Tuesday, 3 March 2026

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:52): I rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. What an extraordinary set of events it has taken to get here, in terms of both the substance of this bill, which is significant and important, but also the parliamentary failures from this government that have led to this bill being initiated as a standalone piece of legislation. In terms of the substance, this bill is a very, very simple bill. What this bill does is remove the consent requirement from the Director of Public Prosecutions for a serious instance of alleged hate speech before a charge can be proceeded with – a very simple single measure. In fact you would think that when the government legislated their hate speech laws these measures would have been in place. They were not. I remember a particularly fiery debate in this chamber, led then by the member for Malvern, and I spoke after him, calling out the fact that the government brought a bill back into this chamber on their hate speech laws that included this consent requirement before action could be taken to protect people from hate speech. It was a very fiery debate. What the government confirmed and have since said publicly – repeatedly; this is not a new thing – is ‘We put the consent in because the Greens said that the only way they would pass the bill was if we put that consent measure in the law, otherwise the Greens would not support it.’ We of course took every opportunity to work with the government to enable legislation that worked. I remember distinctly the former Shadow Attorney-General, the member for Malvern, making every attempt and every effort to work with the government to ensure we had laws that did work. He went to both the Attorney-General of the day and also the Premier to say, ‘We want to see these laws work.’ We all did. We wanted to see these laws work.

When the bill came back to this chamber including that consent provision, we said, firstly, that it was a dirty deal with the Greens. I mean, the government have admitted that it was a deal with the Greens on this provision. But more importantly what we said was that with the consent provision in, the laws would not work. Let me tell you how many people have been convicted of hate speech since the laws were put into place, the laws that were supposed to provide new protections to Victorians because we know we are seeing behaviour on our streets that is unacceptable and for which we would expect charges to be laid. How many convictions have we seen? Zero convictions. There has not been a conviction because these laws do not work.

Then I would say to you that it is important to ask if perhaps there is a backlog of offences for which people who have committed behaviour that is hate speech have been charged but the courts have not yet considered the matters. How many charges have been laid? As of this morning, the Attorney’s office advised me, zero. The government claimed these new laws would fix the hate speech problem in our state, the rampant antisemitism and hate speech that we are seeing in our state. The Premier said these laws would fix that, but there have been no charges and there have been no convictions. Frankly, it is as if that law did not exist in the first place.

I can assure you that no-one on this side of the chamber was surprised when the government got up and said ‘We got it wrong. Were wrong. The laws do not work, and they need redrafting,’ because we had said it. We said it from the minute we found out that the government did a deal with the Greens to pass laws that could not and would not work. We called it out. I remember the debate as if it were yesterday because the speakers on that debate, when the amendment came back to this chamber, called it out passionately. We told the government it was doing something which would negate the law in the first place.

were so passionate because enough is enough. But enough was enough a long time ago, and the community has been calling for action for far too long. For far too long this community has been calling for action because we have seen the most outrageous, illegal, feral behaviour occurring on our streets, and there is a tacit acceptance by the government that it is occurring. In passing laws that do not work, you accept that you are not fixing it, and we called that out. We said that these laws would not fix it, and as of this morning the advice from the Attorney’s office is that not a single charge or conviction has been reached under these hate speech provisions. There is currently no legislative mechanism of protection against hate speech. How can that be? Because the government would not work with the opposition, with the coalition, to see laws that do work.

I found out about this Bill 2 minutes before the Attorney stood up yesterday at her press conference to announce it. I note that 2 minutes before they went public the first thing I offered to the government, at that exact moment of finding out, was ‘We want to work with you to get these laws through the Parliament today.’ I put that offer on behalf of the coalition immediately. As soon as I found out that the government had split this amendment into its own standalone bill – and I will speak to how we have seen this amendment move through the Parliament in other forms later – I immediately said to the government ‘We want this new bill considered in the Parliament today.’

Not only did I offer that the bill be considered today, I asked the government if they would split the government business program to see this particular bill dealt with by 5 o’clock today. My view was that waiting till Thursday at 5 o’clock was too long and that we had to not only consider it today – give leave for it to be debated immediately, which we did – but also by 5 o’clock today see that bill pass this Parliament. As I have said consistently for a very long time, we as a coalition support this provision and support it strongly. In fact, we have supported it longer than any other party in this chamber, in that when the government did a deal with the Greens to bring a consent amendment into this chamber, we said it was wrong. We said we supported a ‘no consent’ amendment, because we knew that the laws would not work. The Attorney, by admitting to me that there has been no charge laid, no conviction, has, frankly, admitted that the laws as they stand do not work.

We have seen a sad pathway to these laws appearing today and a sad pathway, frankly, that did not need to occur. As I said, as was said before me by the member for Malvern and as we have said since, repeatedly and publicly, we as a coalition want to see this change. We want to see these laws fixed, and it has taken since enactment in September for the government to work out their laws are not working – a very long time. I am sure that was simply stubbornness – stubbornness in admitting an error. And, frankly, we have seen other instances today where the Attorney has found it difficult to admit error, haven’t we? We have certainly seen instances where the Attorney has found it very difficult to say, ‘Sorry, I got it wrong’, and own the error. This is another one. We saw obviously the instance of the Attorney speaking earlier today where there had been a claim that she had referred a matter to police when she had not, and now with this particular bill where the government took a very, very long time to say, ‘We got it wrong.’ They did not say sorry, but they have, because of this acceptance of a need for change, admitted that they got it wrong.

So what did they do once they figured out that they got it wrong? I presume they took a long time to not do much, because they did not want to admit, when it comes to what is occurring on our streets, that they had not fixed it – because an admission that they had not fixed it was an admission they did a deal that was wrong with the wrong party, which made the laws inoperable, effectively. I imagine also that the Premier and the Attorney did not have the face to accept that error had occurred. But eventually we got to the point where there was an acceptance the laws were not working. Partly that was led by the community, partly it was led by the bleeding obvious of what has been occurring every single week on our streets – the outrageous behaviour on our streets – and the lack of action on it.

What the government did was find an omnibus justice bill which has done some good things. It was a bill that we did not oppose; we supported measures in that omnibus bill, and it was not controversial in any way. The government expanded the scope of that bill to tack on this amendment to it, so when it got sent to the upper house, no-one should have been surprised to hear that members in the upper house felt that because it was an omnibus justice bill, they had the opportunity to add other amendments to it, of course – that is what an omnibus bill is.

The government did it. The government tacked an amendment onto their omnibus bill, so it is fair and reasonable for other parties to also do so. As I have said publicly, although we would consider each of the amendments that were tacked on to the omnibus bill as a policy position – and we have – my concern and the coalition’s concern was that we had a bill being delayed that included a hate speech strengthening because the government did not want to act to give our chief anti-corruption agency increased power. Last sitting week we effectively had a stalemate in the upper house whereby this amendment, this power, was blocked by the government because they did not want the Parliament to consider new anti-corruption powers for IBAC. That stalemate existed to the point that the government said repeatedly to every media outlet that asked on that Thursday, ‘The omnibus bill will be debated and will get to a vote on Thursday.’ And then – I was there to see it – I saw the Government Whip get up and move a closure motion and adjourn off the bill. Why? Because this hate speech amendment was in the bill. Why? Because the government did not want the Parliament to consider giving IBAC new powers. Can you believe that you would see a government say ‘We so much don’t want scrutiny of what has been happening under our watch we are going to stop hate speech laws’? I mean, how extraordinary.

