A Jewish federal Labor MP has called for Australia’s controversial “hate speech” laws to be expanded to cover non-violent and non-threatening language.
Mark Dreyfus, who devised a raft of “hate speech” legislation banning Nazi salutes and symbols while serving as attorney-general, made the recommendation in a submission to the ongoing Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion.
The Member for Isaacs in Melbourne’s south-east also called for tighter gun laws, and claimed he had been the victim of anti-Semitic abuse online that accused him of being a “foreign agent” for Israel, a “genocidal maniac”, and having divided loyalties.
His “hate speech” laws were strengthened again after the Bondi Islamic terrorist attack following intense lobbying from the Jewish community, including left-wing peak body the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which helped draft the new legislation and has also said it should go further.
But Mr Dreyfus said the laws, which include a prohibited hate groups provision that is being challenged in the High Court after it was used to ban the White Australia Party, should be extended to cover organisations that allegedly operate in a legal “grey zone to recruit, socialise and normalise extremist beliefs”.
“I believe that further extension of hate speech laws is needed to create a broader offence that does not require elements of violence or threatening force,” he wrote.
In detailing his own personal experiences with anti-Semitism, Mr Dreyfus said he was particularly distressed at being labelled a “kapo”, a reference to Jewish prisoners who worked for Nazi Germany, by a Sky News commentator.
“To level such an accusation against the son and grandson of holocaust survivors is not an ordinary political disagreement,” Mr Dreyfus wrote.
“It is an attempt to take the deepest wound in Jewish history and use it as an instrument of abuse.”
Mr Dreyfus’s submission came just days after the conservative Australian Jewish Association (AJA) warned that “hate speech” laws brought in as a result of lobbying from Jewish groups had “backfired” and caused anti-Semitism to increase.
Hate Speech Laws Are Backfiring – AJA with Caleb Bond, Sky News
AJA CEO Robert Gregory appeared on Sky News with Caleb Bond, from Israel to discuss AJA’s recent submission to the Royal Commission.
Robert described the numerous recent ‘hate speech’ laws as “unpopular and… pic.twitter.com/pKiUZvfh6D
— Australian Jewish Association (@AustralianJA) June 27, 2026
“Governments should not introduce additional hate speech laws until an independent review has assessed whether recently enacted laws have reduced anti-Semitic incidents or attitudes and whether they had generated unintended consequences,” the AJA wrote in its own submission.
“Laws restricting speech are unpopular in the Jewish community and broader society. They don’t reduce anti-Semitism. There is evidence that they increase anti-Jewish sentiment.”
AJA CEO Robert Gregory told Sky News from Tel Aviv last week that anti-Semitism had “skyrocketed” after the raft of new laws were introduced.
“I think the laws are backfiring, and I know many in the Jewish community aren’t happy,” he said.
When asked by host Caleb Bond why “hate speech” laws were pushed so hard by other Jewish lobby groups, Mr Gregory said it was “really hard to understand”.
“I know some Jewish groups, they’ve just historically always done this, and they’ve thought that ‘we don’t want to see hate speech’, so the answer to that is to police it and make it illegal,” he said.
“When as you’ve said, and as we agree, some of this hate needs to be out there, we need to see what we’re dealing with, understand who is spreading the hate, and we can counter it with facts, with arguments, but to make it illegal, it generates anti-Semitism.
“People accuse the Jewish community, and Jewish organisations, of wanting to censor speech, and it’s something we can easily prevent.”
Header image: Left, right, Mark Dreyfus (Facebook).
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