AFP unable to charge hate preachers under current laws
The AFP says hate preachers are getting legal advice to stay below the threshold for charges, as the government says it will keep its laws under review
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles says the federal government will “continue to monitor” whether hate speech laws are strong enough to deal with hate preachers, after the Australian Federal Police (AFP) revealed it has been unable to lay charges over radical sermons since the Bondi Chanukah attack.
AFP commissioner Krissy Barrett told The Australian that a task force set up after the December 14 attack to monitor a small number of prayer halls, known as Operation Antrobus, had not laid a single charge. “I have asked relevant AFP teams twice to review the sermons of certain hate preachers to determine if charges can be laid,” Barrett told the masthead.
“However, these sermons are not reaching a threshold that would allow the AFP to lay charges. I am convinced some hate preachers are getting legal advice to ensure they push it right to the edge to prevent the AFP from laying charges.”
Under current law, hate speech is a criminal offence only if it involves a threat or call to violence.
Asked on Thursday whether federal hate laws were adequate, Marles told The Australian: “We continue to monitor these, and we continue to look at how we can make sure that our laws are robust in this regard.”
In January, the government proposed a federal criminal vilification offence targeting religious preaching, as part of its post-Bondi legislative reforms. It was shelved after it failed to win the support of the Greens and divided the Coalition. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at the time he would not revisit any of the January proposals.
Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam told The Australian the Coalition would consider “sensible, targeted and effective legislative reforms”. “If there are gaps in existing criminal laws that prevent authorities from taking appropriate action against dangerous extremists, then those weaknesses clearly must be addressed,” he said.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) co-CEO Peter Wertheim told The Australian the January proposal had given parties an “extraordinarily limited time frame” for debate.
“The whole concept should be revisited, maybe it should be in a different form, but above all it needs to go through a proper process of debate and consultation with the public,” he said. “It cannot be rushed.
“The Coalition understands the need to have effective laws to be able to tackle the hate preachers, but every time something is proposed to actually make that possible, we get their bogus arguments about free speech.”
Labor MPs Josh Burns and Mark Dreyfus have both urged the government, through the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, to revisit a criminal vilification offence. The commission is due to deliver its final recommendations on December 18.
Giving evidence to the Royal Commission on July 20, Dreyfus, who was attorney-general from June 2022 to May 2025, said the offence he brought to parliament in 2024 required incitement to violence as an essential element, while Victoria and NSW had since legislated more broadly to criminalise serious vilification. He invited the commission to consider whether the Commonwealth should follow, saying such laws had a “normative” value even where prosecutions were infrequent.
He noted that hate group proscription powers legislated in January had since been used twice, against Hizb ut-Tahrir and a neo-Nazi group.
Independent Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender has pushed for a federal offence of promoting hatred since February 2025, when she moved amendments to the government’s hate crimes bill modelled on Western Australian laws. In January, she said her amendment formed the basis of the government’s proposed serious racial vilification offence, but argued it should also protect people targeted because of their religion, sexuality, gender or disability.
Marles also ruled out removing religious motivation from the legal definition of terrorism, after The Australian reported that Independent National Security Legislation Monitor Jake Blight was expected to recommend that violent religious extremism be defined under a broader category of “ideology” in a report due on November 20.
Meanwhile, The Australian reported that the Federal Court on Monday approved substituted service of a bankruptcy notice on preacher Wissam Haddad, after he failed to pay the ECAJ’s legal costs in its successful racial discrimination case against him. The notice takes effect on November 25, giving Haddad three weeks to pay.