**Ley will work with Labor on softer hate laws, as fears brew they won’t take on radical groups**
*Paul Sakkal
January 19, 2026 – 10.47am*
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley will work with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to pass a watered-down hate crimes bill, overriding the Nationals and conservative Coalition backbenchers, but there is fresh concern that the softer laws will make it harder to crack down on radical Islamist groups.
Ley and Albanese will negotiate this week after Labor dropped a key element of its legislative response to the Bondi massacre over the weekend, which would have criminalised the promotion of hatred. The Coalition, Greens and many civil society groups claimed this part of the bill could have a chilling effect on free speech.
Albanese split his bill in two to salvage political support before this week’s two-day parliamentary sitting. One bill is now centred on gun restrictions and will be passed with Greens support. The second bill gives the government extraordinary new powers to jail people associated with “hate groups”, and separate powers to block visas for hate-driven activists.
Ley’s internal critics, including Andrew Hastie, have argued against doing any deal with Labor.
But Ley told her shadow cabinet colleagues in an hours-long meeting on Sunday evening that it was incumbent on the opposition to be constructive because the families of Bondi victims were looking to the parliament for leadership. Albanese and Ley will also meet with victims’ families on Monday.
Several Coalition sources, not permitted to speak publicly, said the opposition would oppose Labor’s gun laws but that Ley would work with Albanese to try and win relatively minor changes to the hate crimes bill. Nationals MPs were not enthusiastic about dealing with Labor on any of the bills.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said her party was still worried about unintended consequences of the hate crimes legislation that Ley intends to pass.
“The Nationals support changes to [the] Migration Act that make it easier to deport Islamists from our country and to stop them arriving,” she said. “The rushed process, the lack of consultation and genuine concern for unintended consequence will see the Nationals party room consider further issues this morning.”
Both Albanese and Ley returned to Canberra on Monday under political pressure over their response to the worst killing of Jews in the world since Hamas’ 2023 attacks.
This masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor shows Albanese has dropped 28 percentage points on his performance rating since before the Bondi attack in early December – from 6 to minus 22.
Meanwhile, Ley continues to grapple with a resurgent One Nation. This masthead’s Resolve Poll shows the minor party climbing 18 per cent support, with the Coalition on 28 per cent. Newspoll showed One Nation overtaking the Coalition for the first time, 22 to 21 per cent.
Politicians will spend Monday giving condolence speeches about the Bondi attack before moving on to legislative debate on Tuesday.
A critical part of the proposed reforms creates new powers for the government to ban groups if they espouse hate. The government previously flagged that neo-Nazi groups and Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir would be captured by the legislation.
Under the proposal, groups would have been designated as hate groups if they were deemed to have fallen foul of new offences that criminalised the promotion of hatred.
However, since the government shelved those new offences on Saturday under pressure from the Coalition and the Greens, it now faces a higher bar to target Hizb ut-Tahrir. Neo-Nazis will be easier to pin because they display hate symbols such as swastikas, meeting one of the other thresholds to be designated.
Albanese on Monday conceded that shelving the proposals to outlaw hatred “makes it more difficult” to ban radical groups, although he argued the laws would still be workable.
Leading constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said the backdown on the anti-vilification provisions made the test for banning hate groups tougher for Labor, which will now need to prove groups are inciting violence rather than promoting hatred – a higher threshhold.
Zioníst Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said: “If, because of these amendments, Hizb ut-Tahrir can’t be banned, then the bill has a serious problem and the parliament needs to work together to fix it.”
“Hizb ut-Tahrir has for years praised acts of terrorism and sought to normalise the most extreme forms of Jew hatred – and both the government and opposition have now called for them to be banned,” he said.
