Good morning. Late last night our laws to crack down on hate speech and take sensible action on firearms passed the Parliament. And I want to thank all Members and Senators who voted for this legislation. I want to acknowledge all who participated in the debate as well.
We recalled Parliament as soon as we could to achieve this. I stood in this courtyard last month and said we would develop laws that were as effective and strong as possible. I said that those laws would include the adoption of the recommendations of the Special Envoy on Antisemitism. And the exposure draft that we released on the 12th of January did just that. It wasn't possible to get through all of the recommendations of Jillian Segal's report that would have included a racial vilification provision. What we were able to do, though, was to get, with the support of the Greens, the strengthening of firearms laws and with the support of the Liberals and some crossbenchers as well, support for strengthening the provisions on hate speech. Not as strong as we originally put forward, but no doubt the strongest hate laws that have ever been put in place in Australia have now been achieved. That is a good thing.
At Bondi, the terrorists had hate in their hearts, but they had guns in their hands. We said we wanted to deal with that with urgency and with unity, and we acted to deliver both. And there's been advances on both. My Government listens. We work through problems methodically and we find solutions. And we have done that. We prioritise national unity and nation healing and we want to make sure that light triumphs over darkness. It's now an opportunity for the Parliament to unite and to say that this is a good thing, that Parliament has determined this.
We engaged very deliberately and collaboratively with the members and leaders of the Jewish community on developing the draft legislation, just as we did on developing the terms of reference for the Royal Commission. And I thank those members, such as Peter Wertheim and Daniel Aghion and others who spent many hours before the release of the draft legislation, engaging. We engaged with other faith leaders as well and engaged with legal experts. I thank the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of Home Affairs, who normally wouldn't have been working each and every day between Christmas and New Year, but they did so in order to get this done.
Australia was born out of an instinct to unify. That's what we did 125 years ago when the Federation came together. We need to come together and tomorrow will be another day in which I want to see national unity. The Day of Mourning will be an opportunity for all Australians to stand with those who are grieving, those who lost loved ones, family members and members of the Bondi Chabad community, but others as well. There will be formal events which take place tomorrow, but there are also opportunities for every Australian to participate, by putting a candle in a windowsill or at the front of your house, by flags flying at half-mast, by recognising the installations and the lighting that will occur as well.
I want to particularly pay tribute to the spiritual leader of the Chabad community, Rabbi Ulman, who has shown great leadership as have other rabbis in the community as well over what has been a really difficult period. They have comforted their community, they've reached out and engaged in constructive ways. There's a lot of practical things have had to be done. The medevacking of Gefen Bitton, one of the heroes of Bondi, to Israel. I visited him in hospital with community leaders just before he was medevacked out. The work that has been done has been quite extraordinary and I pay tribute to them. This period has been one of the most difficult in our nation's history, coming to terms with this. We continue to take action required to keep Australians safe.
JOURNALIST: You acknowledged there that one of Jillian Segal's, the Antisemitism Envoy's recommendations was this racial vilification changes. I know you're saying there's not the numbers right now in the Senate. Members of your own backbench want you to continue to work on this. Can you commit to doing that? That you can take time to get the detail of this right and that might actually change the numbers in the Senate?
PRIME MINISTER: I commit to trying to get every state to elect six Labor senators, but that's unlikely. The Senate is what it is there. And if you can't get support for these laws in the aftermath of a massacre, it is difficult to see people changing their mind. We have a big agenda as a government, a big agenda. And you'll see that rolling out when Parliament resumes in a couple of weeks' time and beforehand. We've been busy working on that. But the Parliament is what it is.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has today described you as 'delusional and cheap' for trying to shift blame. Were you trying to shift blame and what do you make of his comments?
PRIME MINISTER: Not at all. Look, Mr. Morrison can make whatever comments he likes. He's entitled to. I was simply making the point by quoting what Members said at that time in 2018, '19. We have strengthened hate laws. We have not sought to go over all the detail of the time when we had an Attorney-General in this country who said that 'you have a right to be a bigot.' We know that at that time the attempt to work with to abolish Section 18C occurred under the former government and that was something where I worked very closely with Peter Wertheim and others.