I want to put on the record what we did both before they shelved the bill and since. We made every effort to go to the government and say we support the hate speech enhancements – we have since day one; in fact, we said the government got it wrong in the first place. We said we support it. We said we would do everything we can to help make it happen. That was consistent; that was repeated. On multiple occasions we went to the government and said we want to see this happen, not because we did not think that the Parliament should be considering enhancing our chief anti-corruption agency with new powers – we strongly support that; we moved a private members bill today about that very thing. But what we said to the government is that we want to see both. What the government said to me was that with the IBAC amendments attached to the bill, it was not going to debate the bill again. That bill, that omnibus bill which was listed for debate in the Council this week, has now been pulled. It was listed in writing for debate this week and it has now been pulled from debate in the Legislative Council this week. The government is using its numbers to block the omnibus bill from being debated in the Council because it does not want to consider enhancing the chief anti-corruption agency and it having new powers. You almost have to stop for a moment to think through and let that idea settle with you: a government is blocking a bill so that our anti-corruption agency does not have powers.

Yesterday, in a parliamentary committee, we saw the agency itself call for those powers. Just yesterday in this very place the anti-corruption agency said they need these powers. They need them. I mean, it was not some letter between a Premier and IBAC two years ago – you know, there was a response. The Premier only briefed out the first letter; she did not brief out the second letter – did not think that one through, media office. But yesterday the anti-corruption agency called for the powers. They called for them yesterday.

So for that bill, within moments of the agency calling for those powers, to be shelved from debate in the Council says everything. How has the government dealt with it? They have pulled that amendment out of the bill and put it into this standalone piece of legislation. I will note, only briefly, that that omnibus bill, which we spoke about in another debate, has a number of important measures. I would not want to speak for any other member in this chamber, but many members spoke about the bill, because there are important measures in it, including an extension of the Drug Court. The Drug Court extension is contained within that bill. If that bill does not proceed, the Drug Court is now on a very, very short timeline, and sadly, that has been lost in the public debate of other issues. It is important to note that, because when you split bills, when you shelve bills because you do not like what might be considered, it has other impacts.

We have this bill after that long and rocky path to get here today, where we see a bill before us which does a very, very simple amendment. I would hope that by 5 o’clock today we can see this house pass it, because the anti-hate speech laws that exist in Victoria do not protect Victorians. We have seen the most horrific things occurring on our streets to our fellow Victorians – shameful behaviour, where people are openly attacked and openly vilified, and where hate speech against various communities, but particularly the Jewish community, is vile and rampant. Unfortunately when governments do not stand up and say, ‘No, we’re going to do something about it, and we’re going to do something that works,’ you are effectively tacitly letting it happen, because governments have the powers to make laws. Had the government worked with the coalition, we would have ensured there were laws that worked.

It is very difficult to understand and fully appreciate the damage that is being done to communities of ours, fellow Victorians, by what is occurring on our streets. I might say, as someone who has an extremely close connection to the Jewish community – specifically a very, very close connection to the Jewish community – and an understanding of issues that the Jewish community has seen and lived through over recent years, I felt that I understood very strongly the issues that are facing the Jewish community. But I will add something that I have not talked about publicly that I do feel is an important point to note. I am not Jewish, so therefore I have never experienced antisemitism personally. I have seen it – of course unfortunately I have seen it – and I have helped friends who have had to live through the most shocking circumstances of it. Only recently I attended an event for the President of Israel, who came to Australia and came to Melbourne, and as I do when I attend an event, especially particular types of Jewish events, I put on my kippah. I put it on as I left my car. I always park my car, put it on and walk to the event, as I am sure many other members of this place do when they attend Jewish events. Because of the protests that were occurring around him being in Melbourne, protesters had started to descend upon the location where the President was due to speak. Protesters were milling around and starting to arrive near the locality.

As I walked to the event, protesters thought I was Jewish, and I experienced a level of hate I have never experienced before. I think that in Parliament we are used to people from time to time taking out their frustrations on us. That is not uncommon. Lately people are talking to us a lot about the corruption they are seeing in this state, and they feel their trust is broken. They often will talk to us with incredible emotion. It is part of what we do. We show compassion to people, and we hear what they say. But at no time have I ever experienced a series of incidents – it was not just one – of dehumanisation that included hissing. I have never been hissed at in my life. It sounds so simple, and it sounds like such a little thing, even saying it out loud – and I thought about whether I would, but I feel that it is important. To feel that someone is so degrading you because of who you are, not because they disagree with your action – as I said, that occurs often. Often people question our actions, and it can be robust, but not who we are, not our right to exist. That is what antisemitism is. It is saying to the Jewish community, ‘You don’t have a right to exist. You don’t have a right to be here.’ Experiencing that for the first time was very traumatic. I know that that is a big word – very traumatic. I have been to Israel shortly after the war. I have visited terrorist-hit sites. I have seen where children have died. I have watched footage of terrorists doing the types of things I wish I had never known another human could do to a human. But to feel multiple instances of someone dehumanising me on the way into that event really stuck with me. That is not in any way to compare the two things. Of course it is not, and I would not want anyone to conflate what I am saying. But the reason I am raising it is because that is happening all day, every day to part of our community, to fellow Victorians, and it has not been fixed.

We consider this bill now – which we support. We want to see it passed by this Parliament. We want to see it passed with haste. We want it to see it go through the upper house, and of course we are going to support it. Firstly, I would say we could have had these powers initially had the government done the right thing and worked with us. We could have seen that, and we should have seen that. The government, I think partly because of stubbornness, did not agree to that. I would say that every event that has occurred since then under a regime of laws that have not worked – I mean, the only way you could, I think, fairly describe the government’s assertions that they had acted, is gaslighting. That is the only word you can use, that the government recognised there was a problem, said there was a problem and brought in laws which gaslighted Victorians into believing they might have protections. Well, the Attorney has admitted: no charges, no convictions. So those laws did not protect Victorians. And to think, every single instance that someone had to put up with, whether big or small, should not have happened. That does not mean that government can stop everything from occurring. What the government should be doing is putting in place laws that protect people where they need protection, and the government failed at that. When you go through the history of how we got to the laws – failures in the drafting of the laws, failed attempts to pass the laws through the upper house through a different bill – on every single one of those steps you can only see that the government has failed.

I think that when you take politics out of this issue entirely and you look at these issues with a very fair mind, the only thing that you would see is that the government’s politics failed Victorians, and Victorians know it. The Jewish community knows it. The Jewish community knows it, because every single day they have had to experience questioning of their right to exist. It has to stop; it is wrong. And it is incumbent on everyone in this place, and every community leader more broadly, to say that it needs to stop, not just in terms of antisemitism but any form of inequality. It requires community leaders to stand up, but it also requires governments, where they see a way to legislate, to help to do it – to do it in a way that will work and to do it in a way that puts politics aside – and to sometimes work with other parties to make sure that it will happen in a meaningful way. It is sad to know that the failure in the government’s drafting has seen no instance of those laws working since those laws were introduced. It is good that we have this measure before the house today, which of course we support. We want to see it passed with haste. It should have been done at the start, and had the government had any real integrity, that is what would have happened. Victorians know it, and we will make sure these laws are passed at 5 o’clock today.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (15:22): Well, that was 1796 seconds we will not get back – goodness me. That was the longest acknowledgement that politics from the Liberals and Nationals in the upper house impacted on these protections coming through. It was a longwinded way of describing how adding in things to a bill and the concession of that, the intention of that, the politicisation of a piece of legislation that is to protect members of our community from serious vilification offences, particularly what we have seen in the devastating impacts on the Jewish communities – it was an acknowledgement. I point out to the member for Brighton that it was a shame that for such a performance there were not more colleagues in here. The member for Evelyn came through about 40 seconds before the end of it.

