A neo-Nazi leader who protested outside NSW Parliament, promoting a baseless conspiracy theory that the Jewish community paid bikies to firebomb synagogues for political gain, did not breach racial vilification laws, according to a NSW Police review.
Legal bodies have warned that the hate speech laws are vague and too complex, while the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal says they do not go far enough.
But the findings of a review by former Supreme Court judge John Sackar KC are being kept secret by the Minns government, which confirmed on Wednesday it would reject an order from the NSW upper house to release the report.
More than 60 black-clothed members of the National Socialist Network (NSN) gathered outside parliament on November 8 after submitting a protest application that was unopposed by police. They chanted “blood and honour”, a Hitler Youth slogan, and held a banner that read “Abolish the Jewish lobby”.
Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told parliament, in an answer submitted on March 26, that “a subsequent review of the actions of the protesters conducted after the protest identified no offence”.
The Herald has previously chosen not to publish details from NSN leader Joel Davis’s speech at the rally, but believes it is now in the public interest, as NSW parliament considers new hate speech legislation.
Davis had shouted into a megaphone that the “Jewish lobby” and “Jewish-controlled media” had engineered a “fake antisemitism crisis” to justify hate speech laws. He said attacks on synagogues were the work of organised crime.
“Who paid them? Who paid these bikies to firebomb synagogues?
“I think there’s one answer to this because who benefited: the organised Jewish community, which as a result passed several laws restricting criticism of them, their power, and their influence.
“The Jews do not want to be criticised.”
There is no evidence for Davis’s claims of Jewish involvement. Last year, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said the agency believed that Iran sponsored several of the attacks on Australian soil.
The NSW government passed laws making racial vilification an offence in February last year, arguing it needed to act urgently to combat antisemitism. Two people have been convicted since the laws took effect in August.
In May, it commissioned a review to assess the laws and whether they should be widened to protect people against other forms of vilification.
Sackar, who previously led the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ hate crimes, handed his report to Attorney-General Michael Daley on November 5, three days before the neo-Nazi rally. The Coalition and the Greens have been calling for the report’s release since last year.
But the government has kept it secret for nearly five months, even as it introduced new laws to prohibit displays of support for Nazi ideology. After the Bondi terror attack, the government also set up a parliamentary committee to consider banning phrases such as “Globalise the Intifada”.
“While we are considering further changes to hate crime laws in parliament, it’s troubling that the NSW government refuses to share an independent review it commissioned into the very issues we are debating,” Greens upper house MP Dr Amanda Cohn said.
“A cynic might wonder whether the findings don’t align with the government’s approach.”
A Herald application under freedom of information laws was rejected because the report was deemed confidential to cabinet members. The government has cited the same cabinet confidence to reject an order from the upper house calling for the release of the report.
At a March press conference announcing stronger penalties for homophobic hate crimes, Premier Chris Minns said Sackar’s findings should not be released until the government’s position was finalised.
A spokesperson for Daley said the government considered all relevant advice while designing reforms to combat hatred and extremism, and the two convictions for inciting racial vilification prove the necessity of the new laws.
Legal groups told the inquiry that they shared concerns raised by the NSW Law Reform Commission, which recommended against introducing vilification offences in 2024.
“We are concerned that it could be difficult to prove terms like hatred to the criminal standard,” the commission wrote, warning that a change “would introduce imprecision and subjectivity into the criminal law.”
The Law Society predicted police would be less likely to prosecute because of the complexity.
Segal, the envoy to combat antisemitism, urged changes that would lower the threshold for prosecution. These included a shift from “incite hatred” to “promote hatred” and removing the onus to prove a reasonable member of a targeted group would fear harassment, intimidation or violence.
Other bodies argued for laws to protect vulnerable communities vilified because of attributes such as religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability. “Current laws are too narrow and set the bar too high,” the NSW Women’s Advisory Council submitted.
The racial vilification offence was used to prosecute a speaker at a Sydney far-right rally in January, who described Jews as “our greatest enemy”. He was sentenced to 12 months’ jail.
Davis, the NSN leader, remains in custody charged with a federal offence after encouraging supporters online to “rhetorically rape” Wentworth MP Allegra Spender.
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Jessica McSweeney is a reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald covering urban affairs and state politics.Connect via email.
