Democracy is under attack and must adapt, warns Claire O’Neil

Home Affairs Minister says the democratic project is under threat and must adapt to new challenges including declining trust, greater foreign interference and reduced social cohesion.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil warned that democracy continued to face major internal and external threats. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned that democracy in Australia is under attack from the spread of misinformation, rise of new media platforms, threat of foreign interference and declining social cohesion.

Speaking in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Ms O’Neil said that declining trust was a major problem that needed to be addressed to restore confidence in democracy and warned some nations were doing better than others in addressing this challenge.

She also took aim at pro-Palestine protesters who had vandalised Labor electorate offices including those of Anthony Albanese in Sydney and Josh Burns, the Labor MP for Macnamara whose St Kilda electorate office was firebombed last month.

In a speech to the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra, Ms O’Neil said “denying access to government services, terrorising politicians and their staff, painting symbols of terrorism in public spaces, smashing windows, setting buildings alight - these are the measures of autocrats, despots and tyrants.”

“They have no place in our democracy.”

Launching the Strengthening Democracy report which was commissioned by government in December 2022 to safeguard Australia’s democratic system, Ms O’Neil said it was inevitable that democracies would change over time.

She said democracy would need to adapt to new challenges.

“The democracy of 2025 cannot be expected to look identical to the democracies of 2005, or 1985,” she said. “Every generation needs to discover how to nurture and protect their democracy.”

However, Ms O’Neil warned that democracy continued to face major internal and external threats, arguing that Australia needed to play a major role on the international stage to revitalise the democratic project.

“Many democratic countries are becoming less democratic. Like a virus, populists are replicating at an exponential rate. New strains of nationalism are emerging around the world,” she said. “They are personalising political power, strangling free speech, attacking diversity and adopting ‘strongman’ authoritarian measures — all in the name of “saving the soul of the nation.”

“It seems like the democratic project is backsliding — not only in newer, less robust democracies but also in democracy’s heartland.”

Sounding the alarm on the external threats, Ms O’Neil said the government knew the nation’s adversaries were using “information warfare and psychological methods to sow discontent and disunity in our community.”

“While we can try to fight back, these weapons are becoming harder to counter,” she said. “Just last Friday, two Russian-born Australian citizens were accused of obtaining Australian Defence Force material to share with Russian authorities. This was the first time an espionage-related offence has been laid in Australia since new laws were introduced in 2018.”

Ms O’Neil warned against Australia becoming an “island of democracy in a sea of autocracy.”

“We need to work together to inoculate democracy against emerging threats,” she said. “We need collective action, not only from governments but from society as a whole. This needs whole-of-society invigoration.”

“The project of democratic renewal can’t be led by one person, one task-force, or one government. It needs the expertise of our communities and businesses, our universities and think tanks, our charities and philanthropies.”

She said social media had a big part to play, saying that new media platforms were not “some neutral medium.”

“They are big players and their choices actively shape the systems they control,” Ms O’Neil said. “Like many newspapers that began as sources of essential information and then degenerated into purveyors of propaganda, social media algorithms push people into filter bubbles and echo chambers that entrench polarising beliefs.”