It was such a grand presentation of a concession that the Liberals and Nationals politicised anti-vilification and serious vilification offences, because let us remind those opposite that when we first brought bills to this place, the opposition voted against these stronger protections – 12 months ago. When the member for Brighton talks about politicisation, when the member for Brighton talks about unity, there was a moment for unity right there. The member for Brighton, in his revisionist history right here in that presentation, conceded that they played politics and now suddenly want to rush it through in, say, 48 hours as opposed to 168 hours from last sitting week. What an extraordinary contradiction throughout that speech that does not get to the level of what we saw, say, from Michael O’Brien, the member for Malvern, when he was shadow minister. Dare I say even the former member for Kew Tim Smith, that great intellect, would not have dished up such a waffling piece of contradiction, because these are serious matters, and it is serious business in this Parliament to protect people across our communities.

I do not know how shadow cabinet dealt with their policy position on this. I mean, there are a couple of legends at the table right here that might be able to take us through exactly what that might have looked like, because this whole strategy to say that you are on the side of those being vilified while blocking the very protections and changes that protect them is an extraordinary about-face, and I do not think we needed 1796 seconds to say it. All the member for Brighton had to do was say sorry: sorry for the politicisation, sorry for bringing the construction industry issues into a discussion about how we protect the Jewish community. What an extraordinary thing they did last sitting week; what an extraordinary performance that was, to say that you are on the side of people who need that protection from Victoria Police in our community – something that we absolutely rushed through as quickly as we could.

Facts matter. Your opinions on whatever can be what they are, even if not well founded, but you cannot just make up your own facts. Let us go back only 2½ months ago to 22 December, when the Premier stood up urgently to announce steps that the government would take to combat antisemitism and protect public safety, including amending the way serious vilification offences are prosecuted, to address these concerns that the current Director of Public Prosecutions consent requirements imposed an unnecessary prosecutorial burden impacting on offence effectiveness. That was part of a substantial five-step antisemitism plan. How was that not leadership standing up after such a horrific tragedy only a few days before in Bondi? That is the leadership the state needed and that is what the Premier brought forward: a comprehensive program of combating antisemitism. Our state has been on a significant journey over a number of months and even over the last couple of years. We saw changes throughout that journey when we first brought anti-vilification protections forward. This is what we were doing, because we on this side are absolutely about ensuring that every Victorian, regardless of their faith and their background, is supported and protected and can feel safe.

There have been opportunities that we have all had to connect with the Jewish community. There is a massive anxiety and burden that is felt at the moment that is continuing on post the horrific alleged murders in Bondi that still leaves such a horrible feeling and just a helplessness in Australians about how such hate can be inflicted on others. So our vigilance and our need to stand up in every element of our community to ensure that our Jewish communities are supported are critical as well. It is one thing to attend synagogues, it is one thing to stand there and say that we need more protections, but it was another thing to come in here on the Thursday afternoon and politicise serious vilification laws.

The stunt that was done this morning on introducing bills is the way you do it. Everyone wants politics, an opposition needs to oppose – we know. That was the time to do it today: the Shadow Attorney-General stood up, moved a bill, the bill was voted down, he went out and did a doorstop. That is the way you do it. You do not do it when we are trying to protect Jewish community members from serious vilification and empowering Victoria Police, when we are trying to get a bill through, and then come back into this place and say that you want to rush it through at the end of the day. That is laughable. It is fanciful. It is why those opposite are not a serious and credible opposition, because there is common decency to everything that we do. It is not to say that you cannot have the political discourse and debate. There are moments for that. There is nuance. There is an ability to do your doorstop and do the media grabs, but to politicise trauma like that is absolutely outrageous. That is what it was.

There are the part-timers over there, the Greens political party that we see occasionally – seriously, they roll through. We have had work from home changes, Acting Speaker Tak, I know you have been keeping up with this. I do not know if they are ever here or if they are permanently working from home. The Greens political party rock up occasionally, ask a question once a week and maybe speak on a bill every four weeks. They are absolutely horrendous in their parliamentary performance. Then we see the significant steps that they took to block this work through the Justice Legislation Further Amendment (Miscellaneous) Bill 2025 as well. The Greens political party are once again the part-timers of the Parliament. Goodness me, you can see the socialists chasing them down. The socialist party is chasing them down and hoovering up their support on the left flank, aren’t they, because they do not bother to turn up and do the work. Once again we saw on Thursday afternoon the Greens political party also blocking serious protections and reforms and the frustration of our Jewish community at both the opposition and the Greens political party, who teamed up to block important legislation which was designed to deliver tougher new laws to crack down on people who want to whip up racism and hate against their fellow Victorians. We now know that the amendment proposed by the Greens 12 months ago has the potential to create substantial delays in these hate crimes being heard in court.

Why? Why do they want to create delays there? I am not sure. I am going to give the Greens political party the benefit of the doubt and say it is the lack of attendance in Parliament, the lack of diligence, of fronting up, of hearing legislation, of being a part of the amending process, because it is an absolutely egregious act to delay these protections for any longer than is absolutely necessary in getting them drafted and up to the Governor as quickly as possible.

The change is really important. The administrative delay whereby Victoria Police are currently required to get consent from the Director of Public Prosecutions in every case before it can proceed to court is a significant time delay and impact, so we are strengthening the work and protections of Victoria Police. We have given them the powers, we have got the work that they do at a taskforce level, specialist levels, and we understand the significant work and burden they undertake to make sure that these matters are investigated and brought before the courts. This amendment, the third of its phase coming through, is critically important. Alleged offenders would have more time to continue to commit their unlawful acts if we were not to act quicker as well. In a further step to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate to keep people safe, we need to remove this requirement for consent to police prosecutions for criminal vilification unless the alleged offender is under the age of 18.

As I said, this is not something that should have been politicised in the upper house. It is a great shame that it took 1796 seconds. I mean, the member for Brighton could do night time radio the way he loves listening to himself. But that apology right there was ham-fisted. We acknowledge the member for Brighton. As the time goes off, I will conclude my remarks because I could do 20 minutes on the member for Brighton. We commend the bill to the house.

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (15:32): When the member for Mordialloc was quite critical of the member for Brighton for his contribution, I was expecting something a bit more vivid. Anyway, good contribution, member for Mordialloc.

I note the position that was outlined by our lead speaker the honourable member for Brighton, who made some pertinent points. As we have heard, this bill changes the framework regarding the serious vilification process. As was pointed out by our lead speaker, it is a change that indicates that this was not quite right when it passed this house in the first place, because the laws that were put in place at that time simply have not played out on the ground not only in relation to any convictions but in relation to any arrests. You cannot have a conviction without an arrest, but we have just seen nothing. Currently a prosecution for a serious offence may only occur with the consent of the DPP, and we know that this has been quite a restrictive process. The DPP must consider all actions before it can do so. The complications there, and the fact that police have not had the ability to take action directly themselves, have been quite concerning. Police have been delayed from having any involvement in some cases, prevented from having any involvement in others, and they need to be at the forefront of the response to the hateful conduct that we have indeed seen.

This bill will amend the Crimes Act 1958 to provide that the DPP’s consent is no longer required and that police will have the powers to commence a prosecution unless the person is under the age of 18. This is absolutely right. I am led to believe that when the original bill was voted on in this chamber, the member for Ringwood – and I do vaguely recall this – moved an amendment to give police these powers, and the government voted against it. I see that the member for Ringwood is on the speaking list, and I am sure that he will cover off on that when he has the microphone.

