Bondi shooting: Hate crime laws and gun reforms set to become law after Parliament recalled

Sweeping hate crime laws and gun restrictions will soon come into effect after a mammoth 48-hour special sitting of Parliament to pass new laws in response to Australia’s worst terror attack.

Labor teamed up with the Greens in the Senate on Tuesday evening to first pass tougher firearm measures before pushing through a watered-down suite of hate speech laws after securing support from the Liberals, in a move opposed by their coalition partners the Nationals.

The legislative changes include cracking down on groups that voice hate against people of other faiths, bringing in stronger background checks for firearm owners, as well as setting up a national gun buyback scheme.

In a fiery Question Time, the PM accused the former Morrison government of failing to address a spike in anti-Semitism well before the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.

Speaking during the first parliamentary sitting since the Bondi massacre, Mr Albanese said it was absurd to claim that anti-Semitism had somehow started after the 2022 election.

“The idea that anti-Semitism began two years ago, with the change of government, is false and it’s declared to be false by the comments of those opposite in senior positions,” Mr Albanese said.

“Despite the surge in anti-Semitism on their watch, did the Morrison government appoint a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism?”

Shortly after Mr Albanese remarks, his predecessor Scott Morrison hit back in an online post declaring: “Hamas never praised the actions of my Government, but they did praise yours,” he wrote on X.

Mr Albanese’s push to secure support for the measures looked shaky ahead of the two-day sitting, prompting the Government’s omnibus bill to be split, carving out gun reforms, ditching anti-vilification clauses and picking up a suite of Liberal hate crime proposals.

While the Greens opposed provisions tackling anti-Semitism and hate crimes, Labor won their support for sweeping firearm restrictions after the Coalition snubbed the tougher federal controls, insisting they would unfairly target law-abiding gun owners.

Following internal Opposition tensions over Ms Ley’s hate-laws agreement with Labor, the Nationals opted for a split approach on the vote, formally abstaining while some MPs voted independently on the floor.

Two Queensland LNP MPs, Colin Boyce and Llew O’Brien, had both broken ranks to oppose the hate laws in the lower house on Tuesday, while former party leader Michael McCormack voted for the bill.

It came after the junior Coalition partner opted against holding an expected joint-party room on Tuesday, with leader David Littleproud claiming he didn’t have time to discuss amendments to ensure certainty around “unintended consequences of the laws”.

Among those to vote for the laws was Liberal MP and brazen leadership rival Andrew Hastie, who had previously flagged that he would be firmly voting no to the previous omnibus package.

In a social media video posted after the vote, the Canning MP explained his reasoning to his almost 150,000 Facebook followers, insisting the Liberals had taken Labor’s “terrible” bill and “gutted it like a fish”.

But the Government has claimed the laws are not as strong as they had intended and go against the key recommendations by the Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns accused the Liberal Party of being hypocrites, insisting it was a “shame” that the proposed laws were “not the full set of bills that should have passed this parliament today”.

“It is just an absolute shame that we came here today, and the full suite of laws aren’t what they should be,” he said.

“Because the Liberal Party refused to support the very things that they said they did. But these bills, as they stand, have a significant impact.”

He added that while the Liberal Party claimed to support the full adoption of Special Envoy to Combat anti-Semitism Jillian Segal’s report, their approach went against one of the key recommendations.

Mr Burns read recommendation 3.2 to the House, which related to federal laws targeting anti-Semitism, “including with respect to serious vilification offenses and the public promotion of hatred”.

“You cannot claim to support the special envoy and then refuse to support the very recommendation that a special envoy put forward in her report,” he added.

Other Labor MPs have insisted that they would like the racial vilification laws to be later revisited, with Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah publicly stating her preference for an examination through a parliamentary inquiry.

But Home Affairs Minister and senior Labor figure Tony Burke insisted the government had to push through and “deal with the Parliament that we have”.

“I can’t see a pathway in the current Parliament. The truth is, we were specifically being asked a few weeks ago to recall the Parliament before Christmas to bring in tougher laws against hate speech, and then it’s turned out the tougher laws against hate speech in particular are the exact things that we can’t get parliamentary support for,” Mr Burke told Sky.

In the opening Question Time of 2026 after the first since the Bondi attack, Labor highlighted the Coalition’s resistance to the government’s attempts to drive meaningful legislative reforms.

Ms Ley meanwhile began the Opposition’s attack by insisting the Prime Minister didn’t have the capacity to admit his mistakes or apologise to the loved ones of Bondi victims for delaying calling a royal commission into the massacre.

The PM claimed he had “engaged respectfully” and in an adequate time which allowed for a measured response with proper consultation.

“I have said, I am sorry that this occurred, sorry for the grief and pain the Jewish community in our entire nation have experienced,” Mr Albanese said.

“Our responsibility is to (put) grief, pain and anger into meaningful action,” he said.

The wedge between Ms Ley and Nationals Leader David Littleproud seemed evident on the floor of question time with both figures barely acknowledging each other.

A media release issued by Ms Ley moments before Question Time, which claimed the opposition had “fixed” Labor’s “badly mishandled” hate laws, also hadn’t included a single refence to the word “Coalition”.

Leadership speculation continues to haunt Ms Ley following the snap sitting week where she struggled to reign in rogue MPs in the Coalition, while Labor MPs are privately acknowledged Mr Albanese’s standing with voters has also been damaged.

The House of Representatives will return on Wednesday morning but only to adjourn until Parliament’s previously slated start date for the year on February 3.