More laws won’t stop hate speech. But there’s something else we can do

I couldn’t have been more than 10, maybe 12, years old when my parents walked with me to the local synagogue. They wanted to show me vile graffiti, the swastika, sprayed on the side of the building. It was proof to them, both Holocaust survivors, that antisemitism was alive and sick in this country.

Fast forward a couple of decades from that moment. Two buildings, one a mosque in Rooty Hill and the other a Jewish kindergarten on Sydney’s north shore, are devastated by fire attacks. Sympathy and support for the “other” group. Condemnation of the attacks. Council of Arab Australians head Eddie Zananiri denounced the arson attack on the kindy and “all acts of violence and racism which serve to threaten Australia’s multicultural society”. The then acting head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Gerry Levy described the arson attack on the mosque as “totally unacceptable”. Leaders of both those communities behaved like leaders.

Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain

Not sure what you’d call that. Love speech (eye roll). Support speech (sounds like therapy). Unity speech. Harmony speech. Maybe just leaders revealing themselves as decent human beings, showing empathy and kindness. We need so much more of that.

There have always been attacks on synagogues in this country. Always. Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, lived in Australia for six years and told the ABC this week that the most recent attacks show this country has changed. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here we are, more than 30 years on from the 1991 attacks; and still, they keep coming. Another antisemitic attack on a childcare centre. Firebombed synagogues. Graffitied swastikas. Hijabs torn off the heads of Muslim women. Abuse in the streets. Nine arrests have been made.

Meanwhile, we have had a raft of hate speech laws. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese eventually caved in to calls for a national cabinet on antisemitism, held on Tuesday, urging more and better databases, urging “best practice”. The premiers of NSW and Victoria have made threats and promises, harsher laws, more punishments. In fact, NSW Premier Chris Minns says he will go ahead with changes that experts think are a mistake. Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wants mandatory sentencing, as if that ever put anyone off doing anything.

In January 1991, the Ammanuat Jewish kindergarten in Chatswood was firebombed.Credit: Ben Rushton/Fairfax Media

And yet, antisemitism has never been more conspicuous in our community. Those on the receiving end of anti-Muslim sentiment would feel the same way.

Now it may surprise you to know that our hate speech laws are world-leading. Actually, I won’t tell you that. I’ll let Kath Gelber, professor of public policy at the University of Queensland, tell you. She has done decades of research on free speech and hate speech in this country of ours. Why world-leading? She says it’s the way we’ve combined the possibility of taking criminal actions and civil actions, such as using anti-discrimination laws. Those civil actions were once described as for “less serious offences”. But when it’s directed at you and yours, nothing feels “less serious”. It feels sad, twisted, scary.

We now have hate speech laws in every jurisdiction in Australia and most of those laws have been strengthened in the past five years. We’ve got laws against using Nazi symbols. Gelber describes it as a positive flurry of activity.

These laws send a message to the community that racist bigoted behaviour is unacceptable. We’ve also had arrests and convictions. You’d think the community would get the message. And you’d also think that we would be in a better place than we are.

Worshipper Nazir Ul Hussan Thauvi outside the mosque in Rooty Hill after it was attacked in January 1991.Credit: Steven Siewert

But you can’t legislate people’s feelings out of existence. Laws don’t stop people from hating each other because those feelings arise from a whole range of cultural, historical, economic factors. Laws are part of a bigger picture in how we tackle hate. And the very first thing we must tackle is how our leaders – particularly our political leaders – behave. As Gelber says, we have a set of circumstances where politicians, including Dutton, are calling for hardline hate speech laws.

“But we have those same politicians engaging in a divisive way of conducting politics that is only likely to increase the division in the community and feed into hatred more generally.

“We’re in a very difficult time politically, and I strongly suspect that a new set of hate speech laws is not going to have the effect that the politicians who are promoting it desire to have. We need instead a different kind of leadership, a leadership of unity.”

Like Gelber, David Slucki of Monash University’s Centre of Jewish Civilisation, says leadership matters. But it’s not just the leadership of politicians.

“Leadership is really important in helping shape the way people interact with each other and participate in society. We tend to pin a lot on a handful of high-level leaders.”

But it’s the leadership in our communities, cultural, religious, sporting. It’s the rabbis and imams, as well as the captains and coaches. It’s school teachers and nurses and friends and family.

“Yes, leadership is really important in helping shape the way people interact with each other and participate in society – but it is a societal level responsibility.”

What explains this latest surge of violence? He hasn’t tested his theory yet, but he hypothesises that it’s about the increased discussion of Israel: “Visibility stirs up resentment.”

He’s right. That visibility has unleashed rampant antisemitism. Instead of engaging with the politics of disaster in the Middle East, sure, hate Jews, burn down kindergartens, because that’s really going to make Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu change his behaviour.

I’ve said this before. That won’t stop me from saying it again. Life will not improve for Jews the world over until Netanyahu goes. It’s not his visibility that’s the problem. It’s the sheer inexplicable cruelty. And cruelty is contagious.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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