JOURNALIST: Queensland has rejected participating in your Gun Buyback Scheme. How can the program be effective if a state with the second highest rate of firearms isn't going to participate in it?
PRIME MINISTER: That's a question for Queensland to justify their position. We're putting forward sensible reforms. As I said, when the Howard Government put forward reforms, they received national support, not in a partisan way.
JOURNALIST: Some states say that they won't stump up the 50 per cent of the cost of it. Are you willing to top up the amount that's in there in order to make the scheme work across the country?
PRIME MINISTER: No, they'll participate. There's nothing unusual about states saying they want everyone else to pay but themselves for things. This is a sensible reform. It's based upon the Howard Government's reform. That was something that Labor supported, and every state and territory came together to support. I encourage states and territories to support this, what is now law as a result of the passing of the Senate legislation. But they're accountable for their own decisions. And I had a constructive discussion with Premier Crisafulli last week. I disagree with his position, respectfully. And I don't think it's in the interests of Queenslanders or the nation to not have national uniform laws. One of the things that my Government has had to deal with is the National Firearms Register. There wasn't one. It was forgotten. We had to institute it. We're funding something in the order of, these aren't the exact figures, but something like $110 million out of $160 million program we're doing for states to fix up their firearms register. It's absurd that in 2025 there are states that have a paper register. How do you check people's records across state borders if you've got these paper records? So, the digitisation is essential. We are stepping up. We are stepping up, but state and territory leaders need to step up as well.
JOURNALIST: Are Australians less safe because you couldn't get everything you wanted in these bills?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Australians are more safe because of these bills being carried. The racial vilification provisions, I think, were a recommendation of the Special Envoy's Report. The Coalition said they supported its adoption in full. It's up to them to explain that.
JOURNALIST: On that, if the Royal Commission were to suggest that that would be useful in further protecting Australians, given your answer before about the numbers in the Senate, are you ruling that out, even if there is some sort of recommendation?
PRIME MINISTER: It's a question not for me. It's a question for the Coalition. Labor has always - if you look at every, sex discrimination, race discrimination, the outlawing of Nazi symbols, the legislation - every progress in those areas has been done by Labor Governments. Now, we don't control the Senate. It did not have the support of either the Greens Party who were up front, and I think that was, I said here on Saturday that the Greens Party, while I disagree with their position, they were up front and at least they came to a position. What we had to do - well, if you can make, I think, I'm not sure how many senators we've got, but if you can add another ten people, get them to join the Labor Party, then, you know, come back to me. But it's a matter of maths and there is not support for it. And I accept that. What we have done - I'm a pragmatic political leader. I'm into getting real things done. We got some real things done last night in the Senate.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you've talked about national unity. We haven't seen a lot of unity across the Parliament over the past two days. Are you disappointed by that? And also, there's been talk about Parliament needing to meet the moment. Do you think Parliament has met this moment?
PRIME MINISTER: I'm not the commentator. Others are. I think this morning, you know, was, I made a statement about unity. I have, throughout this entire period, conducted myself in a way that has consistently said, I want to see national unity, I want to work together. I've seen comments saying that somehow it was a take it or leave it approach. Nothing could be further from the truth. That's why you have an exposure draft of legislation. That's why you go through a process.
Now, the Opposition said that they had legislation. They said it every day. They stood up and said, 'Parliament needs to be resumed, legislation can be carried today we have draft legislation.' We still haven't seen any of it. The Shadow Cabinet met for the first time Sunday night during this process. We have, I said on Friday, I think I was in Queensland Friday morning. I said it was like trying to grab smoke. It was just not clear what they were prepared to support. The decision of the Greens meant that we could then be very clear that they would support the gun laws. So, we would split the bills. They wouldn't support the other measures. We needed to know what the Liberals were prepared to support, to see what the possibilities were of having a majority in the Parliament. But I very deliberately as well, stood here on Saturday and said we would only move laws that had that majority support. We worked very hard to do that. We could have, you know, we could have crunched numbers in the House and then gone through a long debilitating process in the Senate that I think would have been divisive. There is a very conscious reason why I believed that if we couldn't meet this moment and get legislation passed last night, it wasn't going to get easier today or tomorrow or the next day, it was going to get harder. That is why we did it, in order to maximise the possibilities of an outcome. Now, most people, people are watching this live, glaze over at those Parliamentary procedures. But I have very explicitly said that every day, tried to work through in a really orderly way, in a transparent way, to say what I wanted to achieve, that national unity. And that has been important. And today we have laws that are stronger than they were yesterday.
