Court blocks hate preacher’s bid to ‘bury’ corrective notices
Justice Stewart accepted expert evidence that social media posts could quickly disappear from view unless given prominence through platform features
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim has welcomed Federal Court orders requiring hate preacher Wissam Haddad to prominently display corrective notices on his social media pages acknowledging his unlawful conduct.
“We welcome the Federal Court’s further orders requiring Mr Haddad and the Al Madinah Dawah Centre to publish a Corrective Notice on their social media pages advising viewers of the findings of unlawful conduct and orders made against them by the court, and requiring the notice to be featured and pinned on those pages,” Wertheim said.
“We see this as an essential part of counteracting the harm that was caused by their online promotion and reproduction of Haddad’s antisemitic speeches.”
Justice Angus Stewart ruled this month that Haddad had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act through a series of lectures titled “The Jews of Al Medina” that were “reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate Jewish members of the Australian community”.
The speeches, published on the Al Madina Dawah Centre’s Rumble page in November 2023, included statements disparaging Jewish people as a whole and repeating racist stereotypes.
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