After Bondi, New South Wales politicians want to ban words and slogans. But rushed laws could punish political speech, not protect the public.

After the Bondi Beach massacre, our New South Wales (NSW) parliamentarians are rushing to examine which slogans to criminalise and what words to ban. They say they are doing this to ensure our safety and protect our social cohesion. But many of us are alarmed and fearful.

We are alarmed at the appalling attempts to link the horrific Bondi attack and the pro-Palestine movement. And we are fearful that the NSW Inquiry into prohibiting slogans that incite hatred will rush to implement measures that will erode our democratic freedoms and will result in the exact opposite of the stated objectives of those measures.

In his excellent submission to the Inquiry Professor Ben Saul writes: “Legislation, and particularly criminal law, alone cannot prevent incitement and hatred or manufacture social cohesion. After terrorist attacks, legislators in many countries are tempted to rush through new laws that overreach, are unjustified, violate human rights, and even have counter-productive security effects.”

We, who have learnt to decode political pronouncements when it comes to Arab Australians, are suspicious of the need for additional laws. We believe that our existing laws already address incitements to violence and hatred. And we suspect that the real purpose of new laws is to criminalise political expression. The words and slogans that politicians are examining neither promote hate nor incite violence against Jews. They simply call for resistance against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. I do not see how criminalising these would make........

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