Bondi shooting: Hate crime laws and gun reforms expected to pass Federal Parliament

Hate crime laws and gun reforms are expected to pass Federal Parliament on Tuesday night after a mammoth 48-hour special sitting in the wake of Australia’s worst terror attack.

Labor will lean on The Greens to first pass their gun control measures before a watered-down suite of hate speech laws are expected to be clinched with the Liberals, following strained negotiations that split the Coalition.

Changes include cracking down on groups that voice hate against people of other faiths, bringing in stronger background checks for firearm owners, and setting up a national gun buyback scheme.

Anthony Albanese’s push to secure support for the measures in response to the Bondi massacre looked shaky ahead of the two-day sitting, prompting the omnibus bill to be split, carving out gun reforms, ditching anti-vilification clauses and picking up a suite of Liberal hate crime proposals.

While The Greens opposed provisions tackling anti-Semitism and hate crimes, Labor won their support for sweeping firearm restrictions after the Coalition snubbed the tougher federal controls, insisting it could unfairly target law-abiding gun owners.

Following internal tensions over Ms Ley’s hate-laws agreement with Labor, the Nationals opted for a split approach on the vote, formally abstaining while some MPs voted independently on the floor.

Two Queensland LNP MPs, Colin Boyce and Llew O’Brien, had both broken ranks to oppose the hate laws in the lower house on Tuesday, while former party leader Michael McCormack voted for the bill.

It came after the junior Coalition partner opted against holding an expected joint-party room on Tuesday, with leader David Littleproud claiming he didn’t have time to discuss amendments to ensure certainty around “unintended consequences of the laws”.

Among those to vote for the laws was Liberal MP and brazen leadership rival Andrew Hastie, who had previously flagged that he would be firmly voting no to the previous omnibus package.

In a social media video posted after the vote, the Canning MP explained his reasoning to his almost 150,000 Facebook followers, insisting the Liberals had taken Labor’s “terrible” bill and “gutted it like a fish”.

But the Government has claimed the laws are not as strong as they had intended and go against the key recommendations by the Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns accused the Liberal party of being hypocrites, insisting it was a “shame” that the proposed laws were “not the full set of bills that should have passed this parliament today”.

“It is just an absolute shame that we came here today, and the full suite of laws aren’t what they should be,” he said.

“Because the Liberal Party refused to support the very things that they said they did. But these bills, as they stand, have a significant impact.”

He added that while the Liberal Party claimed to support the full adoption of Special Envoy to Combat anti-Semitism Jillian Segal’s report, their approach went against one of the key recommendations.

Mr Burns read recommendation 3.2 to the House, which related to federal laws targeting anti-Semitism, “including with respect to serious vilification offenses and the public promotion of hatred”.

“You cannot claim to support the special envoy and then refuse to support the very recommendation that a special envoy put forward in her report,” he added.

Other Labor MPs have insisted that they would like the racial vilification laws to be revisited later in the terms, with Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah publicly stating her preference, including a call for it to be examined through a parliamentary inquiry.

But Home Affairs Minister and senior party figure tony Burke insisted Labor had to push through and “deal with the Parliament that we have”.

“I can’t see a pathway in the current Parliament. The truth is, we were specifically being asked a few weeks ago to recall the Parliament before Christmas to bring in tougher laws against hate speech, and then it’s turned out the tougher laws against hate speech in particular are the exact things that we can’t get parliamentary support for,” Mr Burke told Sky.

In the first Question Time of 2026 after the attack, Labor highlighted the Coalition’s resistance to their attempts to drive meaningful change.

While Ms Ley began the Opposition’s line of questioning to insist that the Prime Minister didn’t have the capacity to admit his mistakes or apologise to the loved ones of victims for delaying his decision to call a royal commission into the massacre.

The PM claimed he had “engaged respectfully” and in an adequate time which allowed for a measured response with adequate consultation.

“I have said, I am sorry that this occurred, sorry for the grief and pain the Jewish community in our entire nation have experienced,” Mr Albanese said.

“Our responsibility is to (put) grief, pain and anger into meaningful action,” he said.

The wedge between Ms Ley and Mr Littleproud seemed evident on the floor of question time with the leaders barely acknowledging each other.

A media release issued by Ms Ley moments before Question Time, which claimed the party had “fixed” Labor’s “badly mishandled” hate laws, also hadn’t included a single refence to the word “Coalition”.

Both leaders will limb away from the snap sitting week politically bruised as Ms Ley seeks to reign in rogue MPs in her stitched together Coalition and Mr Albanese’s low-pressured 94-seat majority second term upended.

The House of Representatives will return on Wednesday morning but only to adjourn to their previously slated start to the Parliamentary calendar year on February 3.