Whilst this bill also provides that Victoria Police can join with the DPP in taking action, I note the consent is restricted to them, meaning that private citizens will not be able to do so.

It does not prevent private citizens from making a complaint themselves, either to police, which will be the case in most circumstances, or indeed to the DPP – as they should be able to do, because these are actions that need to be acted on. The bottom line is that since these laws were introduced as the big saviour to stamp out actions of vilification, we have had nothing happen, nothing on the ground – not one arrest, and I will touch on that a little bit later.

One point that I want to make before I do is that most laws that we pass through this chamber – and I believe it is about 70 to 80 per year that we discuss through various types of legislation – require commonsense implementation on the ground. When people are prosecuting our laws, whether it be police, whether it be officers in other agencies, they need to provide a level of common sense. Interestingly, over the weekend – and not knowing that I would be standing on my feet speaking on this bill a couple of days ago, because we only got very short notice – I watched a presentation by the acclaimed British comedian Rowan Atkinson, and the point he was making was about the erosion of free speech. He is a funny man, Mr Atkinson, but in this case it was obviously quite a serious topic. He warned about censorship becoming too great and, to paraphrase, that we cannot become, as a society, too precious. While I am supportive of the right to free speech, we certainly need some boundaries when we are crossing over into the areas of hate or promoting uprising. Any commentary that incites violence and any commentary that promotes an uprising of harm, we must certainly be outlawing. That is where I do believe this legislation is aimed, and police indeed should have those powers to take action when required. But I also understand the views expressed by Mr Atkinson, and I go back to the point that I was making earlier: that is where commonsense application is required for these laws. We cannot have people being charged or convicted for frivolous-type matters. It is the serious matters that we have been exposed to of relatively recent times that certainly need to be to be acted on.

I do note our lead speaker the member for Brighton’s commentary, that since these laws have come in we have not had one person charged. One wonders why. I came down here, I was at Parliament one Saturday morning to attend a function, and it corresponded with one of the protests out the front. To see some of the slogans that were on placards was shocking, and to hear some of the chants that those protesters were making was abhorrent. Yet we have the laws in place that were meant to clamp down on that and hold people accountable and responsible. For those many actions that we saw over a long period of several weeks and even months, we saw absolutely no arrests. The fact that we are coming back now into this chamber and we are adding police powers to take action is an admission that this was not right in the first place. That is what it is: it is an admission that this was not right in the first place. I want to just point out that in 2022 we had a Ballarat woman Zoe Buhler who was actually arrested for inciting opposition to the lockdown laws. She was arrested for that – inciting opposition to the lockdown laws. Yet some of the things that I have seen out the front of this place on slogans and that have been chanted and that have been said, we have had no action on – no action on whatsoever. There is something not right there. There is something simply not right there.

I do believe that later on the charges were dropped in relation to that woman’s actions, but for inciting others to breach lockdowns you get arrested and for inciting other people to kill other people there is nothing that happens in that regard. It is simply not appropriate, and it should not be allowed to occur. In some cases it seems to be that when taking action here it has all been too complex. There is no other reason to put down for why we have had no arrests. These were meant to be laws that stopped vilification and the uprising of hate, and we see them exploding on our streets and see absolutely nothing happening.

Now, hopefully, with the police having more powers to take action on the front line, we will certainly see some changes in that regard. But of course we cannot get to the stage where we are arresting people for lesser actions, and I go back again to repeating my commentary that this is where common sense needs to be applied by the enforcement officers who will be responding to these laws. In relation to that, I will conclude my comments. We do support this legislation. It should have been there in the first place, and hopefully we will see some positive action playing out on the ground and people being held to account for their actions, which has not happened since this came into place.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (15:41): I will say it is frustrating that it is now the third time this important amendment has had to come before the house. I think we need to do a little bit of a history lesson here, because I do remember vividly when we were first debating the bill along the way that the opposition voted against the stronger protections 12 months ago. It was really disappointing because there had been so much careful work with stakeholders. Nonetheless, our multicultural communities, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and other representatives were very passionate, for all the right reasons, about seeing these important protections come through. So I think it is rather rich of the opposition – and that is probably being a little delicate on my part – to suddenly look at us and say ‘Oh, why didn’t you bring about this particular element of the bill then?’ when they opposed the bill, and it was actually a bit of a slap in the face, not least to the Jewish community.

We know that the Greens political party do not support this change, and they certainly have attempted to stymie this change through the upper house. Having been formerly a member of the upper house, I remember many occasions where the government had done the hard work – because obviously preparation of a bill is not just slapping a few words together on a piece of paper; there is extensive consultation and evaluation of all the ramifications of the wording in a bill – and quite often they would lob in something which had very little, if anything, to do with the premise of the bill per se and would try to find ways through that to affect or impede the passage of the bill at hand to grandstand on a particular issue. This is not to say that other issues that are being put forward that are not central to the premise of the bill are not important, and I am not in any way trying to diminish the significance of matters that may get raised by opposition or minor parties either, because as has been stated in the chamber, the Parliament is a house of debate. But ultimately, if we are to be effective as MPs, we do need to be able to bring reforms through the house. When you see in particular the suffering of the Jewish community – it is not only that, but I will say in this instance that is relevant to the context of the bill, particularly with the Bondi massacre, the bombing of the Addas synagogue and so many incidents that are horrific and offensive to all of us or to any decent Victorian – then we can see the imperative to have these changes here today. To those who are looking with audacity at us putting forward these reforms, well, we simply are compelled, I should say, from an ethical point of view, because so much work went into the formulation of the anti-vilification and social cohesion reforms, and we do want to see the right outcome for the community. I should say, if I read off the purpose of the bill per se, that in a further step to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate and to keep people safe, we need to remove the requirement that the Director of Public Prosecutions consent to police prosecutions for criminal vilification, unless the alleged offender is under the age of 18.

What would be the consequences were this bill before us not to be passed? It has the potential to create substantial delays in these hate crimes – the terrible acts of antisemitism that we have seen to date – being heard in court. It would be devastating, to say the least, if that were to be allowed to perpetuate, hence there really is an imperative to pass these reforms for the good of the Victorian community. Why? Because Victorians deserve to live free from hate, discrimination and intimidation, fundamentally. If we are looking at the purposive element of the legislation we are bringing forward today, which is to ensure Victorians – and I am going to repeat this – live free from hate, discrimination and intimidation.

There is therefore a really strong and compelling argument, to say the least – multiple arguments, I should say – to have a positive passing of this bill in both chambers of the house. I would hope that we do not see further, I will say, tactics, and I am not saying that politics per se is not a tactical exercise. Obviously, in order to be able to get messaging to community and to be able to push forward particular policy or otherwise in an effective way, there are tactics that can be used from time to time. However, we have significant vulnerability in the community, and it really is timely, to say the least, that we get these reforms through, because I do not think any decent person – I would like to think no-one in this chamber – wants to see one more Victorian vilified any day of the week.

We are talking about serious acts that we have seen across this state, and it really is not in the interests of anyone to see them to be allowed to continue. If there was a delay because for some reason we did not get these reforms through – I am confident that we will – that would mean that whilst the bureaucratic processes of police having to refer a matter to the DPP are being followed through, this then would theoretically allow those who are perpetuating discriminatory acts – and we are talking about serious discriminatory acts – can simply continue to do so theoretically. That means more harm, and that is counterproductive when we are looking at the kind of better and happier and more equal and fair community that we are striving to achieve in Victoria.

