Press Release
New Counter-Terrorism Laws are about Defending Western-Sanctioned Tyranny and not about Promoting Social Cohesion

The Albanese Government has introduced its Counter-terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023. The Bill has passed the lower house after it was initially tabled in June 2023 and subject to a Parliamentary enquiry.

The proposed legislation would make it an offence to display in public Nazi symbols or the performance of the Nazi salute. Other significant measures in the Bill include offences for displaying symbols of proscribed organisations or anything that so nearly resembles them, possessing violent extremist material including material that ‘intimidates’ a foreign country, and expanding the offence of advocating terrorism to include praising of a terror act.

These laws are introduced at a time when the Zionist occupation is inflicting, under the approval of Western governments, unprecedented war crimes, and whilst there is increasing populace opposition to the occupation's targeting of hospitals, schools, places of worship, refugee camps, journalists and emergency vehicles, all the while callously starving the people of Gaza.

Hizb ut Tahrir / Australia would like to state the following:

1. Conflating criticism and opposition to the crimes of the Zionist occupation with anti-Semitism is a tired tactic that has run its course. The good citizens of the world have seen right through this narrative and no amount of legislation can cover the barbarity of the occupying entity.

2. This legislation hides behind preventing Nazi symbols and salutes. No amount of elitist virtual signaling can hide the European origins of anti-Semitism. The west is merely deflecting and projecting their own insecurities upon the rest of the world who stand against western colonialism and its subdivisions.

3. Although the Bill removes the flag used by ISIS in the definition of a hate symbol, it is unclear how the government intends to enforce the banning of symbols of proscribed organisations where widely adopted Islamic symbols are used by those the government proscribes. It appears the government has still given itself cause to prohibit Islamic symbols in public. The Attorney General thanked the Muslims for their consultation only to confirm his contempt by not changing much at all.

4. Prohibiting the possession of material that contains an "intimidatory act" against a foreign country raises questions as to who the government is trying to protect, tyrants and occupiers or the people? Orwellianism is alive and well.

5. It is clear this legislation is not about preventing anti-Semitism; it is about defending the barbarity of the Zionist occupation, and the Western states that stand behind it, from the tidal wave of opposition in both the East and the West.

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Australia