NSW Government Refuses to Repeal Hoax-Based Antisemitism Laws

The fallout from the recent Australian federal police admission that it had been aware soon after the 19 January 2025 discovery of a caravan laden with explosives and an antisemitic note in the northwestern Sydney suburb of Dural that the crime scene was likely staged is ongoing, as the NSW premier and the police minister continue to dodge questions regarding their knowledge of the hoax.

The questions relating to when law enforcement informed premier Chris Minns and police minister Yasmin Catley that the caravan threat was an elaborate setup are only growing, as not only did NSW Labor allegedly continue to propagate the fear around it as being a legitimate threat, but it further progressed three bills in response to so-called antisemitic crimes in NSW that had all been staged.

The outrage regarding the news that several sets of right-eroding laws had been progressed due to the fake caravan incident, was further heightened when the AFP and the NSW police also admitted during a 10 March presser that all of the so-called antisemitic graffiti and firebombing attacks on Gadigal land in the Greater Sydney region, over November through to January, were also fabricated.

So, while it appears that NSW Labor likely found it politically advantageous to run with the idea that the caravan incident was a serious threat despite police considering otherwise, after Liberal leader Mark Speakman attempted to call the premier out on this in the chamber on Monday, the opposition leader then went on to insist to the ABC afterwards that “there is still an antisemitism crisis in NSW”.

Outside of the NSW Labor-Liberal duopoly, however, the state’s crossbench and civil society groups are challenging the validity of the new criminal offences that were rushed through parliament based on the volatile situation surrounding ongoing fabricated antisemitic attacks staged by organised crime figures, and they’re further calling for the enacted laws to now be repealed.

Necessitated by fake crime

Speakman quizzed Minns in the lower house on Tuesday as to “what date was the premier first briefed that the Dural caravan incident could be a fake terrorism plot”, to which the premier responded with the fact that NSW deputy police commissioner Dave Hudson had recently revealed that his agency had been aware of it being a hoax since 21 January, two days after its discovery.

Minns then put it to the Liberal leader that he’d “introduced hate speech laws directly to confront antisemitism”, and besides the caravan incident, “there has inarguably been a rise of antisemitic racist attacks in NSW over the summer”, which “needed to be met with comprehensive hate speech laws”.

Minns then asked Speakman whether the Coalition would vote with the crossbench to now repeal the laws, and the opposition leader replied that it would not, and this too entailed the premier successfully avoiding having to answer the original question about when he was made privy to the fabricated nature of the “antisemitic” crime.

Liberal MP Paul Toole also put the same question to the police minister, who explained that she’s already stated publicly that she “will not reveal the contents of confidential police briefings”, even though during these briefings she was told that the caravan was not a legitimate threat to the Jewish community, but rather it had been staged by organised crime to gain an advantage over police.

So, despite the so-called spate of antisemitic crimes in Greater Sydney being exposed as a hoax, members of both NSW Labor and the Coalition appear to now consider it best to continue under a climate of antisemitic fear, with the imposition of the new laws now being required to control a community that was never under the grips of any antisemitic crimewave.

Misleading the public

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties initially called for an upper house inquiry into whether NSW Labor was aware the caravan was a fake prior to progressing three tough-on-crime bills, which included the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Racial and Religious Hatred) Bill 2025, the Crimes Amendment (Places of Worship) Bill 2025 and the Crimes Amendment (Inciting Racial Hatred) Bill 2025.

In a letter distributed to all members of parliament on Monday, the NSWCCL president Timothy Roberts pointed out that despite the premier being updated by police on the incident every three days and Catley being briefed daily, when public awareness was drawn to the caravan on 29 January, eight days after it had been found a fake, Minns continued to call it a “potential mass casualty event”.

The laws relating to the antisemitic crimes were then passed three weeks after the caravan became public knowledge, and it too followed NSW deputy commissioner Hudson having revealed to the public on 30 January that not only was the caravan a likely setup, but of all ten suspects already in police custody in relation to the “antisemitic” crimewave, none of them held any ideological beliefs.

Hudson and AFP deputy commissioner Krissy Barrett revealed on 10 March that organised crime figures had paid gig criminals to conduct graffiti and firebomb attacks to convey that the city was in the grips of an antisemitic crimewave, so that organisers would have a bargaining chip in terms of information regarding further attacks to be divulged in exchange for softer penalties on a conviction.

The NSWCCL has three main concerns about how the Minns government has acted, which include that the premier may have been aware of the hoax but continued to propagate a climate of fear around it as if legitimate, that stoking the flames in this manner created more fear amongst the Jewish community and that the government had misled the public about what it knew and when.

Kicking against the pricks

Palestine Action Group spokesperson Josh Lees lead a coalition of civil society groups in lodging a challenge of the laws contained in the Places of Worship Bill with the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, as they hope to see them repealed. These laws include a ban on protesting “near” places of worship and the granting of the police power to move on those demonstrating near churches.

“What has happened in this state under Chris Minns is scandalous. It’s one of the biggest scandals we have seen in NSW politics in decades,” Lees told the press on Monday. “A series of undemocratic antiprotest laws that take away the rights of people in our state to voice their dissent to this government and its bad policy were rushed through this parliament based on lies and deception.”

“We now know that the Minns government was getting briefed every day by the police about the caravan hoax, about the series of other attacks that happened in this state and yet, still they are trying to maintain this fiction that they didn’t know through this entire thing what the police had called a criminal con job,” he made certain. “The Minns government has been part of that con job.”

The antiprotest laws that build upon the 2022 NSW antiprotest regime, which was enacted when climate defenders were being targeted, however the current measures that are soon set to be the subject of a Supreme Court challenge, have been progressed due to the threat of a fake antisemitism scare, while one of the goals of the authorities in this regard is to end pro-Palestinian public protests.

Meanwhile, in the NSW Legislative Council on Wednesday, Independent MP Rod Roberts raised a successful motion to hold a select committee inquiry into “the relationship between the Dural caravan incident and parliamentary debates on legislation”. However, the inquiry won’t deliberate upon whether the laws should have been passed, along with if they should now be repealed.

The Roberts motion was progressed by the entire crossbench and the Coalition opposition, and it entails looking into the police briefing notes provided to Minns and Catley up until 20 February, which is around the time the laws were passed, along with inquiring into the legitimacy of some of the statements being made by senior ministers at that time.

“I strongly support the motion to establish a select committee of inquiry into the relationship between the Dural caravan incident and the rushed passage of yet more draconian anti-protest laws in February this year, this time by the Minns Labor government,” NSW Greens justice spokesperson Sue Higginson told the upper house on Wednesday. “This is a necessary and urgent inquiry.”

Higginson further outlined that the government has presented parliament with the legislative package, claiming it “was needed urgently” and it went on to bully parliament, especially the upper house, into passing the laws “under false pretences”.

“This committee is necessary because the parliament and the people we represent deserve to know when the premier and the minister knew this was not a terror event, why the government did not correct the record in debate, what role the Dural incident played in shaping the content and urgency of these laws, and who made the decision to withhold the critical information,” Higginson ended.