Labor and the Coalition have been accused of “bad politicking” by teaming up to pass tough hate crime laws in the wake of a series of antisemitic incidents, including one revealed this week to be a “fake terrorism plot”.
Crossbench MPs also backed a review – or a reversal – of the laws, after the revelations about the caravan plot.
The Australian federal police revealed on Monday the caravan found on Sydney’s outskirts laden with explosives was allegedly part of a plot concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal gain – not inflict a “mass casualty event” in Sydney.
Krissy Barrett, an AFP deputy commissioner, said investigators “almost immediately” had considered the caravan, which police discovered on 19 January, to be “a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job”.
The Albanese government’s hate crimes legislation passed parliament on 6 February, eight days after the discovery of the caravan in Dural was publicly revealed.
The new powers had bipartisan support after Labor agreed to opposition demands to introduce mandatory minimum sentences, despite it being against its own party platform.
The minimum jail times include six years for terror offences, three years for financing terrorism and one year for displaying hate symbols or performing a Nazi salute.
The laws also removed rules around intent, meaning a person acting “recklessly” without necessarily intending to threaten violence can be charged. The laws will be reviewed after two years.
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, described the changes at the time as the “toughest laws Australia has ever had against hate crimes”.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has warned previously that mandatory sentencing increases incarceration, is costly, ineffective as a crime deterrent and can disproportionately affect marginalised groups.
Government sources say minimum sentencing powers were introduced as a last-minute amendment to strike a deal with the opposition to pass the laws swiftly. The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, had introduced the bill in its original form months earlier in September 2024 before a spate of incidents against the Jewish community in Sydney and Melbourne.
The changes were opposed in the lower house by the Greens and a number of independent MPs, including Monique Ryan, Helen Haines, Zali Steggall and Zoe Daniel.
In the Senate, an unlikely group of senators including David Pocock, Fatima Payman, Gerard Rennick, Ralph Babet and Alex Antic voted against it.
Rennick, who described the change as a “political stunt” at the time, told Guardian Australia the opposition had politicised the debate, wedging Labor into adopting minimum mandatory sentencing to jump on a “bandwagon”.
“We see that time and time again where the politics of it overtakes the actual quality assurance of what they’re doing, and it gets rushed through, and then you suddenly find yourself in this situation whereby they look back on it,” he said.
Pocock took aim at both major parties for the changes, saying it was “yet another example of the major parties teaming up to ram laws through the parliament that pollute good policy with bad politicking”.
“The hate crimes laws had broad support and minority communities have been desperate for these new protections for years,” he said.
“But despite expert advice that mandatory sentencing doesn’t work and actually makes people less safe, the government caved to last-minute Coalition demands, going against their own longstanding Labor party policy position.”
Pocock said he would support a reversal of the minimum sentences in light of new details about the caravan plot.
Labor’s national platform opposes mandatory sentencing, stating the “practice does not reduce crime but does undermine the independence of the judiciary, lead to unjust outcomes and is often discriminatory in practice”.
During debate in February, the Liberal MP Julian Leeser said arguments against mandatory minimum jail times usually applied to “people engaging in small crimes like shoplifting” but said recent events had included “terrorism and crimes motivated by hate” in a reference to the caravan plot.
“We cannot have a situation in this country where people are committing these crimes and then not doing jail time. There is no deterrence set. If it deters even one person, it will have been worthwhile,” he said.
Labor MP Mike Freelander had also said he did not believe in mandatory sentencing, but believed that “we should trust in the legal process”. Freelander told Guardian Australia he stood by his comments in February.
Ryan said the last-minute amendments were “hugely disappointing” and undermined the separation of powers. She also supported a review of the laws.
“In this 47th parliament, we’ve repeatedly seen the major parties compete with each other to appear tough on crime. Petty, point-scoring politics makes for bad laws,” she said.
Juliana Warner, the president of the country’s peak legal body the Law Council of Australia, said good lawmaking relied on “robust and transparent consultation processes” which was missing in the debate on this legislation.
“The Law Council is concerned that legislative reform processes are increasingly rushed and lack transparency or public scrutiny,” she said.
“The urgency of the circumstances or nature of particular reforms may, on occasion, require a different approach. However, this should be the exception, not the norm.”