I would like to think, and I would hope, that we will not again see the kind of teaming up of the Greens and the Liberals in the upper house. I hope this will get through the lower house of course. I am really hoping for the betterment of Victorians, but I hope that we do not see a teaming up of the Greens and the Libs again trying to lob in other elements to a bill which really has a very pure and decent motive here, and that is to prevent the prosecution of serious matters being unnecessarily delayed by bureaucratic processes. I am not making inferences about the DPP themselves of course but rather showing confidence in police in being able to pursue matters that are authentically being pursued.

I also want to say, and I will put a caveat, it is a pity that we have to have anti-vilification and social cohesion laws in the first place and the fact that we have seen such horrific acts of discrimination and disruption in our community. But that being said, because it has happened and we cannot resile from it, and no-one is seeking to, we therefore need to follow through, take this all the way and make sure that we drive the right outcome for our community, nonetheless the Jewish community, who certainly have worked very collaboratively with the government. I know the government consulted widely in the development of the anti-vilification and social cohesion laws, because I attended some of those sessions on behalf of the Attorney-General at the time when I was Parliamentary Secretary for Justice.

I know very well the very nuanced and careful work that went into bringing about these reforms. That is why it was so frustrating to see, for instance, the Greens political party lobbying in at the last minute chucking in something without giving it the proper consideration that it deserved and in effect stymieing progression of this really important reform. I hope that they will resile from that, and I hope that we will get genuine collaboration this time to be able to see these important reforms through. We genuinely care about our Victorian community, and we want all Victorians to be to be treated with love and respect and integrity. Getting these reforms appropriately implemented is fundamental, and we would like to see a safe passage of this bill finally. That would be much appreciated.

 David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (15:51): I rise to make some comments on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. This just feels like groundhog day, because we have been talking about this for far too long. Every day lost is another day that puts those communities at risk when it comes to hate, and especially the Jewish community, which has seen an unprecedented increase in antisemitism, particularly since the events of October 7.

I want to highlight to the house that this did not just start 12 months ago when the government failed an attempt to bring in new hate laws excluding the very thing that would have made the law stronger – but it started many, many years ago. In fact it happened 2364 days ago – six years ago – when the parliamentary Legal and Social Issues Committee had a look at strengthening our anti-vilification laws. One of the key recommendations from that committee six years ago was that in order to strengthen the powers of hate laws, you have to remove the barrier so that, for anyone that incites hatred, the police have to ask an independent umpire for further powers before they go and charge somebody. Imagine that: police have all the powers to be able to do their job in everything, but when it comes to prosecuting with hate laws, they need to ask the DPP, the Director of Public Prosecutions, or a third umpire to rule on whether it is valid to charge somebody that spews hatred, incites hatred, to another individual. I was part of that committee, along with the member for Brighton, and we unanimously agreed six years ago to change this law. So what happened 12 months ago? The government brings in a bill, and the one thing that needed to be fixed – that the parliamentary inquiry said would fix our hate laws – was excluded. And you have to ask why. Why did this happen when we spend hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars on these parliamentary committees that are all so important? We did the work, the work was done, and the government ignored the work. Why? Because this government, who claim they are so good at protecting people, did a dirty deal with the Greens to ensure that this important part of the legislation was excluded.

What happens afterwards is simply this: the Premier, along with the Attorney-General, puts out a great press release headed ‘Protecting more Victorians from hate’ that says that after this, on Wednesday 2 April, everybody can feel safe in Victoria, because they have strengthened our hate laws. Well, what a false promise that was, and particularly since the Jewish community since October 7 have seen an unprecedented piece of hate. I only have to remind the community and this house that it was only months later, on 10 December, that we had people hunting Jews in Caulfield outside a synagogue on the Sabbath.

What happened to those people that targeted the Jewish community, that threw rocks on the Friday night? Were any of them prosecuted for what they did? No. In fact has anybody been prosecuted since the hate laws were brought in? The answer is no. Why? Because the government failed in the one thing that they could have fixed in strengthening the laws – the very reason we are here today. The government failed, the government got it wrong, and they left the Jewish community and other vulnerable communities unsafe as a result of it. The government talks up supporting women, disability, LGBTI, Indigenous communities, the Jewish community. Well, it is a big, big false promise when these laws do not go far enough, because you have to get the third umpire to intervene and decide whether someone passes the test. I will tell you what, this does not pass the test of good government. This fails when it comes to good government.

Let me further mention this to you: why did 10 November happen? On 7 October we had the horrific situation in Israel. People were murdered by a terrorist group, Hamas. In the community it flowed on to Victoria, and people have not been the same as a result. What happened on 10 December? I will tell you what happened. We had a burger restaurant that was firebombed, and who was blamed for that? The Jewish community were blamed for that. Again, what was the result of falsely blaming a community for something which, later, people were charged for doing? Nothing. I will tell you what: the individual that was involved in that restaurant has been running the weekly protest, the pro-Palestinian protest, chanting all kinds of hateful and evil things outside Parliament, week in, week out. And what has been the answer? Have there been any charges? No, because this government has done nothing. Instead what we have had is a good citizen, Menachem Vorchheimer, who went back to study the law because he was also attacked wearing his yarmulke one day, when a bus pulled up and football players got off the bus, knocked his kippah off his head and assaulted him.

Years later Menachem Vorchheimer stood up, because the government failed, and took it to VCAT. VCAT found only last week that the Burgertory founder and pro-Palestinian activist Hash Tayeh had unlawfully vilified Jewish people by leading protesters in the chant ‘All Zionists are terrorists!’ at a rally in March 2025. The 30-page decision ruled that Tayeh breached both racial and religious vilification provisions of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. The tribunal found that by initiating and repeating the chant Tayeh incited hatred towards the Jewish people. He was unable to successfully argue his conduct was in public interest or done in good faith. Tayeh bought the argument that he was referring to Israel, not to the Jews that live here. Again, it was one of these ridiculous arguments that these people continue to do, blindly spewing their hatred out – not blindly – deliberately spewing their hatred out to the Jewish community that are more vulnerable. And do you know what? It took an individual within the Jewish community, a good upstander – not a bystander, an upstander – Menachem Vorchheimer, to take this individual through to VCAT and to get a positive finding.

Why couldn’t the government do this? Why didn’t we have police charge this individual and have him prosecuted? Because we do not have strong laws. We are sitting here 12 months on trying to fix the mess that this government created, and it did not just happen overnight. I said it happened six years ago. The government was aware. The government knew. The government has been going out to the Jewish community, to my community, and telling them ‘How safe you are, because we’re passing these laws.’ Well, I will tell you what: every single day that these laws have not been passed the government has continued to fail. We saw that happen seven months ago or thereabouts, when, again, we had the firebombing at the East Melbourne synagogue. On the same night, on the Friday night, we saw a bunch of these extremists heading down to a Jewish restaurant, turning tables upside down and targeting a restaurant simply because it was owned by Jews. And what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. This continues to happen, whether it is on the football field, whether it is at a school, whether it is in a museum where kids are targeted for being Jewish, whether it is graffiti on our walls or whether it is the weekly protestors with these signs. No matter where, we see the racist antisemitism.

The Greens have just stepped up now. I am sure they have got something positive to say, the member for Richmond. Each and every time we keep hearing this hatred, and the government has done nothing – absolutely nothing.

