

The New South Wales government will be strengthening hate speech laws and banning protests outside of places of worship in response to the wave of antisemitic attacks across Sydney.
In a press conference on Sunday, Premier Chris Minns said that the Labor party would table tougher hate speech and protest laws when parliament resumes in February.
“Our government’s going to make a decision soon, a difficult decision, but the right one, I believe, to strengthen hate speech laws in NSW so that if someone’s preaching hatred in the community, it doesn’t manifest itself two months or three months later in a firebombing or an attack or something worse,” Minns said. “No stone will be left unturned, and we will, of course, meet all kinds of violent activity in NSW with a massive, massive police response.”
The move comes just days after the firebombing of two cars and the vandalism of a house previously owned by Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The incident is the latest in a slew of antisemitic hate crimes across Sydney and wider NSW.
The NSW Law Reform Commission reviewed incitement to violence laws a year ago, at Minns’ request, and found reform was not needed. Instead the panel endorsed education and community engagement as more effective ways to address vilification.
Protest an “essential right”
Although Jewish groups are advocating for tougher laws, civil rights organisations, Muslim, and pro-Palestine organisations have warned the government to ensure the protection of the right to free speech and protest.
In a statement made last month, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties condemned the Minns’ government’s “authoritarian step towards the criminalisation of the right to protest.”
“The attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue is a reprehensible and violent act,” they said. “The vandalism and destruction of property in the Eastern suburbs should also be admonished. There is no place in a democratic society for any such behaviour.
“Freedom of religion is essential in a democratic society, but it does not exist at the expense of our other essential rights like that of protest.”
Chris Minns has been fighting to expand anti-protest laws for months now and, last December, called a protest outside of the Great Synagogue on Castlereagh Street “pitiful”.
The protest in question was being held by Stop the War on Palestine, who were rallying against an event being held by Technion Israel Institute of Technology, which was marking its 100 year anniversary.
Technion is implicated in weapons research and development, contributing directly to the devastation in Palestine.
“Why are we protesting at a synagogue? Isn’t this antisemitic?” asked Michelle Berkon from Jews Against the Occupation during the protest. “Of course it isn’t antisemitic… What we have is an ideology and a state using my identity, my culture, my history of oppression and persecution as a moral and religious shield for this genocidal state. Zionism and Israel uses Jews as living human shields for its criminality.”