On 9 December 2020 the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, and Senator Kristina Keneally agreed upon Terms of Reference for an Inquiry by the Par­lia­ment­ary Joint Committee on Intel­li­gence and Security (PJCIS) into extremist movements in Australia “including, but not limited to, Islamist and far right-wing extremist groups”.  On 10 December 2020, the ECAJ received an Invit­a­tion to make a sub­mis­sion from the PJCIS.

The Terms of Reference are wide-ranging and cover many issues that have been of long-standing concern to the Aus­trali­an Jewish community and have been the subject of advocacy by the ECAJ.  These include:

• measures to be taken against extremist groups such as National Socialist Network (and its pre­de­cessor Anti­podean Res­ist­ance) and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocate violence, but are thus far not known to have engaged in violence.
• the efficacy or otherwise of current hate crime laws ie laws against crimes which include, among their defined elements, hostility or prejudice against the victim on the basis of a protected attribute such as race or religion.
• the need to list the entire Hezbollah organ­isa­tion (not merely its so-called “External Security Organ­isa­tion”) under Australia’s terrorist organ­isa­tion listing laws.
• banning the public display of hate symbols.
• the need for a much more sys­tem­at­ic, whole-of-gov­ern­ment approach to address the problem of extremism, both through legis­la­tion and, most espe­cially, through education.
• the need for a uniform national system for clas­si­fy­ing and recording hate crime and hate-motivated crime.

The ECAJ sought and obtained input from each of the State and ACT roof bodies, and others they wished to consult, including the CSG.  The ECAJ sub­mis­sion covers each of the above matters and is neces­sar­ily a longer sub­mis­sion than usual.

The full sub­mis­sion can be accessed here.

The PJCIS is due to bring down its report to the Minister in April.