So we will be supporting this. Absolutely we will be supporting this. Why? Because we have been calling for it for years. In fact, we put the amendment up nearly 12 months ago, which the government rejected despite, as I said, doing a dirty deal with the Greens. Now here we are, back to square one. It is literally groundhog day. We are fixing the problems that this government has created. And I tell you what, we cannot wait for this to be passed, because finally we need to give the police the powers to charge and arrest these extremists, these haters that hate communities, that go out and target communities simply for being Jewish or simply for being of another faith, another religion, whatever it may be. These individuals go out there and target people, and that is simply not good enough. This needs to change. The government should have done their work. And I tell you what, hopefully this time we will get it right, because we just cannot continue to have the Labor government fail vulnerable communities. They talk up a big game, but they fail when it comes to action. This is a massive F, a massive failure. The Jewish community does not feel safe under the Allan Labor government. This government has failed them. The fact that we are here now, six years later, trying to pass something that should have been done years ago, is an absolute disgrace and a failure of the Allan Labor government.

 Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (16:01): I also rise to make a contribution on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026. As has been noted by other speakers, hopefully this is third time lucky to get this amendment into the legislation, which will make an important difference in relation to the vilification protections.

Now, I want to echo the some of the words of the member for Mordialloc in the sense that I find that there has been an enormous amount of historic revisionism going on in this debate from those opposite in relation to the initial legislation. Can I remind everyone that the opposition voted down the initial bill, which included this provision that police would be able to prosecute and it would not require going to the DPP. The reason that was posited at the time for voting the legislation down was in relation to four words that were applied to the civil anti-vilification protections. The member for Caulfield mentioned the Legal and Social Issues Committee report that had recommended changes to the anti-vilification laws, which predated 7 October 2023. The inquiry was held because there was a realisation that the existing laws were not sufficient, were not strong enough, and it was difficult to bring both a prosecution for criminal vilification and provide an opportunity to bring civil claims.

Interestingly, and as the member for Caulfield said, both the member for Caulfield and the member for Brighton were on this committee and the committee produced a bipartisan report that was endorsed by all committee members. Interestingly, chapter 5, which deals with civil anti-vilification protections, talks about introducing and adopting a harm-based provision. It says:

… the harm-based provision would shift the focus to the victim and the harms they experience as a result of the vilifying conduct.

It then went on to make a recommendation, recommendation 9:

That the Victorian Government introduce a new civil harm-based provision to assess harm from the perspective of the target group.

Further down that page – I am reading from page 120 of the report – it talks about a number of options to introduce and formulate a harm-based test. It suggests that the test:

… comprise a reasonableness test to objectively assess the conduct from the perspective of a reasonable member of the target group. For example, if a person was vilified for their disability, the conduct would be judged against a ‘reasonable’ person with that same disability.

If you go back 12 months to the debates in Hansard, the vast number of contributions made by those opposite were specifically in relation to this reasonableness provision and the concern that it should be a reasonable person generally rather than a reasonable person of the particular affected group. I have talked about this previously and about how nonsensical that would be in the context of vilification. The Jewish community, for example, makes up less than half a per cent of the Australian population. The antisemitism that we see in the streets, some of the words and the slogans – the reason why they are so hurtful is because they have been built up over generations. It is generations of trauma that mean that those words have such an impact. For the reasonable person in Australia they will not have that same impact. They cannot have that same impact because those people have not been affected by the same trauma. And it would be exactly the same for the Muslim community, again a relatively small proportion of the population, or our Indigenous population, again a very small proportion of our population, but a community that has endured years and years of suffering. Sometimes vilification that is targeting that group will be acutely felt by that group, but that may not be translated if you were talking about the reasonable person.

Why do I bring that up when we are talking about changes to the Crimes Act 1958? It is to remind everyone that the proposed changes – in the proposed amendment – were part of the initial bill. The initial bill that was put up to vote 12 months ago included that provision because it had been identified, as the member for Caulfield said, in another section of the report that one of the barriers to bringing a criminal conviction was the process that complainants needed to go through, and that extra process was seen as hindering the potential bringing of a charge. But then we have to ask ourselves: why did the opposition oppose the bill at the time? It was just for those four words, which –

Tim Bull interjected.

Paul HAMER: The member for Gippsland East wants to say he supports the amendment, but the records show that 12 months ago when the initial bill was presented to Parliament the opposition voted it down. The reason the opposition voted it down – speech after speech talked about the four words that were related to the civil protection, even though what had been stated in the committee report was recommending a civil provision that specifically referenced the group that had been targeted. The member for Brighton made an interesting point. He went on at length to say that the community – and by this I think he means the Jewish community – has called for action for too long. And that is correct. The community has called for action. At the time, 12 months ago when the initial bill was being debated, which included the provision that direct action could be taken by the police, the Jewish community pleaded and urged the coalition, the opposition, to vote with the government and pass the laws.

Tim Bull: We supported that amendment. You voted against it. The member for Ringwood moved it.

Paul HAMER: I will take up the interjection, because I think the member for Gippsland East is incorrect in his recollection of the event. There was an initial bill and the member for Malvern had put forward an amendment, which had been supported by the member for Ringwood, which had dealt with the political purpose defence.

That was taken out as a house amendment before the bill was even passed in this house. So the bill that was put up in this house to a vote did not include that political purpose defence, and the member for Ringwood then withdrew his amendment. When the member for Malvern got up again, the lasting point of dispute, or point of contention, that the member for Malvern had said was the last bit of contention that the opposition had with the bill were these four words relating to the reasonable person test in the civil provisions. The point that I am trying to make is that this was the opportunity. I mean, this had gone through the parliamentary inquiry, and it had support from both sides of Parliament – a bipartisan report. It had strong support from the Jewish community to pass the legislation as is. Once that political purpose test had been withdrawn, it had strong support from the Jewish community to pass it. They were pleading with the government to pass it. They were pleading with the opposition to join with the government to pass it, and instead the only way that we could pass it – and we knew that the overarching provisions were important to pass – was through this change that had been recommended by the Greens. I commend the bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (16:11): I am certainly happy to rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026 today. I will pick up a few points that the member for Gippsland East raised during his contribution to the debate. But I think it is important to start off, many might say, by stating that this is a very simple bill and one that has been taken out of the omnibus bill from a few weeks ago.

I will get to the other points in that omnibus bill that now have disappeared, one of those of course being the strengthening of IBAC. As the member for Brighton mentioned earlier, IBAC have been calling for it in several public inquiries – never by a formal letter, it appears. In several inquiries they have said that they do not have the powers to investigate corruption within Victoria’s Big Build sites because of the confusion between the definitions of ‘public officers’ and ‘corruption’ – and of course they do not have follow-the-money powers. We know that. The omnibus bill that went through this chamber would have strengthened that, not to the level that they perhaps needed. But then all of a sudden that is out of contention, that is out of play now, and we are presented with this Crimes Amendment Bill, which rightly does take out that needed referral to the DPP, which is probably why there has never been a conviction under these vilification laws – and is it any wonder, if any case needs a referral from the DPP. It was stated that the new section provides that a prosecution for these offences may only be commenced by the Director of Public Prosecutions or a police officer. This prevents private litigants from bringing prosecutions for these offences. There is also the section within the bill that talks about how burdensome it is on the DPP. So this bill will remove that – great.

But I did want to pick up on some points that the member for Gippsland East made earlier in his speech. No-one in this place would be surprised that he is highly entertained by the comical genius of Rowan Atkinson and was watching him over the weekend. But the point is about free speech – the difference between free speech and hate speech. I would like to think that growing as you get older and have more life experience is not an uncommon thing, but a much, much younger version of myself – and this is probably from time living in the United States – hated censorship of any kind. During my teenage years and my 20s I hated censorship, and I would have hated a bill that could be perceived as putting laws around what you can and cannot say.

