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.

She was equally critical of the firearms restrictions passed after the Bondi attack, calling them “a very political response to the problem” and confirming she has a bill before the Senate to repeal them. McKenzie is a firearm owner herself.

“As we’re finding out from the royal commission interim report, state and federal agencies believe they had all the powers necessary,” she said.

The failure was one of enforcement rather than statute, she said, pointing to the Opera House protest after October 7 at which the only person dealt with by police was a Jewish man. Policing culture, she added, had shifted from upholding the law to keeping the peace.

McKenzie named radical Islam as the source of the problem and said politicians had to stop avoiding the term.

“It’s here. It’s on our doorstep. It’s killing our people.”

The Nationals are pushing a Senate motion to extend the royal commission, which she said had not called the range of witnesses its scope demanded, including university vice-chancellors. Without them, she warned, its recommendations would be open to challenge.

On immigration she flagged a coalition values test, a lower intake, no welfare for new arrivals and deportation for dual-citizen hate preachers. A coalition government would also reverse the recognition of Palestine.

Asked what she wanted from the community, McKenzie said millions of Australians stood with it.

“We have to be relentless, determined, and positive.”