JOURNALIST: Will Australia be joining Donald Trump's Board of Peace?
PRIME MINISTER: I've been focused on the House of Reps and the Senate at the moment. We'll give consideration to those issues in line with other countries as well. But we haven't turned our attention to those issues. We've been prioritised, I think quite rightly, on what do we need to do to keep Australians safe.
JOURNALIST: Thanks, PM. Is it correct that under amendments passed last night, an individual could be prosecuted, or an organisation could be listed under the new rules for expressing ridicule or contempt to another person or another organisation? And is it a sufficient standard that the ASIO Director-General would give advice? Is that enough of a protection for a modern country like Australia?
PRIME MINISTER: There are good protections in this legislation last night. There are good protections, and you will see it operate. You will see it in operation what it does. I'm not going to pre-empt those processes. Part of the thing is that the Minister who's responsible for designation can't, in advance, can't predetermine those issues. But a bit of, you know, people will have tried to draw all sorts of analogies around this legislation, both on guns and on hate. None of them are based on reality. This is sensible reform. Put forward, adopted by our Parliament, and that's a good thing.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, is the Government looking to take further action on religious discrimination like Islamophobia as flagged by Minister Aly last week?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we have, when it comes to -- we couldn't get through the vilification laws at all. So, the Senate is what it is. So, people want to direct questions to the votes that we need in the Senate to make further changes, but we will set about now implementing the laws that have been passed. I'll go to the Governor-General for Royal Assent and then we'll get about implementing them.
JOURNALIST: You said the Senate is what it is, but these decisions were made on a very short timeline. The Greens have indicated their willingness to negotiate on racial vilification laws. Will you negotiate with them into the future?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, they had an opportunity. If you can't get laws passed in the wake of a massacre, then it's difficult to see people changing their minds. There have been people who've said, including the Leader of the Opposition, has said that she had laws ready to go. We asked for those. We asked for those so they could be given to the Attorney-General's Department to inform the work that was being done for this legislation. I'm yet to see it.
JOURNALIST: So, on Saturday, you stood at that lectern and said that you wouldn't introduce any laws that didn't have bipartisan support. Why not take that same approach with racial vilification laws, given that that is what the Jewish community have asked for as well as members of your own party?
PRIME MINISTER: Let's be very clear. We stood with the Jewish community to support the recommendations of the Special Envoy on Antisemitism. I didn't do that on Saturday. I've done that consistently. I stood up when we released the report and we've been going through one by one. It's up to others to explain how it is that they called every day, demanded Parliament to come back and pass these laws in a day as late as that whole lead up to December, as late as December 22, December 23. They were standing up saying, "We could be passing these laws today." When they saw them, they didn't vote for them. They voted against them.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you cited a 59 per cent rise in antisemitism under the Morrison and Turnbull governments --
PRIME MINISTER: No, ECAJ. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, not someone. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
JOURNALIST: ECAJ. You presided in 2023 and 2024 over a 316 per cent rise in antisemitism. Can Mr Morrison really be blamed for a wave of antisemitism that you presided over?
PRIME MINISTER: I didn't mention him at all. What I did was I quoted, I quoted the Ministers in his government at the time. I just quoted them, just as a fact. And I accepted that all governments needed to do better. At that time, of course, we know that the former government, go back, they had an opportunity to do things that they didn't do, but we've done. Doxxing, outlawing, criminalising doxxing. The Coalition voted against that when we introduced laws over a year ago. We introduced laws about Nazi symbols and flags and those issues. That was never done before. There wasn't ever, there's been a Special Envoy on Antisemitism in many countries of the world for a long period of time, my Government did it. My Government has acted. Could we have done better? Absolutely. All governments could have done better. That's just a fact. But I accept my responsibility as Prime Minister of Australia and people are responsible for what happens on their watch. I do that. I expect others to do the same. Thanks very much.
