‘Enough of the politics’: Minister calls on Ley to back Bondi laws

Sussan Ley must get “on board” and back the Government’s legislative response to the Bondi terror attack after Labor made major changes to the snap reforms, a senior minister says.

Ahead of Parliament sitting early next week, Anthony Albanese announced on Saturday that the Government would split up its behemoth Bondi Bill, separating gun and customs laws from hate crimes and migration reforms.

He also said racial vilification laws would be scrapped for the time being, telling reporters at Parliament House that “it’s clear that that will not have support”.

The Prime Minister added the Government “will only proceed with measures that have the support of the Parliament”.

Health Minister Mark Butler said on Sunday Labor had met the demands of the parliament and called on the Coalition to put politics aside.

“We presented a Bill that was a proper response to the Bondi terrorist attack five weeks ago – the worst terror attack in Australian history,” Mr Butler told Seven’s Sunrise.

“(We held) national cabinet the following day, so all of the premiers and chief ministers, as well as the PM, took the view that we needed stronger gun control laws as well as hate laws.

“So we brought an omnibus Bill but we said we wanted to hear from other parties about suggestions of getting those changes through the Parliament.”

Through listening, according to Mr Butler, the Government separated the gun laws and axed the racial vilification laws.

“The challenge now is we’ve got to see action from the Federal Parliament,” he said.

“We’ve got to grasp this opportunity for national unity in the face of the worst terror attack in our history, and crack down on hate preachers once and for all, crack down on these hate groups that are doing protests and fomenting the sort of hate that we saw drive that awful terror attack.

“Enough of the politics, enough of the debate about whether the Bill should be big or should be separate.

“We’ve got a focused challenge for the parliament this Tuesday, and it’s time Sussan Ley got on board and came together and saw … a moment of national unity, which I think will serve the country enormously well.”

Prior to the bill being split, the Opposition Leader declared the legislation “unsalvageable” and ruled out supporting it as it was.

“Laws of this seriousness demand precision, confidence and clarity,” she said, adding that the government had instead offered “confusion and contradiction”.

The stance sparked concern from Jewish groups and community leaders, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry calling on the Ms Ley not to let “the perfect to become the enemy of the good”.

“Some of the Opposition’s criticisms of the Bill are valid and repeat concerns which we ourselves have expressed about the Bill’s shortcomings,” ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said in a statement.

“By all means seek to amend the Bill to remove its shortcomings, but a wholesale rejection of the Bill would not at all be warranted.

“In our view, the defeat of the Bill would be a retrograde step.”

Reacting to the Government splitting the Bill, a spokesman for Ms Ley said the Coalition would “look at the Prime Minister’s announcement but we are not going to be lectured about unity”.

‘Rampant politicisation’

Ms Ley has also drawn ire for what critics have called mixed messages.

In the days following the attack on December 14, she demanded Mr Albanese recall Parliament to pass new laws before Christmas while investigators were still scrambling to establish key details.

She spent much of December and the January hounding Mr Albanese, declaring earlier this month that “every day that the parliament has not come back has been a day that it should have come back”.

But she has since changed gears, accusing the Government of rushing legislation and not giving parliamentarians enough time to scrutinise it.

Murray Watt, another senior minister, said on Sunday the Government would have preferred “to see after that terrible incident in Bondi ... thePparliament come together and work together constructively in a bipartisan manner to deal with these issues”.

“But of course, within a couple of days of that terrible incident, we saw the rampant politicisation of it by a range of Coalition figures,” Senator Watt told Sky News.

“Day after day before Christmas, we saw Sussan Ley on behalf of the Opposition, demand for Parliament be recalled to legislate immediately, and now that we have recalled the parliament, they say it’s too rushed, and we shouldn’t be having it happen so quickly.

“We saw them day after day, demand that we take action on racial vilification, that we take action on hate speech, and now they’re saying that that’s all too hard and we shouldn’t act on it.

“So I think what that shows is that the attacks from the Coalition were always based on politics rather than actually trying to bring the country together in the way that we want to see happen.”

Five weeks have passed since “ISIS-inspired” gunmen opened fire on a Chanukah gathering in Bondi, killing 15 innocents, injuring dozens more and tearing at Australia’s multicultural social fabric.

The massacre came amid a surge in anti-Semitism and warnings from intelligence officials that a terror attack was probably due to deteriorating social cohesion.