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam hinted on Monday that the Opposition might finally be negotiating properly with the government.
“We have gone through some of our internal processes,” he told the ABC.
“We accept and see that the government have made some significant concessions in dumping the racial vilification laws and the religious text defence.
“That’s all gone. They were major problems for us. So we are, in good faith, looking at the balance of the legislation. We have identified some issues that require further work and we are working in good faith with the government.”
To date, his most repeated line is that the process has been “beyond flawed,” and that Labor, the PM, and the whole Federal Government have been all over the place with it.
Whether that is true or otherwise, Duniam’s most profound line on the eve of the bill being introduced was this: “The onus is on this parliament to do the right thing.”
That includes the Coalition.
