ECAJ statement on hate speech reforms and anti-doxxing legislation.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim said:

The leg­isla­tive reforms on hate speech announced by the gov­ern­ment today are a step in the right direc­tion but still fall short of the reforms which are need­ed.

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions will still not be pos­si­ble for the kind of ugly and men­ac­ing behav­iour that occurred in Octo­ber 2023 on the fore­court of the Syd­ney Opera House when pro­test­ers chant­ed “F**k the Jews” and oth­er gross­ly anti­se­mit­ic slo­gans. Nor will it be pos­si­ble to pros­e­cute hate preach­ers who have called for a “final solu­tion” against “the Jews”, and described Jews col­lec­tive­ly as innate­ly “blood­thirsty”, “treach­er­ous”, “crim­i­nals” and “mon­sters”.

Hope­ful­ly the Sen­ate inquiry into the new Bill will high­light these defi­cien­cies and lead to fur­ther reforms. What our com­mu­ni­ty has expe­ri­enced over the last 12 months should nev­er be allowed to hap­pen again.

The new anti-dox­ing leg­is­la­tion is very wel­come, and is in line with the calls made by the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry since Feb­ru­ary for both crim­i­nal penal­ties and civ­il redress to be avail­able against this per­ni­cious prac­tice. The new anti-dox­ing laws will apply prospec­tive­ly.

Those who mali­cious­ly dis­closed the per­son­al details of 600 Jew­ish artists, musi­cians and writ­ers ear­li­er this year and made them the tar­gets of death threats and dis­crim­i­na­tion at work will have to be dealt with under the exist­ing law, which was not designed specif­i­cal­ly to address this kind of behav­iour. We need­ed this anti-dox­ing leg­is­la­tion long ago.