A moment at 5.48pm on Tuesday stopped me in my tracks

What were you doing at 5.48pm on Tuesday? I bet you weren’t watching the NSW parliament livestream – and understandably so. Even for political tragics, observing the bear pit is often not a great use of time.

But Tuesday was different, and I’m glad I happened to be tuning in as the NSW Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig rose to speak. Hoenig is the only Jewish member of the Minns government, and the child of a Holocaust survivor, Edith Hoenig. His grandparents were murdered by the Nazis in the sand dunes of Kalevi-Liiva, Estonia. Most of his mother’s extended family were murdered in the Auschwitz gas chambers.

The Minns government hopes its new race hate speech laws will help stem the antisemitic violence plaguing Sydney, such as this attack in Woollahra late last year.Credit: TNV

After providing a harrowing summary of his family history, Hoenig told parliament his mother, Edith, and father, Ernest, came to Australia in 1948 because they had sought out a country that had a liberal democracy, welcomed immigrants, was free and had free speech, and valued the notion of a fair go.

“Growing up in Sydney, in the area in which I still live, like all minorities often there were remarks made that might be regarded as antisemitic, but all minorities face them,” Hoenig explained.

“Whether somebody made some reference to the size or shape of my nose, whether your spending patterns related to your religion, comments were often made. But, as those sorts of comments were often made from other ethnic groups, it just seemed to have been in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the Australian way. You never took offence, or you learnt to live with it.”

But Hoenig warns that life for Jews in Sydney has deteriorated in 2025. “In my lifetime, I have never seen or witnessed the extent of the antisemitism and the antisemitic attacks that have been so concentrated since October 7,” he said.

“Do Jewish people live in fear? They do live in fear. I have been told that I should not be walking to the synagogue on Shabbat, that I should not be walking down the street. I have been told that I should be dropped off right in the presence of security and collected right in the presence of security, something that I do not like to do.”

Hoenig went on to plead for a bipartisan approach to the antisemitism crisis, including on three tranches of legislation rushed through parliament this week.

The first involves news laws against the display of Nazi symbols on or near a synagogue or place of worship, Jewish school or the Sydney Jewish Museum. The second involves a crackdown on protests outside places of worship.

The third tranche has proven the most contentious because it creates a new criminal offence for intentionally and publicly inciting hatred towards another person, or group of people, on the grounds of race. Individuals would face maximum penalties of two years’ imprisonment, fines of up to $11,000, or both.

Premier Chris Minns proposed the change several weeks ago, arguing that racially motivated violence often starts with race-based hatred. While inciting violence has long been a crime, intentionally inciting racial hatred has not been an offence in NSW (unlike some states such as Western Australia) and anyone subjected to racial hatred could seek recourse only through civil courts.

Minns is right that violence is more often than not preceded by hate. Indeed, in his powerful speech to parliament, Hoenig made the point that the centuries-long persecution of Jews has started with hate speech before progressing to even more serious acts.

For Jewish residents and the broader community, the antisemitism crisis means the threat of death or injury in Sydney right now is real. The vast majority of MPs were convinced that this new law was a necessary response.

The spate of antisemitic attacks in Sydney is abhorrent and the government understandably wants to stamp it out. We all want the scourge of antisemitism to end.

The easy road here in my weekly note to subscribers would be to tell you about the new laws passing and leave it at that. But my honest take is that I am conflicted about events in parliament this week.

I’m not alone. MPs from across the political spectrum privately hold concerns about the legislation and whether it may produce unintended consequences. The NSW Law Reform Commission, led by distinguished former chief justice Tom Bathurst, last year looked at whether the Crimes Act should change to criminalise hatred and warned against it.

“Expanding criminal vilification offences to cover the incitement of hatred could have negative consequences, including upsetting the ‘balance’ of rights and disproportionately impacting certain groups,” the report stated. “Expanded criminalisation comes with risks and is not always the best tool to achieve social policy aims.”

Even Hoenig acknowledged in his speech that the bills being debated by parliament were “not easy” given the implied constitutional requirements of freedom of political communication in Australia.

In an opinion piece for the Herald, columnist and former federal attorney-general George Brandis congratulated Minns for his strong condemnation of antisemitism but accused the premier of overreach on these new laws. Brandis’ support for Israel and the Jewish community is rock solid, but he warned against governments telling people what they may or may not think.

“It is not the state’s role to regulate opinion on political, social, moral, religious or cultural questions – or to prohibit the passionate expression of such opinions,” he said. “It is the role of the state to protect people from harm. And while we recognise that harm extends beyond physical harm – or the apprehension of it – to psychological harm, it cannot mean criminalising hostile attitudes.

“Yet hate speech laws have been used as a Trojan horse to prohibit – or even, now, criminalise – attitudes and beliefs of which society disapproves. The corollary is that society – through government and its agencies – claims a right to prescribe what attitudes and beliefs are acceptable. And so, in the name of a good cause, what may be said is policed by ever-more intrusive political censorship. That is how free societies lose their freedoms.”

It’s possible concerns about the impact on freedoms are over-done. The same laws that passed in NSW this week have existed in WA for some time, and free speech hasn’t imploded there.

Brandis’ concerns are shared by many NSW MPs who don’t feel they can express those views publicly due to party loyalty or fear they will be seen as downplaying the very real antisemitism crisis in Sydney.

Many MPs also don’t like the way these legal changes were rushed through parliament (the laws were introduced on Tuesday and passed at 4am on Friday, without a parliamentary inquiry as is often the case), and say consultation with the broader community was limited to non-existent. I share those concerns. Surely a lesson from the COVID era is that well-intended but lightning-fast policy responses can lead to poor outcomes.

For example, it is currently an offence under the Crimes Act to threaten or incite violence towards a person or group based on their race, religious belief or affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, and HIV or AIDS status. The new laws only criminalise hatred for race but none of the other so-called “protected categories”.

I am not necessarily making the case for an expansion of hate laws to those groups, but the awarding of additional criminal penalties for race-based hatred over hatred directed to other vulnerable groups is jarring at best.

Independent MP Alex Greenwich summed that up well a fortnight ago by noting the creation of a new offence for the incitement of hate based only on race would capture a neo-Nazi targeting a Jewish person, but not stop the targeting of an LGBTQ person.

“The NSW government’s proposal is effectively providing neo-Nazis with an exemption to target LGBTQ groups,” he said.

The government has promised to review over the next six months whether those other vulnerable communities should be given the same higher level of protection.

The Herald will be watching and reporting. NSW parliament can be a dull place at times but this week – and in particular at 5.48pm on Tuesday – was something quite different. It all serves as a good reminder that what happens on Macquarie Street has real-world consequences.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend.

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