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Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has called for a sweeping expansion of Australia’s hate speech laws and tighter restrictions on gun ownership, arguing extremists are exploiting legal loopholes and that the country can do more to prevent antisemitic violence.
In a deeply personal submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Dreyfus said the nation’s hate crime laws, strengthened only this year, no longer go far enough because they criminalise only the most serious conduct involving threats or advocacy of violence.
The Labor MP, who lost his cabinet position after last year’s federal election amid factional infighting, wants a broader criminal offence that captures hate speech before it reaches that threshold, saying extremist groups deliberately operate in a legal grey zone to recruit supporters and normalise hateful ideologies.
“It is now clear that this offence is too limited,” Dreyfus wrote, saying further reforms were needed to create “a broader offence that does not require elements of violence or threatening force.”
“Experts and officials have repeatedly provided evidence that some groups are acutely aware of the legal threshold and use that grey zone to recruit, socialise and normalise extremist beliefs.”
Dreyfus also urged the commission to recommend tighter limits on civilian gun ownership, saying there were clear arguments for restricting the number of firearms an individual can possess unless they can demonstrate a genuine need, such as farming or competitive shooting. While acknowledging some gun owners have legitimate reasons to own multiple firearms, Dreyfus said those seeking to exceed any cap should be required to justify doing so.
As attorney-general, Dreyfus oversaw in 2023 Labor’s laws banning Nazi salutes in public and the public display and trading of prohibited Islamic State symbols. The government also created new criminal offences for doxxing amid pressure from Jewish community groups.
His current intervention comes as the royal commission examines responses to rising antisemitism following a series of attacks on Jewish Australians, including last year’s Bondi terrorist attack on a Hanukkah festival, which killed 15 and injured more than 40. The commission is also considering whether existing laws adequately protect targeted communities.
The submission is also a rare personal account from one of the country’s most senior Jewish MPs, detailing the torrent of antisemitic abuse he says he has endured since Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel.
Dreyfus, whose great-grandmother Ida Ransenberg was killed during the Holocaust, recounted being verbally abused while standing outside Melbourne’s State Library before attending a rally in April 2024 protesting over violence against women. A stranger had approached him and said: “You’re a genocidal Zionist. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It was shocking because in the 17 years I had by then served in the federal parliament, I had never experienced this kind of public abuse,” he wrote. “Sadly, it has continued since then.”
His electorate office in Mordialloc was later splashed with red paint, while vandals scrawled the words: “Who does AG Mark Dreyfus serve?” outside the building – a slogan he argues invoked the longstanding antisemitic trope that Jewish Australians have divided loyalties.
Dreyfus said he had also been repeatedly branded a “genocidal maniac”, accused of being an “enemy foreign agent” working for Israel and subjected to online abuse claiming “Jews are running Australia”. Other posts described him as a traitor and a “genocidal creep”, while one called for him to be “put six feet under”.
Perhaps most distressing, he said, was being labelled a “kapo” – a reference to Jewish prisoners forced to supervise fellow inmates in Nazi concentration camps – by a Sky News commentator.
“To level such an accusation against the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors is not an ordinary political disagreement,” Dreyfus, who is now Labor’s special envoy for international human rights, wrote. “It is an attempt to take the deepest wound in Jewish history and use it as an instrument of abuse.”
He stressed there was a crucial distinction between robust criticism of Israel and antisemitism.
“That line is crossed when Jewish Australians are collectively held responsible for the actions of a foreign government,” he wrote. “It is no more correct to hold Jewish Australians responsible for the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza than it is to hold Palestinian Australians responsible for the atrocities committed by Hamas.”
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