McKenzie: I’d wave hate preachers off at the airport

Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has accused the Albanese government of failing to use its own powers to deport hate preachers, telling an Australian Jewish Association forum she would be at the airport to see them off.

Addressing the AJA’s weekly speaker series via Zoom on Wednesday night, McKenzie said the government had held the power for six months without acting on it once.

“I’d be standing at Sydney Airport, waving them goodbye,” she said. “It’s been six months. He’s had the powers. He put them in that legislation. Hasn’t used them.”

The Nationals supported the migration provisions and the listing of Hizb ut-Tahrir as a prohibited hate group, she told AJA president Robert Gregory, but voted against the rest of the hate speech laws.

“The rest of the legislation was, in our view, going to be too far an attack on free speech,” she said.