The Jewish community and the Coalition have called on the government to use existing terrorist group designation laws to crack down on Hizb ut-Tahrir, which this masthead revealed in 2024 was using pro-Palestine front groups to spread its violent message. However, neither Hizb ut-Tahrir nor neo-Nazi organisations have met the definition of a terror group.
dreamlikes7 on
Or albo could always work with the greens to make it not terrible
2 Comments
**Ley will work with Labor on softer hate laws, as fears brew they won’t take on radical groups**
*Paul Sakkal
January 19, 2026 – 10.47am*
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley will work with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to pass a watered-down hate crimes bill, overriding the Nationals and conservative Coalition backbenchers, but there is fresh concern that the softer laws will make it harder to crack down on radical Islamist groups.
Ley and Albanese will negotiate this week after Labor dropped a key element of its legislative response to the Bondi massacre over the weekend, which would have criminalised the promotion of hatred. The Coalition, Greens and many civil society groups claimed this part of the bill could have a chilling effect on free speech.
Albanese split his bill in two to salvage political support before this week’s two-day parliamentary sitting. One bill is now centred on gun restrictions and will be passed with Greens support. The second bill gives the government extraordinary new powers to jail people associated with “hate groups”, and separate powers to block visas for hate-driven activists.
Ley’s internal critics, including Andrew Hastie, have argued against doing any deal with Labor.
But Ley told her shadow cabinet colleagues in an hours-long meeting on Sunday evening that it was incumbent on the opposition to be constructive because the families of Bondi victims were looking to the parliament for leadership. Albanese and Ley will also meet with victims’ families on Monday.
Several Coalition sources, not permitted to speak publicly, said the opposition would oppose Labor’s gun laws but that Ley would work with Albanese to try and win relatively minor changes to the hate crimes bill. Nationals MPs were not enthusiastic about dealing with Labor on any of the bills.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said her party was still worried about unintended consequences of the hate crimes legislation that Ley intends to pass.
“The Nationals support changes to [the] Migration Act that make it easier to deport Islamists from our country and to stop them arriving,” she said. “The rushed process, the lack of consultation and genuine concern for unintended consequence will see the Nationals party room consider further issues this morning.”
Both Albanese and Ley returned to Canberra on Monday under political pressure over their response to the worst killing of Jews in the world since Hamas’ 2023 attacks.
This masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor shows Albanese has dropped 28 percentage points on his performance rating since before the Bondi attack in early December – from 6 to minus 22.
Meanwhile, Ley continues to grapple with a resurgent One Nation. This masthead’s Resolve Poll shows the minor party climbing 18 per cent support, with the Coalition on 28 per cent. Newspoll showed One Nation overtaking the Coalition for the first time, 22 to 21 per cent.
Politicians will spend Monday giving condolence speeches about the Bondi attack before moving on to legislative debate on Tuesday.
A critical part of the proposed reforms creates new powers for the government to ban groups if they espouse hate. The government previously flagged that neo-Nazi groups and Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir would be captured by the legislation.
Under the proposal, groups would have been designated as hate groups if they were deemed to have fallen foul of new offences that criminalised the promotion of hatred.
However, since the government shelved those new offences on Saturday under pressure from the Coalition and the Greens, it now faces a higher bar to target Hizb ut-Tahrir. Neo-Nazis will be easier to pin because they display hate symbols such as swastikas, meeting one of the other thresholds to be designated.
Albanese on Monday conceded that shelving the proposals to outlaw hatred “makes it more difficult” to ban radical groups, although he argued the laws would still be workable.
Leading constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said the backdown on the anti-vilification provisions made the test for banning hate groups tougher for Labor, which will now need to prove groups are inciting violence rather than promoting hatred – a higher threshhold.
Zioníst Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said: “If, because of these amendments, Hizb ut-Tahrir can’t be banned, then the bill has a serious problem and the parliament needs to work together to fix it.”
“Hizb ut-Tahrir has for years praised acts of terrorism and sought to normalise the most extreme forms of Jew hatred – and both the government and opposition have now called for them to be banned,” he said.
The Jewish community and the Coalition have called on the government to use existing terrorist group designation laws to crack down on Hizb ut-Tahrir, which this masthead revealed in 2024 was using pro-Palestine front groups to spread its violent message. However, neither Hizb ut-Tahrir nor neo-Nazi organisations have met the definition of a terror group.
Or albo could always work with the greens to make it not terrible