Australia’s democracy is under siege. Over the past five years, a cascade of laws – from the Foreign Relations Act 2020 to the Online Safety Act 2021, expanded metadata retention and sweeping anti-protest measures – has granted ministers unchecked power to censor speech, spy on citizens and crush dissent.
Now, proposals to yank funding from universities, charities and arts bodies if they “fail to act” against anti-Semitism promise to weaponise grants as ideological cudgels, stifling debate and gutting academic freedom.
Meanwhile, our political leadership chants “we stand with Israel” as that country – and its U.S. patron – mount a campaign in Gaza that human rights groups, UN investigators and even U.S. military analysts warn amounts to collective punishment and war crimes.
Bombardments of hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure are met not with calls for accountability but with uncritical applause for “self-defence”. This moral double standard erodes Australia’s credibility as a defender of international law and betrays every principle of justice we claim to uphold.
In our newsrooms, too, a chilling conformity takes hold. Major outlets owned by a handful of conglomerates relentlessly echo government talking points, branding peaceful protestors as “radicals” or “extremists,” while dismissing dissent on Gaza as fringe.
Online, the eSafety regime levies six-figure fines on platforms that host “harmful” speech – often defined so vaguely that even moderate criticism of government policy can trigger takedown orders.
Federal and state legislatures have criminalised assembly with draconian fines and exclusion zones, muzzled minor political parties near polling places, and expanded metadata retention to five years with only bare-bones oversight.
These are textbook tools of fascist transformation: centralise power, surveil citizens, choke opposition.
Adding fuel to the fire, well-connected pro-Israel lobby groups – whether the Executive Council of Australian Jewry or affiliate organisations linked to powerful U.S. counterparts – enjoy privileged access to ministers.
Their influence steers our foreign policy toward unconditional support for Israeli actions, drowning out Palestinian voices and sidelining calls for an independent war crimes inquiry. By conflating dissent with anti-Semitism, they bolster draconian funding controls at home while deflecting scrutiny abroad.
Australia now faces a stark choice. Will we defend universal rights, due process and academic freedom? Or will we let the creeping architecture of censorship and surveillance – reinforced by uncritical backing of atrocities in Gaza – hollow our democracy from within?
If we cannot condemn war crimes when they beggar belief, how can we credibly oppose repression on our own soil?
It’s time for the government, media and civic institutions to reclaim moral clarity: roll back authoritarian laws, abolish funding blacklists, guarantee freedom of assembly and speech, and demand an immediate, independent international investigation into allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Anything less makes us complicit – in our own backyards and halfway across the globe.
Header image: Australia’s Anti-Semitism Envoy Jillian Segal (Facebook).
