Submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in Australia

Human Rights Watch is pleased to make this submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international nongovernmental organization that reports on and advocates for human rights in about 100 countries worldwide. Human Rights Watch has had a Sydney office since 2013.

This submission addresses the following issues relevant to the Royal Commission’s terms of reference:

1. The rising prevalence of antisemitism in Australia
2. Limitations in data collection on racism in Australia
3. The Australian government responses to antisemitism and the need for a human rights-based response regarding legislation designed to tackle antisemitism or other forms of racism
4. Concerns over the need to accurately and meaningfully define antisemitism
5. Recommendations

1. Rising antisemitism in Australia

In recent years, antisemitic hate crimes have increased in Australia.[1] The December 2025 mass shooting during which two gunmen killed 15 people celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah at Bondi beach[2] followed a spate of hate crimes targeting Jewish people in Australia in 2024 and 2025.[3] This includes the arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024,[4] the firebombing of a Sydney childcare center in January 2025,[5] and multiple incidents of antisemitic graffiti.[6] These acts of hate prevent Jewish people from being able to freely practice their religion and culture and equally enjoy their human rights, as has been reflected in numerous testimonies already given to the Royal Commission from people with lived experience of antisemitism.

This rise in antisemitism sits within a broader rise in racist attacks in Australia.[7] These include, but are not limited to, rising Islamophobic violence,[8] anti-Arab[9] and anti-Palestinian[10] racist hate crimes, racist attacks against people of Indian heritage,[11] and racism towards First Nations people,[12] fueled by structural and systemic racism and inequalities. This trend mirrors patterns observed in other countries, including in the European Union[13] and the United Kingdom.[14] Antisemitism can also intersect with other forms of racism. For example, promoters of recent anti-immigration rallies in Australia have shared theories of the “Great Replacement" on social media.[15] The Great Replacement is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that “Jewish elites” are orchestrating the replacement of populations through non-white migration.[16]

Every person in Australia has the right to practice their religion and culture freely, without fear of violence, discrimination, hatred, or vilification. International human rights law obligates the Australian government to take positive steps to prevent and respond with all appropriate means and without delay to eliminate racial and religious discrimination, hatred, and violence. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the government must protect communities from such harms while also safeguarding the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.

2. Limitations in existing data collection on racism in Australia

While rising racist violence in Australia can be observed by the number of recent hate crimes targeting various communities, there are limitations on data collection on racism in Australia. The Australian Human Rights Commission has found that current data collection on racism in Australia is limited, with complaints or incident data not collected consistently across state jurisdictions, limited data on systemic and structural racism, and limited data on hate crimes and perpetrators of racism.[17] The absence of comprehensive data collection on racism by state governments can create a reliance on data collected by communities themselves, which has both benefits and downsides, but in particular, does not lead to consistency across communities.

The Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework,[18] a 10-year plan for addressing racism in Australia, recommends that the Australian government commit to collecting data about experiences of racism, including systemic and structural racism, in ongoing national surveys. It also recommends the government develop a National Anti-Racism Data Plan, in which communities with lived experience of racism are meaningfully engaged in co-designing a national approach to data about race and racism. This includes the development of new population and administrative data standards on Indigenous status and ethnicity, strengthening data about different forms of racism, and initiatives to address personal and structural barriers to reporting racism.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the international expert body that monitors implementation of ICERD, has similarly recommended that states’ “educational, cultural, and informational strategies to combat racist hate speech should be underpinned by systematic data collection and analysis in order to assess the circumstances under which hate speech emerges, the audiences reached or targeted, the means by which they are reached, and media responses to hate messages.”[19]

In collecting data on racism, it is important that government authorities take steps to ensure data quality and accurate categorization. This requires definitions and criteria for recording incidents to be objective, measurable, and consistent with accepted definitions that are human rights based.

3. Need for a human-rights-based approach

Any legislative response to antisemitism should be grounded in human rights. However, some laws Australian governments have recently introduced to address rising antisemitic attacks, including hate crime laws, raise serious human rights concerns, particularly in relation to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to peaceful assembly. Governments are obligated under international human rights law to protect people from racial discrimination and violence, and hate crime laws can further that goal. However, such laws need to be carefully drafted and applied to protect the rights of all groups and to minimize risks to other fundamental rights, including freedom of association and expression.

Recent examples of legislation passed by Australian governments that highlight these risks include:

• In February 2025, the Australian government passed laws introducing mandatory minimum sentences of between 12 months and 6 years for certain hate crimes and terrorism offenses. [20] Mandatory sentencing is known to disproportionately affect already marginalized groups; in Australia, mandatory sentencing has historically contributed to the over-incarceration of First Nations people.[21] Mandatory sentencing has also been found to be an ineffective method of reducing crime.[22]

• In January 2026, the government passed further legislation granting the Home Affairs Minister new powers to designate and ban "hate groups” and to refuse or cancel visas on the basis of hate speech, association with extremist groups, or hate crimes.[23] The legislation expressly excludes the requirement of procedural fairness, meaning groups can be banned without the opportunity to respond to allegations or challenge the evidence against them. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the laws could be used to ban groups in violation of international human rights law.