My friends and I in the States used to say that they are all for free speech until you say something that they do not like, which is essentially true. But there is a very big difference between free speech and the freedoms that we are afforded in this country simply because of those past and present who have served this country in all sorts of roles and have fought for our freedom of free speech. There is a very big difference between that and hate speech and vilification.

As the member for Gippsland East would well know, there are often times when there is not a filter between my brain and my mouth. I might be able to say some pretty outrageous things, but none of that has any venom with it, I think we could all agree – never any venom. There is no place for hate speech within our society. There is just not, particularly based on religion, race, sexual orientation or anything of that nature. Hate speech is simply unacceptable in our society. It simply is. There is no-one in this place that would disagree with that.

I have been approached many times in the last few weeks about supporting the anti-vilification laws and going against free speech. That is not what this is. I just need to say that that is not what this is. There is such a big difference. Present day me, thankfully, now understands that there is a very, very big difference between free speech and hate speech. We have seen what happens when hate and hate speech and incitement go unchecked.

I did listen very, very closely to the contribution by the member for Gippsland East. He mentioned the protests that had been going on out the front of this place for months and months and months. Given the signs and the chants, you would have thought that there would have been arrests and convictions, multiple times. In fact you would think every protest would have seen multiple arrests based on the Crimes Act 1958 and the serious vilification offence against these groups, and of course it was antisemitic, so for there still not to be a conviction or an arrest is just horrific. Hopefully this does put some barriers around it. And I will touch on this: it was not in Victoria, but we saw it all over the media. We had a young female and, like it or not, she was Australian of the Year – I am not going to mention her name in here – chanting. That to me was hate speech – those chants that a young female role model, like it or not, was chanting, which then got spread all over social media. Again, I wonder: if that had been in Melbourne, would there have been an arrest and a conviction? Because in my mind there absolutely should have been. We understand that the reasons she was awarded Australian of the Year meant she had fought a very hard battle, and we respect that. What we do not respect is the inciting of violence against a particular group that we saw all over the mainstream media and social media. It was disgusting.

Although, as I said, younger me would have been absolutely opposed to anything that was going to censor us, censor our speech and stop me from saying exactly what I was thinking, present day me, thankfully, has grown up. I understand the difference between free speech and hate speech and vilification and being able to express a strong opinion in a diplomatic way. I would like to think sometimes I am diplomatic – not all the time, but sometimes. There is a very big difference in that. Hopefully now, having closed these loopholes that have prevented any convictions occurring, we can see some boundaries put around that hate speech and the inciting of violence and the inciting of hate, because it has been allowed to fester on the streets, particularly on the streets of Melbourne, every weekend, openly, without any consequence for action. Hopefully that will fix this.

 Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (16:20): I too rise to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill 2026, and the aim of this bill is to make a very small but very poignant challenge to the operation of our anti-vilification reforms. I will start by noting that this is the third time that we have tried to introduce this amendment, and each time those in the other place have rejected it – I want that on record.

What this bill is about, to put it simply, is stopping racism. It is so simple. It is about tackling serious racial vilification that goes on in our community. Indeed there is a major impetus for this change, which we have seen over the past couple of months, and a part of that has been antisemitism – hate weaponised and directed against our Jewish community here in Melbourne and of course in Sydney too. Everyone, every single one of us, deserves to live a life free from extremism, discrimination and hate. As I reflect on this, I also want to acknowledge another very important issue that this bill will help address, and that is Islamophobia. We have seen a massive rise in disgustingly vile racist attacks on our Muslim communities that are not warranted in the slightest. In December the Virgin Mary Mosque in Hoppers Crossing, which I have been to on many occasions – a wonderful and welcoming Muslim community – had their fence defaced with the phrase ‘Get some pork on your fork.’ I can tell you that when I speak to the Muslim constituents in my electorate they do not go around telling people who are not Muslim not to eat pork; I cannot for the life of me imagine why someone felt the need to do this. Two weeks later, ICOM, the Islamic College of Melbourne, one of our local fabulous Islamic schools in Wyndham, over in Tarneit, which I had the privilege of visiting many times as the member for Tarneit, was defaced in a similar manner, and it would not surprise me if it was the same person. Their fence was graffitied and defaced with an equally vile message, and do you know what it said? It said, ‘Not okay to eat bacon but okay to’ – and I am not going to say the word – ‘goats.’ This is something that someone has decided to write, likely in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness, at a faith-based school for children, so children can turn up to school and read that. I can tell you what I think they were hoping for: they were hoping that children – students at that school – their parents and their teachers would see this, and they would feel unwelcome in their own community and feel afraid, and worst of all, they would feel threatened.

I want to point out that these attacks on local Islamic schools and mosques are very unlikely to be connected or in response to the horrific events at Bondi. That incident at Virgin Mary Mosque took place around two weeks before the Bondi attack. This is not some kind of retaliatory impulse, and even if it was it is no excuse, but what we know is that there are other factors that are driving this kind of hatred and vilification that absolutely necessitate these reforms. A big part of that, I have to say, is the extremely disturbing rhetoric espoused by people like Pauline Hanson, One Nation and those kinds of supporters. I was absolutely disgusted when she was interviewed recently on Sky News and said quite bluntly that there are no good Muslims. This is the same person who twice wore a burqa into the Senate chamber up in Canberra as a publicity stunt to antagonise Muslims, and in that same interview Ms Hanson thought it would be a good idea to single out and target the suburb of Lakemba in Sydney, a very, very multicultural community and a wonderful community which happens to have a major mosque.

Those comments unfortunately – naturally – led to a series of threats being made to Lakemba mosque, which is surprising to no-one who knows what that kind of rhetoric is intending to do. No-one is surprised by this. I mean, is anyone in this chamber surprised by this? These are stock-standard tactics employed by parties and movements like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and their friends. It is deeply, deeply disturbing that those opposite and the Leader of the Opposition have refused to rule out a secret preference deal with One Nation.

As I said in this place a couple of weeks ago, it is all about race. It is all about skin colour – whether you are white or you are not white. When you separate that, for God’s sake, about what shade or flavour of white you might actually be, communities like mine are always, always the first to suffer. When Pauline Hanson first came to prominence 30 years ago, she said that Australia was being swamped by Asians. She was trying to target communities like our Vietnamese community in Melbourne’s west, an amazing, amazing community. Then she returned to the Senate in 2016, and it was all about targeting Muslims. That was the flavour of the decade. We might recall when Muslim communities, many of whom had been here for decades or had been born here, were suddenly cast as terrorists and extremists who wanted to destroy the Australian way of life. Of course the racists never go after the extremists; they always, always target vulnerable people. These kinds of people target people in my own community, like Muslim women, mums in hijabs with their kids at the shops, old men just trying to go about their daily lives or, even worse – and I see this on a regular basis – children. They target schoolchildren, literally kids who are probably more culturally acclimatised and aligned to whatever these people think of when they talk about Western civilisation. This is never okay. It is not who we are. We must stand up against this.

It is funny watching the knots that people will tie themselves up in because they are so full of hate. Very recently I made a number of posts on social media wishing my Muslim communities in my electorate a very warm and welcome Ramadan season. I have made hundreds of little gift boxes with my office to hand out at the community iftar dinners across my communities, like the one I attended with the Australia Light Foundation in Tottenham on the weekend. This is just so sad. These posts attracted hundreds of the most vile comments, the majority of which came from trolls and the majority of which were not actually from Victoria. Ironically, what they were saying was, ‘What about Lent? Are you going to be doing Lent boxes for Christmas?’ That was what the majority of those comments were about – Christians, or so-called Christians, who were triggered by a local MP wishing her Muslim community a happy Ramadan. They forgot the whole point of Lent is to give up something or sacrifice something. Why be consistent with your faith when you can beat up on another religious community instead? It was a very sad state of affairs.