  While the new laws cover hate crimes based on race, nationality, or ethnic origin, they do not extend to victims targeted on the basis of religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, or disability.

• In December 2025, the New South Wales government passed legislation that gave police increased powers to restrict public assemblies from taking place in specific areas following a terrorist attack.[24] In April, the New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned the laws, finding they had "impermissibly burdened" the implied freedom of political communication.[25]

Introducing laws that risk infringing the rights of some people in the pursuit of combating antisemitism is counter to a rights-based approach, and risks unwittingly fueling further hate. The United Nations Rabat Plan of Action, a 2012 UN framework designed to help countries distinguish between protected freedom of expression and unlawful incitement to hatred, has warned that vague or overbroad hate speech and incitement laws often fail to address serious incitement while being used against members of minority communities themselves, "with a chilling effect on others."[26] The Plan of Action also makes clear that freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief are not in tension but are mutually dependent and reinforcing, stating that "free public discourse depends on respect for the diversity of convictions which people may have."[27]

Australia's current legislative framework does not provide the consistent and enforceable safeguards needed across all levels of government to ensure legislative responses to antisemitism reflect international human rights law.[28] Australia is the only Western democracy without a federal charter or act of rights.[29]A Human Rights Act would put procedures in place to help ensure governments consider human rights at an early stage in law and policy development. Under the existing framework, human rights reviews of bills occur late in the drafting process. The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011[30] requires statements of compatibility to accompany bills introduced into Parliament, but this requirement does not extend to all legislation.[31] A Human Rights Act would close these gaps and help ensure that legislative responses to antisemitism, and to racism more broadly, meet Australia's international obligations.

The need for a Human Rights Act was highlighted in the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework, a plan developed after the Commission consulted more than 1,200 people who had experienced racism in Australia. The Framework states that "[t]hroughout the Framework's development, the Commission heard about the urgent need for comprehensive and enforceable legal protections against racism that reflect Australia's international human rights obligations," and that "[m]any participants emphasised the importance of having rights-based frameworks that are guided by the principles of participation, equal access to justice, and accountability, to protect communities from racism.”[32]

Recent Australian government legislation responding to antisemitism has also focused largely on criminal law targeting individuals. Criminalization alone does not prevent hate crimes: criminal charges follow only after harm has already occurred, and research shows that individuals are often reluctant to report hate crimes to police. This can be connected to mistrust in police based on past experiences, as well as cultural and language barriers.[33] To address antisemitism and other forms of racism effectively, the Australian government should also invest in community-based anti-racism strategies, including those set out in the National Anti-Racism Framework developed by the Human Rights Commission. In its 2026-27 Budget, the Australian government cut funding to the Commission and reduced its projected staffing levels and operating expenses over the forward estimates.[34] The government should both fully implement the National Anti-Racism Framework and reverse reductions in the Commission’s funding.

4. Definition of antisemitism

Human Rights Watch notes that the Letters Patent establishing the Royal Commission state that the Australian Government has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) "non-legally binding working definition" of antisemitism, and that Commissioner Virginia Bell has stated that the Commission will apply the IHRA definition in investigating the nature and prevalence of antisemitism in Australia.

Human Rights Watch also notes that Commissioner Bell has acknowledged that at least two of the definition's illustrative examples are controversial, but her current view is that these concerns can be addressed through the requirement to consider "the overall context in which conduct occurs." We also note that Commissioner Bell has acknowledged that criticism of Israeli government policies is not in itself antisemitic.

While we welcome Commissioner Bell’s comment that criticism of Israeli government policies is not in itself antisemitic, it is important that the Royal Commission ensures that any definition of antisemitism is not instrumentalized to label non-violent protest, activism, and speech critical of Israel and Zionism as antisemitic, thereby chilling and sometimes suppressing it.[35]

We encourage the Royal Commission to look also at two other definitions of antisemitism, the Jerusalem Declaration[36] and the Nexus Definition,[37] alongside the IHRA definition. These definitions aim to ensure that efforts to tackle antisemitism do not inadvertently curb free expression.[38]

5. Recommendations

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Royal Commission make the following recommendations:

1. The Australian government should legislate a national Human Rights Act to ensure that legislative responses to antisemitism, and all forms of structural discrimination, including racism and hatred, are consistently grounded in human rights and meet Australia's international obligations.
2. The Australian government should fully implement the National Anti-Racism Framework, including community-based anti-racism strategies, and should reverse the recent reduction in the Australian Human Rights Commission's funding.
3. Australian state governments should collect comprehensive, disaggregated, and consistent equality data based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability and other protected characteristics to capture and reveal hidden structural discrimination in line with international human rights law and recommendations from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
4. The Australian government should review existing legislation passed in response to antisemitism to ensure consistency with international human rights obligations, including by removing mandatory minimum sentencing provisions, and strictly monitor the laws’ human rights impacts.