I have no patience and no tolerance for this kind of hatred in our community, and it is why I overwhelmingly back these anti-vilification reforms. It is why we need to remove the requirement that only the DPP may sign off on prosecution of serious vilification offences and allow police to do the same, because what has happened until now is that until Victoria Police can get the sign-off from the DPP, the offenders, these terrible people who spread this kind of hate, have more time to continue to commit these awful offences unabated. This needs to change, because we cannot allow racism to fester unchallenged. That is why this is such an important bill.

This side of the chamber will always stand up for our communities of faith and our multicultural communities. We talk about it each and every single day here in this place and out in the electorate time and time again. What makes Victoria a great place to be and what makes Australia a great place to be able to have the privilege to live and raise a family is that everyone has the freedom to be who they are and to practise their faith. Whatever colour they are, whatever colour their eyes are or their skin is, whatever language they speak or country they were born in, they came here for a better life, and we raise our children and our grandchildren together.

We must push back against this vile hate. It is deeply, deeply disturbing that the Leader of the Opposition has refused to call out a secret preference deal with One Nation, who continue to spread the most vile racism across our communities, inciting hatred. It must be called out. You cannot pretend to stand with multicultural communities, as the Leader of the Opposition did in Footscray Park with our Vietnamese community on the weekend, and then behind closed doors do secret preference deals with racists. It is wrong and it must be called out. I commend the bill to the house.

 Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (16:30): I think it was a famous American sportscaster who said ‘It’s deja vu all over again.’ That is the case with this bill. The bill we are considering today is part of a bill that was first presented to this chamber in November 2024. Off it went on its winding journey to the upper house with a whole bunch of other things attached to it. The upper house in their great wisdom made a bunch of amendments and it came back to this chamber, and that is when things got very, very interesting indeed. I did need to check Hansard on this because I was like, ‘This sounds very familiar, what the government is doing here. This sounds a little bit like something I might have taken a bit of a view on way back when it came back to us in 2025.’ Sure enough, the amendments the Greens made in the upper house – and I worked very closely with my colleagues in the Greens – in my view were not good amendments because they were adding complexity to the very, very important work of police in charging for these new incitement offences. I said it was more appropriate that that additional test, that additional piece of work, not be allowed. So what did I do? I moved an amendment in this chamber when it came back from the upper house way back in April of last year to do exactly what the government is doing today.

There it was. Nearly a year on and we are back to litigating or discussing the position that I put to this chamber and that the entirety of the government voted against way back in April 2025. Who voted for it? The Greens did not vote for it, understandably. The opposition voted for it and I voted for it. It was my amendment, and the amendment I put is exactly what the government is putting to the chamber this day. It gets rid of the artificial, silly extra step of getting the DPP to clear a matter to be charged – not brought all the way through to trial, but charged. We know this intuitively, because when police are in the field, they need to be able to charge people. They then assemble a brief of evidence, take it off to the DPP, and the DPP forms a view. They say, ‘I think maybe you haven’t got enough here,’ or they will say, ‘Yes, this looks to be in order. We’ll go ahead and take this through to trial.’ But no, as a result of the amendments, which I did not support at the time, we added this extra step where instead of police, whilst in the field, being able to charge someone on the spot, they would have to take their details and say, ‘We’ll get back to you if we’re allowed to charge you. I’ve got to go off and consult with the DPP.’ That rendered the law absolutely useless, in my submission, because you have the circumstance where police are trying to use these laws, in part, for deterrence – to have a chilling effect on some of the behaviours we have seen. We have seen it recently with Grace Tame and others chanting the most abhorrent, appalling things at rallies. What effect would it have for police in those sorts of circumstances where someone is saying appalling things, hateful things and inciting people to violence, going up to them and saying, ‘Can I have your details? We think we’re going to charge you, but I’m just going to go off and check with somebody else,’ rather than being able to charge them on the spot. That is exactly why I moved that amendment way back in April 2025. It is exactly why I said, and I quote from Hansard:

My amendment will essentially be to reinstate Labor policy in relation to the ability of police to charge offences of incitement and threats. These are very serious offences that this bill is introducing into Victorian law. They are very serious offences and I do not think it is appropriate for the DPP to have a running veto over offences of this nature.

I maintain that position, and I am delighted that the government’s bill now adopts the position I put to this chamber. The farcical element of all this, though, is that the government voted against this very element last April. They voted for it in November 2024. It then went up to the other place. They voted against it and it came back here in April 2025 and the government voted against it, and here we are in March 2026 still trying to land a workable position in relation to these incitement crimes. It is an absurd path that we have been on in relation to these crimes that this bill seeks to amend – an absolutely absurd journey when it could have been cleaned up had the government just stuck to their guns in the other place way back when this bill left this place in November 2024 and was considered upstairs in 2025. If they had stuck to their guns, we would not be here today trying to further tweak these rules. So much of the Parliament’s time has been wasted on getting these laws right, and getting them, frankly, in line with the very amendment that I proposed to this place in April 2025.

Of course the reason this even comes about is because of a niche bit of political convenience. I do not expect for a minute that people are going to take much interest in the arcane machinations of what happens in this place in relation to particular bills being yanked or otherwise, but the reality is here that Labor pulled these provisions in a bill from the upper house because the Greens – good on them – successfully moved amendments in the upper house to expand IBAC’s powers: good amendments, good policy, good law. The government’s response? Shelve the bill. Kill the whole bill. The only reason the Greens were able to move those amendments was because it was a broad bill. So what did they do? They take the bill off the table in the upper house, they chop it up into a bunch of little bits, and this is one of the little bits. We are now legislating in itty-bitty bite-sized chunks to serve a political purpose, not a policy purpose.

I heard the member for Laverton speaking like it was a new idea, this bill, when we have been sitting on this legislation for nearly 18 months. It is not a new idea. This is good policy, it is good law, we just have not finished the job yet. It started in November 2024 and presumably went through cabinet in, I do not know, October of that year. For 18 months it has been wending its way through this process, and it is only for political convenience that the government has now pulled their omnibus bill in the upper house, chopped it up into little bits, and brought this little bit to this chamber for us to litigate yet again. We have discussed it so many times: in November 2024 when these rules were first introduced and in April 2025 when we reconsidered them on the basis of the amendments of the upper house. The government said no DPP veto, then they said okay to DPP veto, then I moved an amendment saying no DPP veto and the government voted against it, and where are we today 11 months on from that amendment? No DPP veto. Back to square one after all this time. What an appalling waste of time. Why, oh why, could not this have been done sooner?

The omnibus bill has been yanked. Why has it been yanked? This is a critical part of the process. It has been yanked to avoid those expanded IBAC powers. It has been yanked to avoid what the government perceives as a political problem in terms of IBAC having follow-the-dollar powers or expanded powers to investigate the CFMEU criminal infiltration of Big Build projects. That is what this is about. As much as we might be here today talking about something very good, it is a direct process consequence of the government seeking to duck and hide when it comes to CFMEU corruption of the Big Build process. That is the reason we find ourselves here today debating yet again these incitement rules.

As I have said, I respectfully disagree with the Greens on their assessment of the DPP veto or otherwise. I do not know if their position has moved at all, but I respectfully disagree with it. I said so at the time, and I moved amendments to that effect at the time, and the government, astonishingly, voted against their own policy. Just months after first introducing it, they voted against their own policy, and now, full circle, back we come, they are voting up their original policy. It is absolutely extraordinary.

[The Legislative Assembly report is being published progressively.]